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200 years of devastation
Issue 81 - 26 May 2005
One day in the dreamtime my spirit was sitting on the beach dreaming about his family who lives in the desert.
He was thinking how easy it was to get food at the tribe that he was married into and the strange things he came across, like when the old men took him hunting for food and one of the eldest pulled this thing from the water.
It was slimy, had big eyes and spiky things along its back. This one they call fish.
And then we walked along a bit further and we caught another spiky thing but this one was on land. This one they call porcupine.
And the big Blue Mountains and green pastures where I had to walk for more food for my tribe.
And suddenly I was awoken by this strange thing that looked like a canoe to me with long sticks and sheets on top of them and iron things coming out of the side of them.
And then little canoes came into the beach with ghosts on it so then I ran into the bushes to watch them.
One of the ghosts put a stick into the ground with a scarf on top of it.
They then started to clap and laugh and seemed happy.
One of the ghosts kept pulling half of his head off so I ran back to the leader of my tribe and told Mudabiggadi.
Mudabiggadi then went down to the ghosts and said not to come down to our sacred sites and not to build houses on our land.
Then a couple of weeks later they started to build houses on our sacred sites.
Mudabiggadi then went down to the boss of them and speared them.
And they shot Mudabiggadi with a stick that had a rock coming out of it.
I watched from the edge of the cliff while my tribe went down.
My tribe went down, they then made the old men and women walk off the edge of the cliff.
They then buried the children in the ground and they rode on their horses and chopped off their heads.
And who was left they made them build iron bars and brick walls and locked them up to be used as slaves.
So I ran back to my mother’s tribe.
And then I told my mother what had happened to my people. She said go and tell every other tribe in Australia.
So I did it but they would not believe me. They then said, where are your elders?
I said they’re home, waiting for the ghosts to come.
But they did not believe me so I ran back to my mother’s tribe to wait for the ghosts to come.
We waited with nulla nullas, spears and stone axes.
And the ghosts came a couple of days later.
They shot me with a little rock and my spirit rose above the pack of them.
I watched my people fight a great fight, but they did not win and now I am back in the 90’s. How things changed.
They stole our land, our culture and our minerals. But one things that didn’t change - they still got the iron bars and the brick walls and now I sit with four walls that surround me.
Ernest Smith
Lightning Ridge, NSW
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