Butterflies and Demons. Eva Chapman

ships from afar, but now he could see the ropes, masts and sails in their intricate detail. He was in awe of the workmanship involved. The Kaurna were proud of their fibre culture, but these ropes and riggings were unbelievable. How did the ghost-skins do it? He entered a long low room where other white men were sitting at a wooden structure, piled with delicious smelling food. The men smiled and welcomed him, beckoning him to sit down and eat. Ityamai-itpina watched George, who picked up some finely wrought implements, and proceeded to cut and spear the food, then place it in his mouth. Ityamaiitpina carefully observed how the sharp bladed implement was held, and how the many-pronged spear worked. Soon he was able to slice some of the cooked meat and put it in his mouth. George was impressed by his dexterity. Milte-widlo had been right. This meat was extraordinarily good.

      ‘Beef,’ said George, pointing to the chunks of meat on the plate. Ityamai-itpina, smiling broadly, his white teeth glinting in the light of the lamps, went on to savour fish, tongue, and plum pudding. What tastes, sights and sounds! A ghost-skin seated himself at another wooden structure which supported a large array of large perfectly even teeth, and started pushing the teeth up and down. Ityamai-itpina couldn’t believe the enchanting sound that issued forth, like the tinkling of a waterfall. Then to top it all, another ghost-skin blew into a shiny winbirra, as silvery as the moon. The resulting tune engendered in Ityamai-itpina a totally irresistible desire to dance. Like for all the Kaurna, dancing was deep in his blood, as was the spirit of exchange. These white-skins had graced him with food and beautiful music. In return, he wanted to offer them his dance. He eagerly mimed at George, ‘I want to dance.’ But George shook his head, (he must assert his white superiority and test this native’s obedience!) The music continued. Ityamai-itpina mimed again, ‘I want to dance.’ Again, the white man shook his head. But the black man could not suppress the urge to dance that welled up within him. It was unbearable. Undeterred, he mimed again.

      Albert who was watching all this burst out, ‘Mr Stevenson, please sir, I beg you. Allow this man to dance!’

      ‘Yes,’ said Robert Cock, a Scotsman who had endured the interminable squabbles between Hindmarsh, Stevenson and Fisher on the gruelling sea journey. ‘Let him dance.’

      George, not looking too pleased, wiped his fingers slowly on a napkin, and at last deigned to nod. Ityamai-itpina leapt up ecstatically and ‘began kicking and dancing with all his might.’ The whites cheered and clapped.

      George wrote in his diary that Ityamai-itpina possessed ‘a degree of archness and quickness which places this race many degrees above the savage.’

      Wirra Woman: What a condescending boor!

      Ityamai-itpina was impressed by what he had seen, and was grinning happily as Albert and Robert Cock escorted him back to dry land. Ityamai-itpina returned to his countrymen, sporting his blue jacket with metal buttons. They took one look at his strange garb and ran away in fright. Only when he took the jacket off did they accept him back and listened to his stories, open-mouthed. Perhaps these people were old ancestors, who having learnt incredible skills and amassed great riches, had been resurrected and impelled back to their beloved land of birth; a deep pull every Kaurna knew intimately. Why else would these pale people come in such numbers? It didn’t look like they were just setting up a trading post, like the Karta sealers. It must be that they were returning to share their good fortune with their black brothers.

      Only the elders sighed and kept mum. Let him believe for a while that all this is good, they thought, as they stared into the camp fire embers. They will learn the truth soon enough.

      CHAPTER 3

       Aliens

      Svitochka didn’t know where in the world she had landed. A hair-raising escape through a scary forest, a long tedious journey over several oceans, sojourns in various migrant camps, a stint on a sheep farm, and now here; on the sunbaked streets of Adelaide, which harboured some decidedly unfriendly children. Her mother Tatiana, who loved partying and dancing and had disgraced herself by flirting outrageously with sailors and jackeroos, couldn’t stand the quiet. The corner shop at the end of Commercial Road fell sadly short of the expectations engendered by the gaily-coloured Rosella Parrot painted on its side. Within the dingy interior lurked a few unpromising tins inscribed with writing Tatiana couldn’t decipher, and no fresh produce whatsoever. A rather ancient proprietor regarded Svitochka’s skipping about with great suspicion. Tatiana hastily bought a bottle of Rosella tomato sauce before escaping. She dragged Svitochka by tram into the city centre, looking for hustle and bustle and bright city lights. None were to be found.

      Adelaide stood quiet, orderly and well defined. In one way, this was reassuring – Tatiana flashed back to Magdeburg, the city she had been transported to at the tender age of seventeen as a Nazi slave. For the next three years she witnessed Allied War planes pulverise this magnificent baroque city into a pile of rubble, killing most of the population, including thousands of her fellow slaves. Adelaide stood reassuringly calm and serene. In the shade of the Post Office tower, Tatiana looked out over the marigolds of Victoria Square, not knowing that they blanketed Adelaide’s own war past, when they had been dug up for air raid shelters. The fact that Japanese bombers were extremely unlikely to fly so far south was irrelevant, the shelters reassured the South Australian citizens. Svitochka and her mother looked up at the statue of Queen Victoria, wondering who she was. Little did they know that in the name of the British Empire she had vanquished a far older race who, at full moon, danced ecstatically in this very square. But no one danced here now. Tatiana consoled herself by taking Svitochka to the nearby Adelaide Market, where German and Greek traders sold rather delicious produce. She filled her basket with sausage and olives, while Svitochka buried her face in a torte.

      Tatiana was disappointed in Adelaide. In fact, that was putting it mildly. She had been induced into leaving the flattering attentions of numerous Jackeroos at a sheep farm near Wagga Wagga when Ivan had flown in to propose to her. Tatiana was impressed! Fresh from hard labour on a hydroelectric scheme in Tasmania, and fed up with loneliness and bad food in a cheap boarding house, Ivan wanted a wife. He had fallen in love with the tempestuous Tatiana on the journey to Australia. Now he had landed a job at the new General Motors Holden factory in Adelaide, and flew Tatiana and her daughter in. He was seduced by what would later be called Playfordism. The Premier of South Australia, Thomas Playford, attracted large numbers of refugees with promises of plenty of work, cheap housing, and cheap goods. Ivan was Tom Playford’s perfect migrant; willing to work extremely long hours and help build the new industrial South Australia. Well, not quite so perfect – he was in fact a secret Jew, spoke a weird language, had weird customs, and could conceivably even be a commie. But these vagaries were to be smartly dealt with by the assimilation policies of both Commonwealth and State Government. Good Neighbour Councils sprang up all over Australia for this very task. Even new citizenship conventions were drawn up, to prepare for the influx of ‘aliens’, as the refugees were called. Of course, this did not extend to people with coloured skin. The White Australia Policy was a given in the 1950s, as surely as flies crawled up your nose.

      Svitochka did not even know of the existence of Australia’s original inhabitants. After all, the British had brought ‘history’, as well as their colourful spider-web flag, to terra nullius. Any inconvenient indigenous people were relegated to ‘pre-history’, and safely tucked away out of sight in far flung missions. But Svitochka did play on an old bent gumtree in Heywood Park, which was just around the corner from Commercial Road. Heywood Park was the last remnant of the Black Forest which covered the Adelaide Plain, in which the Kaurna once roamed, and in whose trees another little girl, Midlato, sat mesmerised by a British penny, over one hundred years earlier. Governor Robe razed South Australia’s extensive Black Forest during the Crimean War.

      Wirra Woman: Why?

      Author: In case escaping Russians tried to hide there of course! Akin to the riddle of why marigolds were dug up from Victoria Square during World War Two.

      Wauwe Woman: I want to comment. You think Svitochka had a bad time being a refugee? You try being a refugee in your own country! That’s what happened to my people. At least Svitochka had more rights than us mob.

      Tatiana