Doctor Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the End of the World. Mudrooroo
within hearing. But Wooreddy felt insulted. After all he was a full citizen, not only of his own nation, but of the South West too, and had he not collected, debated and even on one occasion refined a point of law regarding a custom of his people! He was a prominent citizen and a biological father to boot. What was this Ro-bin-un? . . . Then he saw and felt the sickness all around him and surrendered. It seemed a small price to pay for survival.
‘Fader’ gave him some white powder for his wife’s sickness. He mixed it in water and gave it to her to drink. It did no good. She was so weak that she could not sit up. Her body flamed with fever, and to ease her suffering Wooreddy took a sharp piece of glass (shell was a thing of the past) and slashed the most painful parts of her body. The bad blood ran out. For a few days Lunna seemed better, then she had a relapse and died. Wooreddy performed the last rites and sent her soul on the first stage of the journey to Great Ancestor. Then his eldest son caught the coughing sickness and followed his mother into the fire. Wooreddy looked at his youngest son, acknowledged his responsibility, and decided to help him to survive.
Meeter Ro-bin-un did not like anyone going around naked like a human. He wanted everyone to cover their bodies as the ghosts did. ‘Novillee, novillee’ (not good, not good), he repeated over and over again to them in his atrocious accent. Wooreddy could see nothing wrong in showing the maturity of his manhood. What was wrong for the male to do was to neglect the hair. He took great care in keeping his locks smeared with the heavy ointment made from whale oil and red ochre. But now as he was going to see ‘Fader’, he pulled on a long shirt and then stuck a feather in his hair.
‘Fader’ met him with the outstretched hand which Wooreddy politely touched. He explained that he wished ‘Fader’ to take care of his remaining child and almost recoiled at the avid joy with which the child was received. To Robinson this was an important breakthrough. He wanted to separate the few remaining children from their heathen parents so that they could be educated free from bad examples. Now he complained of those bad examples to Wooreddy. They were not to wander where they wished, but were to stay with him, their only protector. Wooreddy replied as best he could in a mixture of Bruny and Ghost. He was stripping his language down to the bare essentials in order to be understood. All the honorifics, family designations and different grammatical constructions he would have used in conversing with a person belonging to the highly stratified Bruny society were unnecessary. The result sounded barbaric in his ears, but it did serve the purpose he had designed it for. And so he replied in this broken Bruny: ‘Trugernanna, Dray, Pagerly maggera raege logana mobbali nunne’ (The three women have gone off to the other num for the last three nights). In the same style, though using a number of Ghost-words, he described the death of his wife and eldest son. He complained of the coughing demon and of how the island had become a place of evil. Meeter Ro-bin-un said: ‘Nonsense!’ Then he hinted (that is, if Wooreddy understood correctly) that they might be leaving shortly on a long trip. Wooreddy questioned him and verified it. They were indeed going on a long trip. How he longed to be away from this evil place! The tie between earth and man had been broken and he never wanted to return.
Meeter Ro-bin-un decided to go and save the three women from the ruffians at the whaling station. He dragged Wooreddy off with him. After he had slowed from the mad dash with which he started things, he pointed out shrubs and expected Wooreddy to give him their names in Bruny. After this he began to talk on things close to Wooreddy’s heart, though he would never realise this. He talked down to Wooreddy on religion and much to his surprise found that these children of nature had some faint inkling of a creator god. Wooreddy equated the Christian god with Great Ancestor and gave the name: Parllerde. Robinson tried to elicit further information on their primitive religious beliefs, but the primitive form of communication he was using collapsed under the weight of abstractions. He did manage to learn that they also had the concept of the devil, called Ria Warrawah. This gladdened his heart, for now he had the two necessary terms for him to begin preaching the gospel to them.
The whaling station was a clutch of ill-shaped wooden sheds about a few large iron pots used for boiling down the blubber. Robinson marched right into the centre of the station, recoiled from the smell of rotting whale flesh, then recovered himself as the manager bustled toward him. Wooreddy, forgotten, hung in the background, his eyes moving in search of the women.
‘Mr Robinson, I assume,’ the manager said in the direction of the on-coming Robinson who, steaming with all the righteous wrath of the Lord of Hosts, immediately began the offensive.
‘Sir, it is disgusting, too disgusting for words,’ he spluttered, fighting to control his pronunciation. ‘Sir, ‘ow can you allow your men to take advantage of these poor creatures? Sir, it won’t be permitted, I ’ave t’ear ob t’gov’nor –’ He paused to recover himself. ‘Never fear, it shall be in my report. It won’t be permitted sir, it won’t be!’
The manager, recovering from his surprise, replied coldly in a middle-class accent to which Robinson was practising to attain. ‘What won’t be, Mr Robinson, and what exactly are you talking about?’
‘Native women have been enticed into your station.’
‘Enticed, enticed, that’s a new word to describe it. Sir, we cannot rid ourselves of them.’
‘Sir, if you read the gazette you will know that His Excellency, Governor George Arthur, has placed me in charge of these creatures. I have them in charge, sir! It is my duty to look after their welfare and to protect them from such types as your men. It is my duty to protect them, and protect them I shall!’
While the ghosts shouted at each other, Wooreddy wandered off. He looked inside the hut where the women stayed, or were put, when they visited the whaling station. They were not there. He looked down onto the ground to find the newest set of tracks, but the dust was too smudged for him to read the time. He returned to the two ghosts and waited for a silent moment to break into their wrangle. At last he made himself understood that the women were not there. Meeter Ro-bin-un stamped off, streaming words to the effect that he would send letters officially to each European ordering them not to interfere with the native women, or men for that matter, Wooreddy caught the words ‘this letter’ and remembered that they referred to the strange lines of abstract shapes which the num drew on thin sheets of bark called ‘paper’. When ‘Fader’ had cooled down enough he tactlessly asked about ‘this letter’ and set him off again. He shouted out to the trees: ‘I’ll haddress ha circular letter to heach and hevery un o’ t’ese reprobates. I will not hallow t’em to co’abit wit t’a native females. I’ll put a stop to i, t’at I twill.’ Then he pulled himself together and in a clearer voice patiently explained to the good doctor that ‘this letter’ was magic and so was the bark called ‘paper’. ‘Put pen to paper,’ he declared, ‘and the waggon begins to roll and the house to be built.’ This mystified Wooreddy still further. Finally gesture and repeated num words got the meaning across. How childlike they were, Robinson thought while the good doctor politely acknowledged the magic of the symbols scratched onto a thin sheet of bark with a stick dipped in charcoal. They might well be magic, he thought, declaring: ‘Neire this paper, neire this letter; good this paper, good this letter.’
‘Extremely good, Wooreddy,’ ‘Fader’ agreed holding the man’s hand in his own pale paw. ‘We will put a stop to this immorality,’ he said squeezing the hand.
Wooreddy smiled in the warmth, nodded vigorously and urged: ‘send this letter, send this paper.’
Robinson returned to the hut and wrote and wrote. Nothing happened; the women did not return. Finally Mangana got up one morning and ambled off in the direction of the whaling station. His daughter had been gone too long and he missed seafood and num-food. Wooreddy wandered off after him. Both returned after a week, but the women refused to come with them. Wooreddy began to doubt the efficacy of ‘this letter’ and ‘this paper’. He began to pester ‘Fader’ with a continuing wail of ‘Send this letter; send this paper, Fader and they will come’.
The ghost had spent long hours in acquiring his style of writing; and though it had been some time since the Governor had acknowledged his report or sent instructions, he still believed in the power of the written word just as he