Njunjul the Sun...an excerpt
Our home's gone. Bulldozed. Bloke that owned it, sold it. Bloke that bought it, knocked it down. Another bloke cemented it up. Poured a big slab of concrete over our front yard, then over our back yard, then poured that cement over everything in between. Over all the nights round the fire laughing and shiakking, over the rose bush where my sister Chicky jumped out the window and landed on her butt, over that ricketty old dunny out the back, over where that hairyman, that eunji, that ghost-fulla been choking m'sister and scaring the rest of us half to death with his yucky, wrinkly old hands. Concreted over all the teasings and fights and tears, over all the headaches and heartaches and long lazy nights.
Dingo Hire, that's what the sign says. Bloke hires out wild dingoes. Nah, only gammin', only pulling your leg! He hires out bulldozers!
Everything changed when our house went. Mum had to farm us older kids out with aunties and uncles. She only had room for the younger ones in that tiny little flat she found. Dad, he went off fruit-picking. He's been gone that long Mum reckons he turned into an echidna. Lost his way home.
I been living down with Aunty Milly, down there in Happy Valley. One of those places whitefullas put us mob when we were getting in the way of what they wanted to do. Called it a reserve or something. Said they were protecting us. As if!
Aunty reckons, 'What from? Our own land? Our 40,000 year old way of protecting our own selves?'
They got funny ways of naming things those whitefullas .Like opposite to what they're really thinking. My Aunty Milly laughs at that name, 'Happy' Valley. Like 'Happy', when they mean 'Real Sad Place.'
You see, Happy Valley is right next door to the cemetery. Cement-ery, get it? All cemented up? Real deadly place! That many of us mob buried over there, it feels like home, true. M'aunty, she always finds something to laugh about, but. 'If this place's "happy", next stop's gotta be a real good heaven!'
