Heartsick for Country by Sally Morgan

Author:Sally Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/General
ISBN: 17788
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2009-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Image 8.2: Pat’s mother, Christine Grimm, Darwin, 1975 Courtesy Pat Dudgeon

Willy must have been responsible and trustworthy as well. Why else would he have been on the Enid going to Fremantle, with a family back in Broome? Being an Aboriginal man as well? White crew members would have appreciated the paid or even unpaid trip down south, back to the populated civilised centre that they missed so badly living out in the frontier. We don’t know if this was Willy’s very first trip or one of several, but the skipper trusted him and chose him and one other to go on the trip. The crew must have been paid because Willy had a family back in Broome to support. I thought at first that the family might have been living in Beagle Bay Mission at the time, but Mum felt they lived in Broome so the family would have got Willy’s salary. Indigenous people did not get equal pay then, and whatever they did earn usually went straight to the government. So, if they were living at Beagle Bay, perhaps Willy’s wages would have gone straight to the mission without his ever seeing a cent, or a penny, as it would have been then. But if they lived in Broome, the situation might have been different, and he might have kept his wages. So we decided that they probably lived in Broome for a couple of years around that time. Willy may have wanted independence and success for his family, and moved away from the mission into town in hope they would have better resources and life chances. Perhaps they lived in a shack on the fringes of town, in the coloured camp called Indian Territory, where no white people went. My grandmother was there years later, when my mother left the mission and lived with her. From my conversations with my mother, about the implications of Willy’s place on the ill-fated Enid and the reasons behind his marriage to Lillian, Willy soon emerged as a full person in my mind’s eye; the ghost of an unknown skeleton became clad in the flesh of an intelligent, hardworking, responsible, kind, loving father.(Image 8.3)

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