Tears of the Moon - Di Morrissey [87]
This brought gales of delighted laughter and as they were about to move away to find him the oldest woman gesticulated and began talking rapidly and seriously. The other women gathered about her. Niah was unable to follow the conversation, but then the old woman pointed at her shell pendant and began asking questions.
Niah trembled as it dawned on her she had a connection with these people. But she couldn’t understand their language or few words of English so, with signs, she indicated they all walk downstream to meet Tyndall.
After the formalities of greeting, Niah quickly told Tyndall of their interest in her pendant and her recognition of some of their language. They sat in a big circle under the trees and with his knowledge of the language they slowly established the story of the woman who went to live on the other side of the monsoon winds. An old woman sat down and, with a stick, began to draw in the sandy dirt. She drew the pattern depicted on the pendant, explaining the strokes meant trips across the sea, the big circle meant the moon and the small circles were … and here they stumbled on the unknown word until the old woman, with a big grin, pointed at the pearl hanging from Tyndall’s ear.
The women clapped their hands then led Niah and Tyndall further down the track and back onto the beach. Here they showed Niah the remains of stone fireplaces built by the Macassans for boiling the trepang.
Niah sat awkwardly on the sand and ran her hands over the old stones, trying to conjure the scene of generations before. Tyndall watched her, realising how meaningful this was for her. Her childlike excitement had been replaced by a deeper sense of awareness that she had discovered a new link with her family’s past.
‘I know story of my family. Now I know my family. Now I have story to tell baby.’
‘It’s incredible. Quite amazing really. But then life is full of such surprises,’ he said. The longing and the joy in her face touched him deeply. ‘Now you have a Dreaming.’
Word was sent back to the rest of the Aboriginal group and by the evening they had all gathered on the beach with Niah and Tyndall around a big campfire. There was much discussion among the elders and it was agreed that a celebration was in order. A corroboree would take place the following night.
It was a homecoming corroboree, the women explained to Niah, holding her hands, and Niah felt tears of joy running down her cheeks. She had found part of her family.
The fires were burning brightly as twilight faded to a soft night. The members of the community not performing sat with Tyndall and Niah in a half circle talking, laughing and playing with children.
Then suddenly, without introduction, to the beat of music sticks and chanting, some men came out of the darkness and began the dance. Some of the ceremonial white clay designs painted on their bodies were the same as the pattern on her pendant. Their dance depicted seafarers from Macassar guiding their praus across the sea. Others, playing their own ancestors, welcomed them ashore. Then, in superb pantomime, they mimed the diving for shell, and the cooking of the trepang. The stirring of the pots which gave off a foul odour drew a laugh from the audience. Then a woman was singled out and taken away by the visitors in their boat. There were accompanying wails of sadness as she bid goodbye to her family. But then she returned with a baby and there was much celebration until it was time to go again. The long song of the elders told of the unity of family, of how the spirits of the sea and the great ocean birds carried their messages from land to land and kept them all as one. Tyndall grasped the message, even though he didn’t understand all the words, that physical separation could never break the ties that link a family through generations. He saw the tears glistening on Niah’s cheeks as the dance ended. She, too, understood this concept