AustLit
I remember growing up in the rivers, fields, and oceans of Northern NSW—Casino, Ellangowan, Mummulgum, Theresa Creek, and then Rous and Alstonville —before marriage took me to Brisbane and into adulthood.
I remember the Richmond River. Her steep banks hide her waters beneath the horizon. Wooden planks bridge the gap between them. Her bed is soft and sandy. There is open sky, and trees surround us, and the air is fresh and home. I can smell the wet dirt, but it is a pure and clean scent. I remember a hive of activity. Uncles and Aunties and Cousins. The brown chests and the light legs and the diving as we hide and swim and duck and try to catch each other in the murky water. The white soles of our feet giving away our hiding places. I can feel smooth pebbles along the bank but mostly the sandy bottom and I am a bit afraid of eels and bullrouts. I don’t really know what a bullrout is, but I am scared of them. I am worried when I am out in the deep, but I am a good swimmer and I am not afraid of the water but of getting carried away by a strong current. There are no currents today—I feel free and I am present in the moment, never thinking about before or after.
Just now.
I didn’t know then that this is what freedom feels like. Not being haunted by the past or being worried about the future but just simply being in the world;feeling happy and light and carefree in the moment. Noticing every detail. These are the feelings I miss about this day and these people. Because we can’t go back there. It’s not the Richmond River that is absent
or inaccessible now. It is who we were then, before we even knew that we were black or white or brown, or rich or poor. Before we knew that life was hard or that there were things to worry about. Back then, I only worried about the bullrouts hiding beneath the water. Now I know that there are worse things in life than bullrouts. But maybe these things are all just bullrouts. Murky unknown things hiding in unseen places. Maybe they are there and maybe they aren’t. Maybe they have power over me or maybe they don’t.
But in those days, up and out of the water, laying on my back as the warm sun dries my skin and the sounds of the bush and laughter surround me, I think that no bullrout can touch me.
***
I remember walking through trees dressed in crunchy cream ruffles until the blue fills up my eyes. Uncontained vastness. My bare feet on black rocks on hidden beaches. Siblings running, climbing, collecting treasures on Country. The freedom of leaving mum behind, laying on her beach towel.
Bundjalung beaches aren’t just places, they are sacred Country. My Country. Rocks and crevices, rock pools and sandy banks hiding shells and pretty stones in secret spaces for fossickers to find. The treasure hunting of what might be under or over or behind. No red and yellow flags hemming us in. We know that water, we know how it works. We know when we can dive and splash and ride those waves. We know when we have gone too far and we can roll onto our backs and fill our lung balloons with air and let the power carry us out and around and home. And even if those waves take us too far out, it will rise us up and tumble us back onto our sandy shore again. And while we are out there in her arms we will have breathed and soaked and listened until we are plump and full. Day’s end will always have a rosy pink horizon in a low grey sky and we sleep in the back of the car all the way home, our pockets full of treasures.
***
I remember Theresa Creek. Her secret places hiding fish and eels. Her crystal-clear water spilling over causeways, her refreshment and freedom. Days spent with bike and hook and line and brothers and sister and neighbours. Pockets full of devon sandwiches and worms.
How intimately I knew her bends and depths and shallows. Her perfectly placed sandbanks to host our picnics. Her pretty pebble and velvet moss décor. Until the next flood came and her topography transformed. Bridges would no longer contain her, tall banks would not hem her in. And me impatiently awaiting the first sunny day to explore and chart her new mysteries. Waiting for the silt to settle, and for time to clarify the water. Her depths were shallowed, her shallows deepened, and she had formed new snags to capture our fishhooks. She was a treasure to discover anew after every deluge.
I understand her so much better now that I have navigated my own storms. Because of her I know that floods bring mud and churning and change, but afterwards calm will return, and there will still be beauty. No man-made structures will decide her course when she sets her mind to spill out over her banks. And she is always an adventure with the hope of a new discovery just around the next bend, season in, season out.
***
I cannot catalogue my childhood through photographs or stories. Instead I remember it in these wild waterways that never contained me or hemmed me in. Their vastness has not frightened me—it has formed me and comforted me and sustained me. I never knew much about my Bundjalung heritage. Genetics and culture were not things that were named or referenced. Life was just lived. But when I was 45, I met a Yugambeh man who sat with me and we yarned and got to know each other – we tracked family and Country together. He told me that whenever he gets down to the Logan River, he needs to get in and get covered and know that he is on Country. I can’t remember the words he used about how it changed his perspective and his feelings, but it was a revelation to me. He spoke of my ways, ways that I didn’t know were ‘ways’. I thought they were just me.
Whenever I get anxious or life crowds me in and usurps my power, a deep yearning rushes up like bubbles to my surface. Gets me to a Bundjalung beach, gets my shoes off and gets me overwhelmed by her waters. And out there with my toes facing the sky and my face warm, my perspective changes and I remember the vastness that holds me lightly. I am myself again. And just like a little sedimentary stone, the waters seek me out and soften and mould me a little more.
That’s my growing up, my growing in, and my growing out.
Image credits:
Upper Tweed River near Tylagum NSW
https://www.flickr.com/photos/shebalso/26674661854/
Author Sheba_Also
Image edited by BlackWords 2020