it's a cunt of a place....

" its a cunt of a place if you're a blackfella" 

He had slurred this at me over the thumping crap they were playing in the nighty. Minutes previously he had been ready to take me on . I had turned when he lurched into my back at the bar and quickly caught the pent up anger burning in his eyes. 

" Hey man, how are you going ?" 

" You got a fucken problem with me? "

I smiled and laughed, trying to defuse the tension. 

"No man, I don't have a problem with you." 

" What are you looking at then?"

"Hey man,  you bumped into me, I was just seeing who it was. Why would I have a problem with you?"

"Why do you fucken reckon?"

"Hey I don't have a problem.....never seen you before in my life....... how could I possibly have a problem with you?"

" Fucken Bullshit! YOU and every other WHITE CUNT in this fucking town." 

He sprayed this with weary bile, an inch or so from my ear, and it cut through the din,  so close I could smell the sweetness of the alcohol on his skin over the smoke and stale piss odour of the bar. I got pissed off at this point, I didn't belong here either and wasn't ready to be a white cunt any more than he was a black one. 

" Hey listen mate, I'm not from here and I couldn't give a fuck what colour you are, so don't lump me in with the rest of the pricks. But you want to know something........ this is the most racist, fucking redneck, cunt of a place I have ever been and I can't even imagine what it must be like for you man. Just don't assume we are all like that and I won't make assumptions about you." 

He thought about it for a moment.

"yeah it's a cunt of a place if you're a blackfella."

"what are you drinking man..... yeah I'm serious hey,  what would you like ?"

A couple of drinks later  he was the second bloke to tell me I was the first decent whitefella he had met in this town. He was from Carnarvon and had come down looking for work on the boats but never got a look in. I told him he was welcome to come out with us anytime, fuck what the skipper would say, but I reckon he may have forgotten the next day or maybe just thought better of it and left town as fast as he could. 

The first bloke was from out bush, Mullewa way somewhere, and had turned up on our front porch on one of those summer nights when the bogong moths fluttered thick out of the desert on the back of a ceaseless, overnight easterly. The days unbroken by a sea breeze sat in the mid 40's, the nights bought little saviour and the townsfolk got murderous. 

Drunk, broke and heartbroken, looking for his cousin and not knowing what to do next, he wandered, wide eyed and lost, in through the front gate as we sat drinking, listening in silence to the sounds of the city disembowelling. I plied him with water and offered to call him a taxi, then in lieu of a destination, gave him some cash and half a pack of cigarettes for his journey. Suddenly he was overwhelmed, sobbing in my arms, wanting to be home and out of this hard bitter place, that rips the hearts out of men and suffocates their dreams with red sand and wind... 

the wind... the wind.... the wind...... it whistles evil songs in their ears......

And wiping tears and snot away, he cupped the back of my head and held me close and told me quietly.....

" hey brudda, you the first decent whitefella i met ere eh, the first decent white fella eh" 

a less than auspicious start... (warning: contains image of unknown deceased aboriginal man)

from Vancouver's Log 1791....

"At the borders of this clump was found[the] most miserable human habitation my eyes ever beheld, which had not long been deserted by its proprietor, as on its top was lying a fresh skin of a fish, commonly called a leather jacket, and by its side was the excrement of some carnivorous animal, apparently a dog. The shape of the dwelling was that of a half a beehive......"

"The reflections which naturally arose on seeing so miserable a contrivance for shelter against the inclemency of seasons, were humiliating in the highest degree; as they suggested, in the strongest manner, the lowly condition of some of our fellow creatures, rendered yet more pitiable by the apparent solitude and the melancholy aspect of the surrounding country, which presented little less than famine and distress." 

I found image 1976 trawling through the online catalogue of the Albany History Collection   (sans date, location, subject and photographer). When I go to the Library I hope the original has some information attached. This collection has no information attached to any of the images and is arranged in a bizarre seemingly random fashion. It must be one of the first photographic images taken of an aboriginal man locally and although obviously taken some 100 years after Vancouver's visit, his words were the first thing which came to mind when I saw the photograph.  

Vancouver's quote came from Douglas Sellick's First Impressions of Albany. It makes me wonder what the Nyoongar, whose lunch was rudely interrupted, and probably ran for his life from the white devils, thought! 

Bald Head today....