The Undying. Mudrooroo
Mudrooroo was born in Narrogin in Western Australia in 1938. He has travelled extensively throughout Australia and the world and is now living in Brisbane. Mudrooroo has been active in Aboriginal cultural affairs, was a Member of the Aboriginal Arts Unit committee of the Australia Council, and a co-founder with Jack Davis of the Aboriginal Writers, Oral Literature and Dramatists Association. He piloted Aboriginal literature courses at Murdoch University, the University of Queensland, the University of the Northern Territory and Bond University. Mudrooroo is a prolific writer of poetry and prose and is best known for his novel, Wildcat Falling, and his critical work, Writing from the Fringe. Old Fellow Poems and Wildcat Falling are both available with his audio presentation. He has completed a new novel Balga Boy Jackson to be released in 2017.
Also by Mudrooroo and available in ETT Imprint
Wildcat Falling (ebook)
Doin' Wildcat
Dalwarra
The Indigenous Literature of Australia
The Garden of Gethsemane
An Indecent Obsession (ebook)
The Master of the Ghost Dreaming
This edition published by ETT Imprint, Exile Bay 2017
First published by Angus & Robertson 1998
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers:
ETT IMPRINT
PO Box R1906
Royal Exchange NSW 1225
Australia
Copyright © Mudrooroo 1998, 2017
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-6480963-9-9 (ebook)
Cover by John Tatten.
To my friends and enemies.
This story is fiction and should be treated and read as such.
No reality where none intended.
CHAPTER ONE
Jangamuttuk, Ludjee, Augustus yale George,
Yenger jarm garana,
Yenger jarm garana.
That’s how we begin this songline. We created it on that boat. Those times, long ago, when from the east, from the southeast where our island lives, we came sailing, sailing into the setting sun. We of the rising sun were driven forth, to sail into the setting sun. That’s what lies behind this, this song verse. Jangamuttuk, Ludjee and me, her son George, with the few remaining blackfellows of our mob, we came close to this land. On our right side, it receded ever westwards, ever westwards towards the setting sun blazing a coiled serpent across our bows as we sailed on and on, until I reached here alone and unwanted.
I, the stranger with strange habits which make me avoid the full light of day, enter into the warm circle of your fire and will exchange my yarn for your company. It is all that I have, all that I, the undying, have left at the end of that western voyage. Hard and long was the sailing, truly terrifying were our adventures as one by one we succumbed to the toil. Often we thought it would never end, and for many it did not. Now across the milky ocean in the sky, they sail on, leaving me alone with my tales, with the discomfort of the end of Jangamuttuk’s vision. He, my father, our shaman, the dreamer of visions which receded as we sailed westwards, ever westwards until we became as ghosts and ghosts became real men and women. My father, Master of the Ghost Dreaming, sang his ghost songs which were to release us from the domain of the ghosts, which were to close the gate leading from the ghostland to our world, but he failed and wherever we hesitated, wherever we stopped to rest, there were they. Worse, far worse, at least for me, an old granny ghost touched me with her teeth and followed after us. She gave me dreams that were not my dreams, and that is part of my story.
We were a small band of blackfellows, twenty in all, fleeing on a schooner from our island exile. Our homeland had been invaded and we were dispossessed of our hunting grounds. We despaired for our very lives, then the ghost Fada came to us and said that he would save us. He took us to a small island where we languished and died. Fada ate at our souls and, when he had finished eating, he abandoned us. It would have been the end of all of us, but then Jangamuttuk recovered his powers and discovered the Ghost Dreaming. Our shaman, my father, strong in his ceremonies, keen in the visions of his songs, sang Wadawaka to us – he who was born on the water and knew the ways of the sea. Wadawaka accepted us and captained our schooner which sailed on and on with the long stretch of land ever hazy on our right. His vision was beyond the stretch of land, far beyond, and he told me that his beginning had been Africa, though what his end would be he refused to say, though he too was a seer of visions.
Wadawaka inenanam modjie modie.
Djurin nana gulara bidin.
Dabor inganj bidin
Djao djao.
He came up from the sea, from the cool, cool sea he rose to hurry us west. He kept us going in that long boat, in that ship hung with shrouds which rattled in the breeze like dead men’s bones, and when the wind howled through the rigging there came from them the shook-shook of giant bat wings. How that sound echoes in my mind, but from another and later time. Then it was but the sound of the sails. Now it seems to be all around me as huge dark wings, lifting and flying me back to when I was not a stranger, but with my own mob.
Now they are gone, and I sit at your campfire and sing and yarn to you. I watch you nod your heads as you listen to my story, to my songs which are akin to your own, though they are in my own language kept alive in my head. Our people, my mob, are gone and there is no one left to talk to in those ancient words. My language falls into the swirls of the prow breaking through that sea, ever westwards until the land ends, as my people, my language, ends. Now I must use the language of the ghosts and let it shape my lips. I must breathe forth their words as I let the power of the Ghost Dreaming move me along. Ah, that long voyage, each part a verse of a song singing us along. The songline ends here with me, the last of my mob. No, I do not want tea. I want your ears so that I can tell you of those days which we thought belonged to us, for we were powerful in song.
And you wish to know my name? Yes, my name. It was given to me by my father, Jangamuttuk, as I sat in the cave with him and he sang out my destiny. Jangamuttuk, father, shaman of our mob. Well, my name is George. I was named after a mad king and my elder brother, Augustus, was named after an insane emperor and also after the ghost Fada who ruled over us on that island, ever imprisoning us in the words he drew on paper. He scribbled and sketched while we died and died, then Jangamuttuk awoke to his visions and entered them to find a path for us to follow. Whether it was the wrong or right way, it does not matter now, for at the time it gave us the strength to sail into the setting sun, coiling and uncoiling a giant serpent that drew us towards its golden land, though Fada took a last victim as we cleared the island.
My poor brother Augustus was faint .of heart and body and had listened to Fada overmuch. With the island still in his sight, he fell from the masthead up which he had clambered for one last lingering look. How we mourned, and I can still feel those tears on my cheeks. It was then that the sails began to sound like the rattle of dead men’s bones, my brother’s bones. It was then that Wadawaka saw my distress and became an elder brother to me. He told and showed me things that stood me in good stead in the long days ahead.
You ask how I survived? It was fate first, in the kindness of Wadawaka, then in the shape of a female, that old yet young granny, who followed after us and passed over to me her ghost ways. I cannot bear the sun. Now I seek the quiet coolness of the night and remember her in the shook-shook sound of giant bat wings. Shrouds of our sails, giant bat wings drawing us ever