The humpy sits in majestic isolation in ngurrampaa, country

Washing flaps white on a line and I fly back to a kuthi song from the blue blinding sky

The river and the hot shack of tin, sticks and cardboard from the tip

Where you boiled water from the Darling in the forty-four-gallon drum

We hung the children’s nappies on barbed wire over white dust

By our river, my kaathii sister

The sun shone, burnt, and broken glass glinted

The nuns rode past on bikes in long blue saris

What were they doing there amongst the Ngyempa people?

Not needed in India alongside Mother Theresa

Reserve house walls thin, corrugated and whitewashed

The way our history was whitewashed

No killing happened in this land all happy smiling brown people eating nuts and

berries

Let us weep

And Jenny taking down the china cups and saucers from the suitcase

to fill with tea and Sunshine powdered milk, to drink with yellow damper from

a fire in the middle of her shack. And Golden syrup

Where four children slept with mum

And Manny bought a live sheep to soothe with kind words before cutting its throat

To feed a barbie to a big mob from the reserve

Where old Murri men spoke of their initiation and showed us scars

Sharing a flagon

Of walking at thirteen years old, for days in the semi desert of mulga and bones

with only a bottle of kali water - a Schweppes glass bottle.

Of catching gulbree emu by lying on your back and shaking legs in the air

The curious bird beaten and cooked

Or the green eggs broken, kapukaa cooked in a huge cake for everyone

Essie Coffey and her house of beaten fibro in Dodge city, Brewarrina

Her movie and her making light as air dampers on the fire for thirty

Her dancing the hula while her hubby played a ukulele

A Muruwari woman of high regard

Of Uncle Bill Reid the Pastor and his kind heart that shook when he heard those stories

about Major Nunn’s campaign when troopers mowed down Blacks like tin rabbits in a shooting gallery,

We weep

The reserve a place of love and gunjies driving past at midnight

hovering, waiting to bash a Murri man

A humpy home with Laminex table and a meat safe and tins of camp pie

Of women dubais cross legged on the ground playing bingo

And washing flying in hot Bourke wind

The day Jenny and I walked into the Railway Hotel

Ladies Lounge for a lemonade in searing heat

Forty-five fierce degrees and the men in singlets glared into their beers

We laughed and bounced our babies on our knees

Until the publican came to ask her to leave

Being dark skinned but me being blond

He quietly held open the glass door and I yelled

But we left wanting to spit in their eyes

Until late that night the banging on my door

She stood black eyed and terrified, my kaathii sister

They took Manny to the cop station and belted him

For drinking in his humpy on the Reserve

His home: we cried yungakirri

Running in my nightie to beg for his release

Being blond, they looked me up and down and sniggered

In ngurrampaa, country

Julie Janson

Julie Janson’s ‘Kurraarr Far Country’ was longlisted in the 2023 Peter Porter Poetry Prize.