Butterflies and Demons. Eva Chapman

brown, as was the strange woman on the back. Was the girl with green eyes giving her a message? Were these images common ancestors? The girl had pointed at it after she gave it to her and said ‘penny’.

      ‘Pen-ny,’ repeated Midlato looking at it in wonder. She remembered how in awe she had been of the green-eyed girl, and encouraged when she had repeated ‘pilyabilya’ in such a friendly way. A word the girl and her mother used a lot was ‘goode’. Midlato tried it out loud. ‘Goode’. It seemed easy. But some of the other words were much harder; for example, the girl’s name. She had heard her mother call her. “Was it Looty? Something like that. Not as easy as ‘pen-ny.” She had wanted to ask Looty if she was fifth-born like herself. ‘Midlato’ meant fifth-born girl. Her friend’s name Kartanya meant first-born girl and Kudnartu was third-born girl. A favourite game at inter-tribal gatherings was to guess each other’s birth order. She felt she could always tell and was convinced that Looty was fifth-born. There seemed to be a special connection between people of the same birth order. So many things she wanted to ask Looty. What was her totem? Did she play string games? Oh, the frustration of not being able to speak this ‘penny’ language.

      As important people bickered over the site of the new city, James Cronk and his boss John Brown ventured over the hills to the south, to camp, hunt, and hopefully see natives in the wild. They got their wish. Several miles from Holdfast Bay they chanced upon Murlawirrapurka on a hunting trip. The meeting was friendly, with a lot of handshaking and repetition of the word ‘goode’. After a feast of biscuits and sugar, Brown and Cronk continued on their way, encouraged by the bonanza of cockatoos and parrots that flooded the sky. A few days later, at sunset, the white men bumped into Murlawirrapurka again, but this time with a large party of natives. The women and children screamed in terror, having never seen white men before. The black men in a mock attempt at battle brandished spears. Murlawirrapurka, relishing any opportunity for a lark, did not throw his but grinned broadly instead. The women were soon pacified by Cronk’s huge supply of sugar and biscuits but remained wary of the exploding stick he carried. Murlawirrapurka invited the white men to camp together that night. Cronk wrote, ‘Not much sleep was had though, for one of the natives kept singing and beating 2 sticks until daybreak.’

      Next day the men went hunting together. Murlawirrapurka and his friends were flabbergasted by the way the guns shot down birds. They picked up the dead birds, examined them, and had animated discussions. One bullet shot from 200 yards away lodged into a tree to a depth of finger length. The black men were in awe. This surprised the whites, who were blasé about the power of their own weaponry. In turn, the white men were impressed at the way the blacks nimbly climbed trees to dizzying heights, chipping a foothold at each step, and coming down with bags of possums. ‘A foot long!’ James wrote to his mother. ‘And they were quite naked, as is their usual way here in the woods, for they could not climb trees with their clothes on.’ Cronk, like all the prudish English, had to adjust to how free and easy the blacks were with their naked bodies.

      A sumptuous feast of possums and birds was enjoyed by all. Cronk persuaded the women and children to come to his tent for more biscuits and sugar. As they walked over a rise, the women suddenly saw a sight they had never beheld before – several ships in the bay and more sailing in. They couldn’t believe their eyes and stared in utter astonishment, but also great trepidation.

      The bickering between Governor Hindmarsh and Commissioner Fisher continued unabated. Fisher would not lend Hindmarsh his bullock drays, and Hindmarsh refused to avail Fisher of his ship’s tarpaulins. And so it continued. This did not augur well for the new colony. It was the blatant face of a mighty struggle for power between the Crown, represented by Hindmarsh, and the South Australian Commissioners, represented by Fisher. The seeds had been sown in the set up of the colony, when in the laudable attempt to create something new and more democratic, neither power had been clearly defined. A contest for the upper hand ensued, between a bluff, tactless naval man and a tough, calculating lawyer. The result was chaos. The quarrels were ugly, often in public, and of no credit to either. Both parties undermined anything the other tried to do. The unpleasantness was to boil over to horrendous proportions, and nearly scuppered the colony.

      Into this arena of heated squabbles, more ships arrived. In January, the ‘Coromandel’ landed Samuel Stephen’s brother Edward with his gold and safes, to set up the colony’s first bank. In February, the ‘Isabella’ discharged the Quaker John Barton Hack, his large family, and a menagerie of livestock. Sir John Jeffcott, who had sneaked on board at the last moment, was conspicuous in his absence. He had jumped ship in Van Diemen’s Land. Hack wasn’t too impressed by such behaviour from a Knight of the British Empire, and had been shocked by his ‘prodigious’ quarrelling during the long voyage. Not surprisingly, he wondered how someone so hot-tempered and unreliable could hold such high office. The formative colony was sorely in need of a judge. Dr Wright had been charged with a drunken attack on the captain of the Cygnet, and Charles Moon who had so kindly invited Milte-widlo on board the Buffalo had, with his sailor mate Hoare, stolen his spears. Murlawirrapurka had to calm Ityamaitpinna down who was ready to attack the Buffalo.

      ‘Is this how white man reciprocates!’ he shouted, still smarting from Joj’s condescension! But Murlawirrapurka explained that these were bad white men and that White Law could distinguish. However, they had to wait for three months for the trial, when the chief judge finally graced the colony with his presence.

      Hack had brought with him two Manning cottages, which were examples of early flatpack technology devised by the resourceful Londoner, John Manning. After a preliminary scout around Holdfast Bay, Hack commandeered a picturesque spot by a lake to set up camp. On the other side of ‘Hack’s lagoon’, as it came to be known, Midlato was collecting the fibrous parts of reeds to make string. She watched the teeming wildfowl flutter in panic as incessant banging and the excited squealing of little Hacks shattered the peace. A host of entirely new and strange animals were set to graze on the verdant grass. Midlato soon discovered that these few ‘theep’ and ‘bullocky’ were just small beginnings of what was to come. She was afraid of the ‘bullocky’, a few of which escaped and lumbered erratically through the bush, scattering ground parrots, wide eyed quoll, and inoffensive poteroos. And then there were huge animals with long hair on their heads which snorted and kicked. Terrified, Midlato ran off shouting, ‘pindi-nanto’, ‘pindinanto’, ‘pit kangaroos’. She was even more awe-struck when Samuel Stephens mounted and rode one of these pindi-nantos along the banks of the Karrawirraparri.

      While Light’s big task was to convince Hindmarsh and the impatient landholders that the site for Adelaide was right, Murlawirrapurka’s big task was to educate the various Kaurna groups about the pindi onslaught. They had stopped fearing being kidnapped, but now felt they were being invaded. They hated all the noise, especially the incessant ‘boomboom’ of cannon. They would venture timidly from their hiding places to see what was happening, and more often than not their approach would coincide with outbursts of cannon. This seemed to be a favourite past time of the pindi-meyunna whenever a new ship arrived.

      Don’t they realise, thought Murlawirrapurka, what they think is celebration strikes total terror into our people. We have only heard such explosions in times of terrible storms, when we believe that the ancestors are angry.

      Despite these assaults on the ears, Murlawirrapurka’s interactions with white men so far had been very encouraging. He was heartened by the spirit of exchange when hunting with Cronk and Brown. Cronk, as well as teaching him many English words, was keen to learn Kaurna words. Robert Cock and Albert Taplow, who continued to be friendly after Ityamai-itpina’s boat visit, were eager to learn their language too. Murlawirrapurka was taking the Crow’s teaching to heart and acting with as much integrity as possible. One important task was to quell the fears of his own people. He could do this effectively through the Ngunyawaietti handed down to him from his ancestors. This was a form of Kaurna theatre entrusted to him to pass on Dreaming Songs by which ancient and modern lessons were taught.