Inheritance by Carole Wilkinson

Author:Carole Wilkinson [Wilkinson, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760650414
Publisher: Walker Books Australia
Published: 2018-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

ANCIENT HISTORY

Billy had a sixth sense when it came to walks. He knew I wanted one even before I did. Later that week, after school, he was lumbering around my feet, woofing excitedly.

“Okay,” I said. “Come on then.”

Billy bounded ahead as if he’d been set free from prison. Stupid dog. He could go anywhere he wanted whenever he felt like it, but unless someone went with him, he lay on the verandah all day. Only getting up to pee and poop on the lawn.

It was chilly near the lake. I kept walking. Fast. The anger I’d felt after meeting Mum was still there, festering inside me. I started running. My family had been lying to me for my entire life. Something amazing had been handed down to me from my ancestors, something precious. It was part of me. And they had stopped me from using it. I ran and ran. Then I fell headlong over Thor who was on his hands and knees in the path.

“Ouch! What are you doing, Thor?”

I’d hurt my knee.

“I was …” I could see his brain ticking over, trying to think of a feasible excuse. “I was looking for something.”

“What?”

I waited for an answer. I didn’t get one.

“How do you know you’re descended from the Aboriginal people around here?”

“Dad told me. We’re members of the Djargurd balug clan.”

“The sign at the Reconciliation Park said they were called something else.”

“Djargurd wurrung. That’s the name of the tribe, but it’s divided into clans. Our clan was called the Djargurd balug.”

“Are there other descendants?”

“He says there are a few that he knows of, but he hasn’t been in touch with them since he’s been in WA.”

I thought of all the people busily researching their family histories in the History Centre, confident they’d find clues somewhere – in the births, deaths and marriages records; in the rates books; just by wandering around the local cemetery.

“If I could be bothered, I’d be able to trace every Mitchell who lived around here. What they owned, how much money they left their children, what sports they played … if they won.”

“I can’t do that,” Thor said.

He didn’t speak for a while. Then he flicked through the folder he was carrying and pulled out a print out.

“This is what I was looking at online the other day.”

It was a map of Australia with a lot of yellow dots on it.

“It’s a massacre map.” He swallowed hard. “Each one of those dots represents a place where white people massacred Aboriginal people.”

There were dozens of dots all up the eastern coast of the country and a whole lot of them squashed together in Western Victoria.

“We learned about conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people in Year Seven,” I said, “but I thought that only happened in the very early days, you know, when the First Fleet arrived in New South Wales. I didn’t know it happened here too.”

Thor ran his finger down a list of the massacres on another page. It was a long list, shockingly long.

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