Published Stories

Saved (Translated from the Turrabul/Turbal 1848)

Gubbal looks down upon the flowing Kedron Brook Creek from his favourite vantage point, outside the Zion Hill Lutheran Mission, where he is having a cook-up. Some whitefellas are dressing after bathing on a sandbank directly below. He is surprised, as always, that they bathe, clothed. He would tell, whoever would listen, that it would be far better if they didn’t wear clothes, because then they would be cleaner, ripen, become dark of skin and healthier, and fit-in better with the locals.

He and his mate, Puttimar, had brought fish to the Mission to sell. The Missionaries were desperate for food of any kind and Gubbal visited regularly. The whites rejected most of the local fruit and vegetables on offer, but were always happy to eat the seafood. ‘Their loss’ he thought and, after a while, brought only seafood to sell – fish from stone fish-traps along the water’s edge, or crabs poked out of their mud nests along the creek banks he could see from his present position.

‘You want some of this flathead?’ he asks Puttimar.

‘My oath, mate, I not sittin’ here just to keep you company,’ replies Puttimar, his fingers leaving a fleshy scar protuberance on his wrist he’d been picking at, to scratch initiation cicatrices carved deeply into his chest.

‘That very white of you, my man,’ says Gabbal, puckering his lips tight across his teeth when he speaks, imitating the missionaries’ inhibited manners.

‘White… white,’ Puttimar repeats, spluttering with mirth, after emphasising the word.

He looks at the mud-parcel baking in the coals.

‘It sure smell good.’

‘Umm, it look good too, I tell you proper, mate. See, I pull the paperbark away?’

‘You put pipis in there … with the fish?’ says Puttimar.

The wedge-shaped pipis’ pale shells are splayed open. Juice, from the soft creatures inside, has further marinated the fish, already spiced with a native, lemon-scented herb, picked mere yards from their fire.

‘Yeah, add to taste, right? Those missionaries didn’t buy them all … those pipis. Can’t let fat pipis, like them, go to waste, eh?’

Gubbal, pulls white flesh from one of the fish with his delicate bony fingers and, with head laid back, pops the fish between his soft lips as if he were about to swallow a witchetty grub, then downs it with barely a chew.

‘Yum. Tastes great. Help yourself. Don’t burn those lips of yours. Might mess you up with courting the young Gatton girl,’ Gubbal adds, licking the ends of his fingers.

‘No way, man, she come to me already.’

‘You lucky to be given that young one. She a tasty one that one. I bet?’

‘Yeah, tasty like this fish, man.’

Gubbal looks away from the food to the creek below.

‘Hey, isn’t that the bible-man, bathing in the creek?’ he asks.

‘What, from the Mission?’

‘No, not the Germans. The other bible-man. The English one. Talks like the soldiers.’

‘Yeah, I think it is that one.’

‘He must be baptising,’ says Gubbal.

‘Yep, he sure getting wet, but he looks like he can’t swim.  He spluttering away there. Ha ha. Is he baptising himself?’

‘He’s calling for help, that one.’

Yeah, he is. He probably calling to God.

‘Ah.’

‘That what he say – “you ever feel like you sinking, call to God”.’

‘He not gonna make it back to shore. Should we go save him?’

‘No, Jesus will save him. He say that every Sunday, when he up high-and-dry on that church box,’ says Gubbal.

‘He just called your name.’

‘What? You sure?’

‘Damn sure … He sang out “Gubbal”. Pointed up here. I got good ears.’

‘Huh. Wonder what he want?’

The Reverend’s pale head disappears beneath the tea-brown water.

‘Funny, he gone … Fish bait,’ says Gubbal.

‘Sad, bunge. Sad. Just like that.’

‘Yeah, if only that Jesus-spirit not so slow, eh? He didn’t walk on that creek water.’

‘Too slow,’ agreed Puttima, tearing flesh from the fish-bone carcass lying in the bark.

‘If Jesus spirit-fella not able to save that bible-fella, how he gonna save us, Undumbi mob?

‘Don’t know.’

Silence reigns for a moment while the two men stare at each other, without seeing, then the fire crackles, and its smoke files out along the watercourse like a cleansing sprite.

‘You gonna sing, ‘im?’ asks Puttima.

‘No, they do their own over at the church. Not sure it work, though?’

‘They sing and sing all day. All they do,’ agreed Puttima.

‘Hope they can sing him free from that water. It plenty deep,’

‘It don’t make sense, that Christian stuff, eh?’

‘No, it sure don’t. It don’t make sense at all … Primitive mob, eh?’

‘Yeah, if only …’

Note:

12 January 1848, Brisbane’s first Anglican Minister, the rev John Grigor was accidently drowned while bathing in Kedron Brook below the Zion Hill Lutheran Mission. Few local Aborigines took up Christianity and the missionaries were heavily focused on survival.

Undumbi – part of Gubi Gubi nation. (Turrabul/Turbal language)