It was the dry season early morning and we were driving to Jabiru, a mining town located in the middle of the Kakadu National Park two hours or so from Darwin. Jabiru had been built to service the construction workers in the creation of the Ranger uranium mine as well as the mine workers.
This trip we were driving in mums blue Commodore. This car was mums pride and joy, but it was the source of many an argument between my mother and my father. My father had declared it a lemon. So naturally everything that could go wrong did yet this trip we were happily cruising with the luxurious air conditioning on and Kenny Rodgers telling the story of a card game on the cassette player.
I was in the back seat when I heard my mother go “oh what”. A saying she said when she couldn’t believe her eyes or ears. We started to slow down eventually coming to a stop on the side of the road.
What’s wrong I asked naturally assuming it was the car.
We had passed the bark hut Inn, so I knew we were almost to Jabiru but not close enough to be stopping for any other good reason than something had to be wrong with the car.
The Bark Hut was something of a necessity back then it serviced the aboriginal communities and stations. It had a pub, some necessities and fuel. Now it’s a tourist attraction and the simpleness of what it was a literal bark hut refurbished with signs and air conditioning and stocked with items more to the liking of travellers who prefer buses than beat up old trucks like my father had.
Mum turned to me and said when I get out of the car I want you to lock the doors but keep the car running.
I will never forget her saying that ‘lock the doors’.
She said it again as she got out of the car and I looked up at her as she passed the window.
I couldn’t really understand why and yet the way her voice was I was frightened. Facing forward I waited. Feeling the semi-trailers, trucks and cars whizzing past moving the blue Commodore as they passed.
It wasn’t long before she came back. She tapped on the window and said unlock the door. I could see her saying bastards as she turned back away.
I did as she asked, and she pulled the back door open, told me to move to the front seat all while smoothing out a towel and grabbing another from the space by the back windscreen.
I scrambled as she said still not knowing why.
Turning back to face her I could see in my mother’s, hands were the shoulders of a completely naked girl.
She was an aboriginal girl a full blood her skin beautifully dark and as the saying went so dark it was shined purple. Her hair was a mop of black curls, and it hung over her face. She didn’t look at me as my mother placed her lifeless body in the seat putting on her seat belt.
I remember seeing bits of leaves in the dark hair between her legs as I asked why she had no clothes on. Mum never answered so I remained confused as to why she was naked on a highway. I remember thinking how cold she must have been because it was the dry season.
My mother fixed the towel around her because she was incapable she just sat limp. She sat still looking at her feet. It was the first time I had seen another naked woman apart from my mother. She swayed in all directions as my mother tugged at the top of the towel trying to give her some dignity.
“Thank you, sista” are the first words I heard her say.
“You want smoke?” my mum said as she sat slowly back in the driver’s seat.
“Yes please”, she said in her that thick aboriginal accent. Back then in the still wilds of the NT early 80’s english was very much a second language for the aboriginal people.
Now sadly I don’t remember her name I wish I did because as she lifted her head shifting that mop of dark curly hair I could see she had the most beautiful face not that’s why I want to remember it but because their names are what I remember and they don’t deserve part of my memory she does. However, their names as she told us were Paul, Mathew and one other white fella whose name she couldn’t recall.
As she moved to take the cigarette from my mother part of the dark mop moved but some stuck to her lip and forehead where the blood had created a sticky glue. Her face was swollen. Swollen from crying or from a beating I couldn’t determine which. Aboriginal women I came to learn from experience always took or gave a beating to their heads; so seeing a swollen face didn’t surprise me even as young as I was. However even as young as I was I knew it was never okay to beat someone. However calling it culture makes understanding it harder.
I listened in her broken English as she retold her story. About how Paul, Mathew and the other white fella had done this to her. Raped her. Left her naked in the bush. They had been drinking at the Bark Hutt the night before when they went to party at the river. They went down a dirt track partied with her then they left her there so she walked.
Bastards my mum said again.
It’s the first time I learnt about rape.
She slumped in her chair looking out the window smoking her cigarette.
I continued looking at her. Not because she was an aboriginal because I had grown up with aboriginal people, and I feel sad that I have to express that but because she didn’t smell right, and it was the first time I had seen a broken woman, but it wouldn’t be my last mum had a habit of helping broken women.
So despite turning off the air conditioning I could still smell her and she smelt different to the other aboriginals I knew. They smelt of the sun, smoke and the bush. She didn’t smell like any of that she smelt what I now know as semen, blood and dirt. I looked at her because the open gash on her knee was bleeding and was bright red against the dark of her skin and I wanted to wipe it for her and she smiled at me.
We then travelled in silence to town to the police station.
Mum was angry when she got back into the car after taking her to the police station. “They know who they are going to have a talk to them. That’s all that will happen” she said.
We spun out of the car park, and I was thrown into the door as mum hit the accelerator.
As we drove to the camp mum recounted the story and it turns out she had walked for kilometres naked on the side of the road with cars, trucks and trucks passing her and nobody stopped. The more mum told the angrier she got. I told you to lock the car in case it was a trick she added.
She went quiet after that like the purge had tired her. Whilst I was left confused why someone would do that to another. Leave someone behind while they were hurt because even so young I could see she was hurt inside and out. Just like I was confused about the huge pool of blood that was left where she had sat and came to stain my mums back seat.
I did understand though what a bastard was and I reckon three of them got off scot free.
xx Deb
