The Darkside (2013) Movie Script
1
So, Delise,
thank you for telling us your story.
This is perfect for us.
This is exactly what we need.
You know, we're looking for connection
that Indigenous people have
to the other side, you know,
to family that have passed on.
So, please,
can you tell me about your brother?
Yeah. Yeah.
He was born after I had
my two kids to Mum's third marriage.
I didn't know him as a person,
sort of concentrated on my own two sons
and I never had much to do with him.
Mum's 80th birthday
was going to be held at my place
and he was in a panic
because he hadn't bought Mum a present.
So we agreed to meet
and I took him to the shopping centre.
He chose a nice diamond chain pendant.
I would have liked to have time
to sit and talk,
but the party was happening that night,
so it was rush, rush,
get home and prepare.
He told Mum
that he enjoyed our time together
and that he wanted
to get to know his big sister,
but it wasn't to be.
Well, I didn't know him that well.
That day that we went shopping
was the first time in 39 years
that we actually... were alone together.
We just never crossed paths that much.
I'd worked up
in the Northern Territory for 12 years
and life just rolled along.
Anyway, he called to visit that day
and Mum was there visiting
from the country.
She was staying with me.
Little did we know that would be
the last time we'd see him.
Two days after that,
he took his own life.
Mum was devastated.
The funeral was conducted
in the afternoon.
The lady celebrant, it was done
with compassion - a lovely lady.
I had chosen
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
to be played
as he was taken out of the chapel.
His brothers, his male cousins
and close mates filled in the grave.
Everyone was invited back
for afternoon tea
and a slideshow of Geoff
in his younger days as a teenager.
It was probably a week later
when I was back in the city,
I was about to go to bed.
Mum was ringing a lot.
She was still distraught.
And I was trying to help her
in any way I could.
One night, I was so exhausted
and emotionally drained,
I went to bed.
I turned the light off,
I heard this distinct sob.
I just froze - 'Oh, my God. It's Geoff.'
He's sorry that this thing has happened.
I decided I wouldn't tell Mum
'cause she was still too upset.
This went on for some weeks.
Not consistently -
it was every couple of nights.
Sometimes I wouldn't hear it
for four or five nights.
Then I'd hear it again.
I wasn't afraid,
but I found it so distressing
to hear the sadness -
the sadness of his sob.
I hopped into bed
and turned the light off.
And I heard the sob again.
I laid there and I shed a few tears
and I said, 'Geoff.
It's OK, matey.
It's OK.
Grandmother and Grandfather
will be there with you.
They'll look after you.
And it's OK, Geoff.
It's OK to move on.'
I turned the radio on.
I heard this music,
and I thought, 'I know this music.'
And I heard it.
It was He Ain't Heavy...
He's My Brother.
I knew then that that was him.
I just thought, 'Be free, Geoff.
Whatever happened, be free.'
I've never heard it since then.
About my experience -
it was '96, '96 -
and I was on...
Thursday Island at the time.
I was eight months pregnant.
I was staying
at my cousin sister's house
on TI - on Thursday Island
and, um... it was night-time
in the room.
Now, I'd made my bed on the floor.
I'd taken the mattress,
placed it on the floor
and, I was sleeping on the floor.
It was comfortable for me
to sleep on the floor at the time,
but my husband
was sleeping on the bed.
So just as I was falling asleep,
as I was dozing off,
I, uh... I could feel a hand on my face,
on the side of my face.
It was pushing me down into the pillow.
You know? It was just pushing me down.
And I, uh... I couldn't move.
You know, I... I... I was struggling.
I couldn't move at all.
I was just stiff, you know? I was stiff.
And I tried to move my fingers,
but I couldn't move.
I was completely stiff.
It was like all the energy
had come out of you?
Yeah. It was like I was paralysed
and I couldn't move, you know.
And this thing
was just pushing my head
deeper and deeper into the pillow.
And I felt like I was getting pushed
into this big hole, you know.
And it kept pushing.
But, you know...
and I'm a Christian, you know.
I believe in God.
And I just... I said to this thing,
you know,
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name.'
And it came off me.
And I sat up
and my heart was beating so fast,
like, I was so scared.
And I was just sitting there
trying to catch my breath
and I turned and I said to my husband
who was sleeping on the bed,
you know, 'Come down here
and sleep with me on the mattress.
Like, something was...
it was trying to suffocate me.'
Into the pillow, eh?
Well, I told him, 'Come down
and sleep on the mattress with me.
Something was trying to suffocate me,
like, spiritually.' You know?
- Mm-hm.
- It was trying to suffocate me.
And he came down off the bed
and he made his bed,
he slept next to me on the mattress.
And, you know, he had dozed off,
he went to sleep.
But I couldn't go to sleep because
I was still afraid, I was still scared.
So I just laid there,
you know, for a while,
and then I could feel myself,
like, dozing off.
I could feel myself, like,
starting to fall asleep again, you know?
And then it happened again.
You know, this hand
on the side of my face, pushing me.
And it all happened so quickly, like,
just pushing me into my pillow.
And I... it felt like I was going
into this deep, dark hole.
You know, this hand was pushing me
into this deep, dark hole.
And then I woke up and I was
floating above myself, you know.
I looked down,
there was my husband and there was I -
we were both sleeping on the mattress,
but here I was.
- So I was out of my body.
- Mm-hm.
I was floating above the bed.
And I looked around the room
and I looked into the corner
and there was this black woman -
a woman was crouching in the corner.
And, you know, she had...
her skin was all folded over,
you know, like, folded and wrinkly,
like, um...
- You know those dogs?
- Yeah, the...
You know, dogs with the folded skin?
Oh, what's the...? I can't remember.
You know what dog
I'm talking about, eh.
I don't know the name
of that particular dog,
but you know what dog I'm talking about.
Well, that dog,
the one with the folded skin,
that's what her skin looked like,
you know?
You know,
and getting back to that woman,
she had folded skin and she was
just sitting there, staring at me.
And as soon as I saw her,
I was afraid,
but I knew that God was on my side,
you know, 'cause I'm a Christian.
And I said to that woman,
or that thing, in the corner, you know,
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name!'
You know?
And that... that woman, it stood up,
but it had no legs.
It stood up on its arms, like this.
You know?
And I said to it again, you know,
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name!'
And it started crawling along the walls.
You know?
Crawling along the walls, like this.
And it was crawling,
and I was floating and I was looking
and I was saying, 'I see you
and I rebuke you in Jesus' name.
I rebuke you in Jesus' name.'
You know?
And it... it was crawling along
and it was, like, looking at me,
and looking like this
and crawling along the wall.
Moving with its hands?
Moving with its hands. You know,
it didn't have any legs, this thing.
Just moving across the wall.
It had red eyes glaring at me, you know.
And when I said
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name',
you know, 'cause God has
more power over the creature,
and this thing, it just basmout.
Like, it turned to ash.
- Ash?
- To Ash.
You know, turned to ash and, like smoke,
it just went underneath the door,
underneath the door.
It went underneath and it went outside.
Because I worship the Creator,
not the creature.
My God is more powerful.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for telling your story.
It's beautiful.
Au eswou.
This story I'm gonna tell happened
about 11 and a half years ago.
We were travelling...
travelling from Alice to Adelaide.
We got about 100k's out of Coober Pedy
and it was very late.
And we're travelling and I was looking
forward to getting to Coober Pedy
to have a stretch and a drink.
And so we got about... probably
about 80k's out of Coober Pedy,
and we're driving along and I'm just
looking to the side of the road -
Mark's driving,
all the kids are in the back -
and I spotted this young girl.
I reckon she would've been
about 11 years old.
So from where the road is,
she would've been probably
about 100m along the fence line.
And this young girl was, sort of,
she was walking along the fence line.
And for a stage,
I could see her whole body -
her legs - she had long legs
and long arms and a fragile body
and she had a white dress on.
I just was looking at her,
then I thought,
'I wonder what that girl's doing
walking along the fence line.
It's gonna be nightfall in an hour.'
Anyway,
it was just a thought at that stage.
And I just watched her and she just
kept walking along the fence line.
So I said to Marky, I said, 'Did you
see that girl walking along the fence?'
And he said, 'What girl?'
I said, 'There was a young girl there.
About 11 years old.'
And I said, 'What do you reckon she's
doing walking along the fence line?
There must be
an Aboriginal community close by.'
It just really bugged me and I said,
'Oh. You know, it's gonna be dark soon.
We should turn around
and go back and just check on her
'cause she might be, you know,
walking into town
and she's got a long way to go.'
You know, like, by this stage,
I think we were around
30k's out of Coober Pedy.
So he sort of said, 'OK, then,
let's go back and have a look.'
We drove along really slowly.
And sort of at the stage
where I thought I'd last seen her,
we got to that stage, and I said, 'Oh,
she should be round here somewhere.'
So we had all eyes looking for her -
everybody in the car... looking for her.
Anyway, we couldn't see her
and I said,
'Look, we must've passed her.'
And Marky said, 'Oh, well, never mind,
we'll drive up a bit further.'
So we probably travelled another 15k's
up the road, there was no sign of her.
And I sort of gave up then,
gave up hope of seeing her again.
And I sort of, in my mind,
had come to the decision that young girl
must have lived there somewhere
or she was walking along the line
and she was meeting somebody,
and that sort of thing.
Anyway, so I said to Marky,
'Nup. This is too far. She's not there.'
So we turned around
and started coming back,
and, you know, like,
he just travelled slowly,
and by this time,
it was really coming in to dusk.
So we're travelling along
and everybody's
still sort of keeping an eye out,
so we got back around the place where
I thought I'd seen that little girl,
the last sighting I had of her.
And all of a sudden,
there was a little child
walking along the side of the road.
And everyone sort of said,
'Oh. Look there!
There's a kid there!
There's a kid there!'
So we pulled up.
Anyway, it was a little boy.
So we jumped out of the car
and, 'Hello! Are you alright?'
And he said, 'No.
Mum left me behind.'
And I said, 'Oh, what? Where's Mum?'
And he said,
'Oh, we went... we went hunting
and on the way out hunting...'
They were going to look
for some witchetty grubs.
'On the way out, I'd fallen to sleep.'
And he was probably
about seven years old.
'And I'd fallen to sleep on the way out
and my mob went hunting
and I was asleep in the car.
When I woke up, they weren't in the car,
so I got out to go to the toilet
and look for them.
And I couldn't find them.
And so... I walked back to the car
and the car was gone.
My mob had left me behind.
They must have forgot about me.'
And we said,
'OK, no worries. What's your name?'
And he told us his name was Ringo.
'OK, Ringo, don't worry.
We'll take you home.
Where do you live?'
'In the community at Coober Pedy.'
'That's alright, Ringo.
We'll take you home.'
So we put Ringo in the car,
asked him if he wanted a drink
and gave him a drink,
asked him if he wanted anything.
He really didn't want anything.
And his little eyes were, you know,
a bit frightened and whatever else.
So by this time,
it had turned to full dark now.
And so we've got Ringo in the car,
and as we come up, we could see
the headlights of a big truck
and we could see these two women,
one standing on the road,
and as she spotted us, she sort of
put her hands out and 'Stop!'
And another woman
was talking to the truck driver
and had the passenger door open
and I said, 'Ah, Ringo, this must
be your family looking for you.'
He said, 'Yeah,
that's my nana and my mum there.'
You know, and I had this
big sense of relief that, you know,
Ringo was gonna be
reunited with his family
and they were looking for him
and that sort of thing.
And as I walked up to them,
this old lady came to me.
And I said, 'Are you looking for Ringo?'
And I said, 'We got Ringo there.'
And she just started crying, eh.
And so she was crying and she grabbed me
and then his mother come over
and so Ringo has come out of the car
and they're that happy.
'Oh, Ringo!' You know?
So it was a lovely sort of reunion.
And I was like,
so I said to that old woman,
I said, you know, I said,
'I was looking for a little girl.
Was there a little girl with Ringo?'
She reckoned, 'No, that was his spirit.
That's his little spirit.'
You know, totally disregarded,
like, all my concerns
that there was a...
that I'd seen this little girl
and then I'd found this little boy.
And they just said,
'No, that was his little spirit.
She's looking after him.'
And so that's a little story, anyway.
I always still feel there's
a little girl lost out there somewhere,
walking them lines, the fence line.
Beautiful little black girl.
And that feeling has stayed with me.
You know, it's like there's
still this beautiful little girl there -
a little spirit.
A little protective spirit.
Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Oh, oh
Hurt myself again today
And the worst part
is there's no-one else to blame
Be my friend
Hold me
Wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me.
So, Kim,
thank you for doing this interview.
Thanks.
Um, I guess just
start at the start, please.
Um... yeah.
Well, I went over
to stay with my brother-in-law
and his family over in South Australia.
And his, um... For a holiday.
And his family
are the original white people
who've come down from Adelaide,
who settled in the area.
And, um... yeah, they were mostly,
you know, sheep farmers,
but his family were fishermen.
And they settled there.
They call it settling.
And, um... yeah, well, I kept asking
my brother-in-law and my sister...
Actually, I was kind of annoying them
'cause I kept asking them who lived here
before they settled there.
And they were like,
'No, no-one. No, no-one was here.'
And I didn't feel like that was right
because I thought
there'd probably been massacres
on the Yorke Peninsula and that
because it's just, you know,
it's like everywhere else in Australia.
Yep.
'Cause I had a feeling, you know,
that something had happened
in the family's past,
you know, what with claiming the land...
that they lived on.
- I don't think they paid for it.
- Yeah.
So, um, yeah, so he said it was
just a matter of they came there
and they settled there, you know.
It just didn't feel right.
So yeah, so one night,
I went out late,
you know, to go to the toilet
'cause the toilet was outside.
And it was July,
it was freezing cold, you know.
It was a beautiful night.
'Cause it had been windy and cloudy
and that and everything,
but just for a minute,
it actually just - I remember it -
it actually just sort of cleared up.
And it was really, really cold and I was
just standing there looking at the sky.
'Cause they have these
amazing skies down there,
you know, and ocean and that, because
they're right there on the beach.
Wow.
And all of a sudden...
all of these people started to appear
right in front of me.
And, you know,
they wouldn't have been very far -
they would've been about
from here to, say, that rock over there,
so probably not far,
probably about 20ft.
And there would've been
about a hundred or so.
And I didn't count them or anything,
but there was this main man,
front and centre,
and he had on these
beautiful hat and boots and skins.
I wasn't scared or anything.
It was more like, 'Oh, there you are.'
You know? 'I knew you were there
and, you know, thank you.
You know, thank you for showing me.'
- You know.
- Yeah.
Yeah, and, you know,
who was there before.
Yeah. 'Cause I was like,
'Oh, there you are.
'Cause I knew youse were there.'
And, you know, it was like...
it was really, really cold,
but they were all really cosy,
because they had these
beautiful, really striking outfits.
You know, like these beautiful hats
and boots and cloaks
and everything so warm.
Mainly the women and children,
everyone, so warm.
And, you know,
they were just like, I remember,
they were really...
they looked really, really beautiful.
You know, like,
really beautiful and healthy
and, you know, they looked good,
but, you know, there was
a sadness there that I could feel.
'Cause, you know,
even when I was looking at them,
I was thinking that something
had happened to them. You know?
So, yeah.
And that main fellow
who was in the front,
he had sort of black,
sort of wiry hair,
sort of longish and a big black beard.
And he was, you know,
he was a good-looking fellow.
He was probably in about his 40s maybe.
And there was this woman
who was near him, about the same age.
You know, older man.
And there was some other women
and some men, but not many men.
You know, and there was
some boys and girls
and they were more or less
to the side of him
and just behind him a bit, you know.
And...
they sort of come up
and they sort of appeared
and they sort of stayed there
for a while
and then they just faded out.
Which is, um... how I sort of
experience it when I see ghosts.
They all seem to do that.
I don't know what that's about.
It wasn't, like...
It was like, you know...
'cause it was like I was fully awake.
I mean,
I wasn't sleepwalking or anything.
And they were there.
And I had this sense
that this was their country
and that
I was standing on their country.
And you wanted to know, eh?
Yeah, and I wanted to know,
because whenever white people
try and deny things to me
or try and act like things
that I know to be true aren't,
the more curious I get, you know.
And... you know,
they made me very curious,
my brother-in-law and my sister,
when they were saying,
'Oh, no, no-one was here.
No-one was here.'
And I was like, 'No-one?
How could there not be anyone?'
It was like, 'No, no-one was here.
They would've all took off.'
And, you know,
from what people have told me,
the ancestors probably
chose to show themselves to me
'cause I was so curious.
You know, and I'm just lucky
that they showed me, I guess.
You know, it was a real honour. Yeah.
I'm Kenny Dalton. I'm 72.
I was 16 at the time,
and my wife Amelia and me,
we were travelling up to Beerwah,
from Beerwah to Bundaberg.
And I was, um... I was working,
cane-cutting at Childers
for a while there.
And we were staying in this shed.
It was a big shed.
And the shed faced eastward.
And just outside the shed was this hill.
It went up pretty high.
And Amelia and I, we were just
laying there and we were looking.
And on top of the hill,
I saw this light.
It was like, them glow-worms?
What do you call them?
- Fireflies, eh?
- Fireflies. Yeah, yeah.
And it was coming down the hill,
this light.
It was a bluey sort of light.
And it came down the hill, stopped,
just out the front where we was.
And it turned around
and it went back up.
I said to Amelia,
'There's something wrong here.'
So, inquisitiveness... I went up.
And here on top of the hill
was this house.
It had been burnt. Burnt to the ground.
But out the front was all these flowers.
They was in full bloom.
When I went to work, I told the people,
'Where we're staying
on top of that hill, there's a house.'
And this fella said, 'Yeah.
It got burnt down.
The people that were there -
a husband, his wife and their child -
they were burnt.
Burnt to death.'
Because back in '55, '56...
Well, it happened in '52, they perished.
But there was no fire brigade
and things like we got today.
So when I came home that night,
again, that light come down the hill.
They said this woman,
she was a keen gardener.
She put in all the gardens.
And, um... she were mad keen
for gardening.
She was only young - about 20 -
when she died.
Well, when I came home,
I said to my wife,
'Did you get them flowers
from up at the top of the hill?'
And she said, 'Yes.'
I said, 'We better take them flowers
back up.'
So I took the flowers
and I went back up.
And I was just standing there.
There was nobody else around.
And I said, 'I'm sorry.
My wife didn't know what she was doing.'
And I put the flowers back.
And we never seen that light no more.
'Cause I believe,
I believe that when we die,
our body goes into the ground,
our soul goes to meet with our Creator
and our spirits remain.
Our spirits remain.
And I believe that spirit
is still around that house,
'cause that woman
didn't like us taking her flowers.
Yeah...
Well, we decided
to take the rubbish to the tip,
'cause in a country town,
the tip to Aboriginal people
is like... treasure.
A lot of good things, you know?
So we're down there just walking around
and I just go for a stickybeak -
it's just what I used to do
when I was little.
And I seen this square board
upside down on the ground.
And I thought it was
a placemat for the table.
And I'm thinking, 'Oh, yeah, looks good,
brand-new, good condition.'
So I flip it over. Ouija board.
So I jump back.
So you knew what it was?
Oh, yeah, I knew what it was.
I jumped back, wouldn't touch it.
And then I went to my sister-in-law
and said,
'There's a ouija board over here.'
She goes, 'Where, where, where?'
I go, 'No, no, no. Don't touch it.
'Cause it's bad luck.
You're not allowed to touch it.'
She goes,
'Nah, I don't believe in that.'
So she calls her mum, she comes over,
and they pick it up,
and I told the mother and daughter
not to pick it up and take it home.
But the son comes over, he picks it up,
throws it in the boot and says,
'I'll take it home.'
I wouldn't walk in that car.
I wouldn't get in that car.
Wouldn't get in there.
I walked from the tip back home.
Like, it wasn't far.
And the next day...
No... Yeah, no, that night,
they decided to play the board.
And the board goes...
They asked the board questions,
you know, 'So and so and so.'
And the board turns around and it goes,
'I'll get you for...'
'Cause I walked out of the room
and when I came back,
all I caught was,
'I'll get you for that.'
Who... Who said that?
The... The board.
It, like, spelt it out or...?
Yeah, yeah. No, it spelt it out.
And my sister-in-law, she goes,
'Get who? Who are you gonna get
and what's gonna happen?'
And he goes 'you' to her.
Goes, 'You. You'll never have a boy.
Every son you have, I'll take.'
She's now had eight girls.
But, um...
that's part of the board, too -
wishes - or whatever it cast on them.
And Tee-Boy, it said, 'I'll get you.
I'll get someone dearly to you,
you and your missus.'
It took Tee-Boy. He died after that.
And the eldest brother, he goes,
'I'm gonna take
someone you love dearly.'
Took his wife.
And 'cause I was in the room,
it took my daughter.
Mm-hm.
And the youngest brother
who picked the board up,
it said, 'I'm gonna get
someone dearly to you.'
Took the mother.
So the whole family is, like, lost,
it's gone.
One's schizophrenic...
Two's schizophrenic.
One's full alcoholic.
One lost the plot.
One sister died.
Dropped dead, young age, 32, I think.
34... 32.
And the other sister, she lost her mind.
The dad, things are happening to him,
'cause it keeps carrying on.
And my sister-in-law's daughter,
it attacks her.
'Cause they didn't get rid of the curse
from the ouija board -
'cause they didn't know how to do it.
So now it still follows the family.
Yeah. Back in about 1999,
I was at an outstation...
that belongs to my family
and I read about it in the paper.
My old grandfather
and one of my relations... relatives,
we went back out bush to sit down.
But I had been reading about the eclipse
during the weekend,
while I was in Tennant Creek.
And I was explaining to
my old grandfather -
he would've been about 80-odd then -
explaining to him what was
gonna... happen on this Tuesday.
And, uh...
And my other brother's
standing up there,
'Yeah, that's what's gonna happen'.
It was the eclipse of the sun
where the moon comes in the middle of...
between the sun and the planet.
Yeah, so, I told the old fella,
that it's gonna happen today.'
And, anyway, I'm waiting for it
to come around lunchtime.
I'm just waiting for it all day.
And, uh...
There now.
I said, 'There, look Apurlye,
it's coming. It's just starting.
Eh? Eh!'
And he's looking at it,
'What's going on here?'
And he started getting
really uncomfortable,
like, tying his swag up
and going and hiding his head down
under his arm
and having quick peeps, you know,
and me and my brother there
ripping ourselves laughing
because we knew what was going on
but we were just laughing at this old
lawman, Aboriginal lawman, culture man.
And he's wondering,
what's going on with this planet?
This is something that's gonna...
Something bad's happening
around the country. You know?
Someone's destroyed a sacred site
or someone's ill,
some mythological thing
that belonging to the creations
sort of thing was coming.
It was funny, eh?
Oh. Talk about a laugh.
So then it all finished,
then it was really bright again.
So I had to explain what happened
and draw a couple of pictures
in the sand of what happened.
And, uh,
to an old 80-year-old tribal man,
even the pictures
couldn't explain to him
what happened
with the solar system that day.
You know, I think it only comes round
once a blue moon
and it was a good time
to witness it, out bush,
where it's all clear, you know?
In 2009, I went to the National Film
Sound Archive
as a research fellow.
And I was being housed next door to
the National Film Sound Archive -
NFSA building.
Mm-hm.
In a building that I found out
was previously the house
of Sir Colin MacKenzie.
Sir Colin MacKenzie used to be
the head of the Institute of Anatomy,
which was once housed
in the same building
where the NFSA is now housed.
- And this is Canberra, yeah?
- And this is all in Canberra.
I got to learn a bit more
about Sir Colin MacKenzie,
this man who I realised
would have been involved in and oversaw
the anatomical dissection
of Indigenous peoples as specimens,
as scientific specimens.
Mm-hm.
It became intriguing to me
that the parallel
between the National Film Sound Archive
being housed in the very same building
as the Institute of Anatomy,
the place that would have
housed our remains,
the remains of Indigenous peoples,
now housed the representation of us.
So that was the first intriguing
correlation for me.
Then, more and more,
I felt like I was being watched -
first by the portrait.
Studied, almost.
Studied. That's right.
For the majority of my research,
I was living alone.
For a good two and a half months,
I was in this house alone
with the presence of Colin MacKenzie.
About four weeks into it,
I remember laying down in my bedroom.
Each night,
I was terrified to go to sleep.
It had built up so much,
the energy around the nature
of Colin MacKenzie and his work.
And I was dozing in and out of sleep.
I saw this man walking towards me
and he just got closer and closer,
totally in silhouette,
and he walked into my room.
And in his right hand
he was carrying a scalpel.
And he raised his hand
and he sliced the scalpel
through my body.
And I remember the pain of feeling
the scalpel passing through my body,
and I woke up.
It was such a violent swing
of the scalpel
that made me wake up.
I jolted awake.
From that moment on, my research that
I was originally there to do changed.
I was now more and more interested
in what happened
to the remains of our people.
I was increasingly drawn into
the nature of anatomical research.
And I was shown the morgue, which
is on the lower level of the building,
where bodies were kept.
There is one single photograph
in that building now
that shows all the skeletal remains.
That is now
the permanent exhibition of film -
the history of film in Australia -
once housed all the skeletal remains
of animals, people,
the theory of evolution, et cetera.
That's an interesting point because
we're talking back in the days
when they were still looking
for the missing link,
and they thought
that Indigenous people could be
or would have a close connection to
this so-called missing link, isn't it?
That's right. That's right.
And all of the ethnographic work
I was looking at,
which is the anthropometric work,
you know, the measurement,
the archival footage
of people standing up and sitting down -
all of this correlated
to a physical examination...
- Yeah, yeah.
- ..beyond film.
So this was
an intriguing relationship to me.
And I ended up... I became obsessed
with finding out what happened to us
in that building.
I became more and more aware
of spiritual unrest,
um...
people not being returned to country.
I ended up going to talk to David Kaus
at the National Museum of Australia
who now is in charge of
the yet-to-be-repatriated remains
of Indigenous peoples.
His office sits outside about
two or three shipping containers full
of Indigenous peoples' remains
that have yet to be repatriated.
David Kaus himself was involved
in the physical transference
from the Institute of Anatomy
into the National Museum of Australia,
into those containers,
where they now sit.
- To me, their voices are really clear.
- Mm-hm.
To me, the voices of those people
are really clear
and that is...
Um...
You know, it is - it's searching
for connection. You know.
- They've gotta be returned home.
- Yeah.
So what was actually
really quite a dry research topic...
which was looking at the Indigenous
cultural intellectual property
and filmmaking,
by examining the ethnographic works
held in the National Film Sound Archive
ended up becoming...
about... the rights of...
the dead undead...
Mm-hm.
The still-living spirits
of our people,
who have yet to be treated right.
For a lot of reasons,
they're not repatriated,
not knowing where they're from,
those kind of things.
But it was then that this man,
this awful, awful thing
of having a scalpel
cut through my body,
being jarred awake by Colin MacKenzie,
actually, led me on this path
to the very people
he probably would have once examined,
to hear their voice,
and really to work harder
in taking them home.
So, Graham,
thanks for telling us your story.
Pleasure.
I suppose,
just start at the beginning.
Yeah, alright.
Well, when this happened,
we were living in Gove.
Our house had been pretty badly damaged
in Cyclone Tracy
and so we'd been relocated to Gove
and I actually had a project going on
there already.
I was pollution monitoring
at the factory there
and so I was pretty well occupied
but I had a bit of spare time
and I was pretty interested
in what was going on
around the countryside and that.
The thing that was really big
at the time,
and this is the background
to the whole story,
is that, in the '70s, the thing that was
big with the aquarium people
were these fish called rainbows,
and the Germans were really into them
because they were line-breeding stuff,
make fancy designs of fish.
Anyway, there'd been
some collecting trips done
and there was a fishing inspector there
who had a place that he wanted to visit
and he said to me
would I like to come with him
and we go looking for these
little things, these little fishies.
So I was like, 'Yeah!' You know?
'I'm there, for sure.'
So the idea was that we'd spend
the first night on the Cato -
that was a place I hadn't been to,
a place he hadn't been to.
So we took off and we kept going until
we came to a billabong on the Cato
and this was, you know,
this was a beautiful site,
this was lovely, it was magnificent.
So the idea was
we'd spend the night there.
We'd left in the afternoon,
it wasn't dark,
so we said,
'Why don't we just put the dinghy in?'
So it was a steep bank,
so we had to rope the dinghy down,
and I didn't have
any strange feeling here
but Col said to me afterwards
that he had felt a bit strange here.
So we went out, put all our gear in,
we went out in the dinghy
and we were looking for an area
where there'd be some rainbows -
there was obviously
going to be rainbows there.
And upstream, it started
to break up into little islands
but they couldn't have been islands,
I looked at aerial pictures later
and they weren't islands,
but there were channels.
There was no way, or it would've...
I don't know how anyone could've got
to the other bank.
I mean, you would've had to go a long,
long way up to get to the other bank.
And we were going up this channel
and we threw out a line
because we knew there'd be barras there,
and then, all of a sudden,
and this was sort of strange,
the river, the stream,
that was about five or six metres wide,
suddenly widened and there was
an indentation in the right bank
of about three metres or so,
and it came to a point.
And sitting on the point was a girl.
And she was sitting there with her legs
tucked up into the point -
it was an Aboriginal girl,
she was probably, I don't know...
She was a young girl,
16, 18 years old,
conventionally pretty.
But the thing that really got me
was that she was in a dress
and the dress was very, very clean.
Now, if you've driven through
that country
and no utes or Land Rovers in those days
had any air-conditioning,
you'd have just had the windows open and
dust would've been coming in the windows
and I mean, even if she bought
that dress at the mission in Karla
and popped in the car
and came straight over here,
she'd be dirty,
I mean, we were all dirty.
Yeah, yeah.
But she was clean.
I remember it was a pale blue dress
and it had these floral designs -
these flower designs
were in at the time -
yellow with black rings
and white with black rings.
She was just sitting there
and she was, like, clean!
And...
You know... then we looked out,
we kept going towards her
and we looked out to the right
about 45 degrees,
and beyond her, maybe 50, 70m,
there was a lean-to.
Two trees, one with a fork low down,
a piece of timber across,
wired with fencing wire,
and a covering just there, not rusty.
It was... it looked fairly new,
corrugated iron,
and all around there
was like the other place,
like it had been swept
and it was all clean.
Wow.
And anyway, suddenly,
it was a barra, I thought it was
a barra, but Col said it was a saratoga,
started jumping and that distracted me.
I turned around, went, 'There,
let's get this! Let's get it in.'
Then it threw the lure
and I turned around,
and when I looked to the point,
there was no girl.
There was no lean-to.
There was nothing.
And the grass that she was sitting on...
there was no suggestion
that anybody was sitting on it.
She just wasn't there anymore.
And I said to Col, 'Did you see that?'
And he said, he muttered something,
I don't know what he said.
But she wasn't there.
I did hear later on
that an Aboriginal woman
had been taken by a croc downstream
but that was, like, you know,
months afterwards.
All that was there
was they found a piece of tin.
The crocs like chewing on tin -
they like the texture of it.
But, you know, I don't think
it's got anything to do with it.
So it just completely disappeared.
The whole scenario...
the whole... everything.
It was all current. It was all...
And it was just like
everything was clean...
and then they weren't there.
- Did she look at you or...?
- Yeah, yeah.
She looked at us but she sort of...
It was like she was looking through us.
Yeah.
- And... yeah.
- Wow.
She was real, real... She was real.
I think.
There was about 20, 25 people
there - men and women -
and we were introduced to these people
that were going to take us
through the meditation,
so it was this guy - a didge player -
they said we were really in for a treat
'cause he was quite a famous,
well known didge player.
I don't know his name,
I've got it written down somewhere,
but he was going to play for us.
And his girlfriend,
who was an Aboriginal lady,
and she looked very fantastic
and authentic with the painted arms
and bare midriff,
not exposed or anything,
just bare midriff,
and she was covered in, like, bark
or paperbark. Stuff like that.
OK, sort of traditional?
- Yeah, yeah, like traditional garb.
- Mm-hm.
And, um...
and he had this massive didge,
like, not just one of those smaller
ones, it was a really big didge.
So she explained that we should lie down
in a circle on our yoga mats
and, um, go through the process
of relaxation, take a few deep breaths
and she warned us
that we were going to smell smoke.
So, um... we were lying down
and he's in the centre playing the didge
up and down our bodies.
So you could feel this, like,
waves of vibrations coming off
the sound of the didge
and she was chanting and you could smell
the crackle of the eucalyptus leaves
and smell the smoke.
It was really like, um...
just all your five senses
were heightened and it was like...
I felt myself being transported
somewhere.
Like I kind of... Like my body was there
but I was leaving my body.
It was really...
an incredible feeling.
I started seeing out to the left of me
this kind of holographic image
and I couldn't quite work out
what it was.
I mean, intuitively, I could see it
because I had the eye bags on
so it was in my mind.
And, yeah, I just felt like...
you know, things were...
I was being transported somewhere
and I was losing my current...
going to a different consciousness.
It was an incredible feeling.
Ah, I love this song.
So I could see this Aboriginal elder
standing there like a holographic image,
and he was talking to me, like,
I couldn't understand what he was saying
'cause he was speaking in,
yeah, an Aboriginal dialect.
And I was saying, 'I don't understand
what you're trying to tell me!'.
And then he was kind of getting louder
and louder
and I don't do drugs but it was like,
I don't know,
it felt like what it would be like
to be on drugs -
it was really dizzy
and I was feeling really spacey
and he was talking to me.
And then I looked down
and I thought... hang on,
there is a massive rainbow serpent snake
coming up from under my foot
and it's winding its way up my body
really purposefully
and I can see its, like, eyes
looking right at me
and I can see its little fangs
and its tongue flicking in and out
and I am just like...
I couldn't feel my body
and I couldn't move
and I'm just thinking,
'I'm going to die.
Am I going to get squashed?'
And it was moving its way
up my body purposefully
and the Aboriginal gentleman
just kept singing and talking
and trying to tell me something.
And then the snake,
just as it got close to my face,
did this... this magnificent movement
where it just flicked its body around
so that its head
was resting on my throat.
Just like if you were looking at me,
you would see the snake looking at you.
It was a beautiful feeling.
It was like he was protecting me,
like, it was a comforting feeling
and I thought, 'Oh, right,
you're not here to hurt me!'
And all the fear and the anxiety
just dissipated.
The Aboriginal elder, like, he was
far away on the other side of the room
and then, suddenly, pow,
you know, bang!
He was right there,
his face right in front of me.
And then the room started spinning again
and suddenly
we just landed in this place.
It was night-time
and it was red and barren
and I think, maybe,
I was, like, near Ayers Rock.
And there were
all these Aboriginal men
dancing in a clockwise motion
around a big campfire
and I was thinking,
'Wow, I shouldn't be here.'
I was the only woman there and I know
that this is maybe sacred men's business
and why am I here?
Why am I being shown this?
And the Aboriginal man came right up
to me and he was talking really loudly,
like, the sounds were coming
from everywhere
and he had this white paint.
He put some dots on my temples
and dots right under my eyes.
I just felt really... honoured,
like I was being... accepted.
I just felt very, very honoured.
Yeah, and then he just started
to fade away.
Yeah. Anyway, at that point,
I just kind of felt this convulsion
and I landed, like, bang,
back in my body,
back in the North Shore lady's house.
There was no didge playing,
there was... no smoke,
the meditation was over.
I woke up and sat up,
and I said,
'Wow, that was really trippy!'
And the Aboriginal lady was there
and I said...
'I just had
the most amazing experience.'
And she said, 'Yeah, I know.
You saw my grandfather.'
Mm.
And I said, 'Yeah, how did you know?
Did you see the spiders as well?'
She said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I saw the spiders
but more importantly,
you saw my grandfather,
and that's never happened before -
he's never appeared to a white person
before, let alone a woman.'
And, um...
I get a bit emotional
when I talk about it
but she said
that the reason why he would've...
I would've experienced that
was because I have... because I'm open.
Like, I've got the heart of a child.
And that the rainbow serpent
was there to protect me
and in the Aboriginal...
It means creation and spirit and, um...
Yeah.
- I just felt really honoured.
- Mm.
And it just feels like
it was some sort of initiation
to let me do the work that I do now.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah!
Oh, so where do I look, brother?
- Look at the camera or I look at you?
- No, no, look at me here, yeah.
- Look at you?
- Yeah, beautiful. Thank you.
Yeah, well...
Well, we was heading over to Mount Isa.
There was Mum, me and David.
We left Alice Springs
and we were cruising, anyway,
and we ended up in Camooweal.
Our car broke down, you know.
We couldn't get it fixed or anything, so
we were kind of stuck there, you know.
Anyway, I reckon we must've been
going to primary school at the time -
me and my brother -
we were only kids, you know?
Yeah, yeah, that's right. We were going
to that school at Camooweal.
- You know that school there?
- Sort of, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, we were going there.
Anyway...
I reckon we might've been there
maybe four weeks, five weeks.
Anyway...
We were hiring out this big shed,
renting it,
and it was across the road
from that old fuel station there.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And that shed, I tell you, man,
that was an eerie old shed, you know?
Real scary one.
That had a dirt floor
and it had all these big meat hooks,
everything, right down the back.
I don't know what was going on
there before. Anyway...
It had all these old steel shutters.
You know, like them ones you've got
to prop open with an iron bar -
you know, the little iron bar?
Prop them open.
Anyway, you got to use a bit of force
to prop 'em open.
They're not easy to open up.
Anyway, we were staying there
and that big shed we were in,
it didn't have any lockable doors
either, you know.
We used to have to prop up them big...
- Cyclone beds. You know them ones?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they're heavy - them ones.
They stand the test of time,
I'll tell you, man.
Anyway, we had to prop it up
just to close that main door.
Anyway, look, there was two sheds there.
There was a little basic
small shed there, too,
and it was same as that one -
it had no facilities, no power -
but there was an old woman
staying there. Old woman.
- One old family member.
- Aboriginal one?
Yeah, old woman, old Aboriginal woman.
She used to live there with her husband.
She actually lived there.
We were only renting.
Yeah.
Anyway, a couple of days
before the incident,
the dog that we had that was there,
he was doing all these strange things,
you know?
- Like barking up this tree.
- Yeah.
And it was only a small tree 'cause
it was right next door to that old shed.
You know, right next door to it.
Right along the side there, anyway.
And he's barking up this tree
and he's trying to run up the tree,
and he's falling off and we're thinking,
'What's going on with this dog?'
It was weird, man, really weird.
Anyway, Mum saw that and she said,
'Eh, something happened.'
- Like... like, something bad, you know?
- Yeah.
Like maybe someone passed on
or something like that.
- Like an omen?
- Yeah! Yeah.
Yeah, it was scary.
Anyway, my uncle noticed that, too,
and he said, 'That's real weird.'
He thought something bad happened, too,
'cause dogs don't normally act
like that, you know.
Up trees, barking?
Yeah, he's barking up a tree.
There's nothing up there!
You could see it,
it was only a little tree.
- Well, not that little, but you know.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, couple of days later,
Mum... me and David,
we went into town, 'cause the butchers
were having a barbecue, you know.
So we went in there to have a feed
and it was a good feed.
And then it was getting late
so we all decided to walk back,
you know, to where we were staying
in that big shed.
And it was a beautiful night,
like, a bit like now -
you know, the moon was lit,
you could see where you were going,
it was real quiet, a calm night,
beautiful night.
Anyway, we got back to our shed
and there was family there
camping outside,
a family that had come up
a couple of days before,
'cause they'd come up in a troopie,
about six or seven of them,
and they were all camping in swags.
Anyways, we all said, 'Goodnight!'
Then we went inside and put up that
cyclone bed up against the main door
just to close it, you know, and we all
went to sleep, lying down there.
And I don't know
how long we were asleep for
but all of a sudden, this noise started.
Like, them shutters, they started
to slowly rattle... little bit.
No, bruz?
Yeah, like, intermittently.
You know, like, not at the same time,
different times.
Anyway... it was getting
a little bit louder, more abrupt,
like, aggressive, you know?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Like, angry.
And we woke up.
I mean, I didn't get out of bed,
none of us did.
We didn't know what was going on.
You know, it was pitch black -
we couldn't see anything.
- There was no wind or anything?
- No, there was no wind!
- Nothing! Still, like tonight.
- Yeah.
Like that.
It was a good night.
Anyway, the shutters started, uh...
just kind of be slammed together,
like someone... duh-duh-duh-duh...
knocking them together, you know?
And then, next minute,
that thing - whatever it was -
it started on that door, then,
pushing at that door.
You could see that cyclone bed...
well, not see it but you could hear it.
Hear that cyclone bed moving.
Then all of a sudden,
he pushed that door open
and that cyclone bed went flying!
- Boom!
- Yeah.
And then you could hear this noise,
he come in, like,
'Argh...'
He breathing, you know, like groaning
and moaning, you know?
Carrying on, brother. Carrying on.
And anyway...
I didn't know what it was
'cause it was right up in your face,
too, you could feel it here like this.
- It was in your face!
- Yeah.
Like angry at you.
Anyway...
- What, man?
- You hear that?
Nuh.
I thought I heard something.
I can't hear it.
Bruz, we're still rolling.
You going to sit down?
What's that?
Oh, I thought I heard something,
brother.
Anyway, we, um...
We jumped up out of bed,
well, me and Mum did,
but my brother David, he couldn't move.
He was, like, like, petrified.
- Unna.
- Yeah. Yeah!
- Stiff as a board.
- Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, he didn't move. Anyway...
- From fright, eh, or...?
- Oh, he was shitting himself.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
But we all was.
- And it was still in there?
- Yeah, it was still in there!
You could feel it, brother. Yeah.
It was real bad energy.
Anyway, Mum picked him up
and carried him outside
and he was stiff while
she was carrying him, too, you know,
like, he didn't move - he was like that.
And we got him out
and when we got him out,
you know, everything seemed
to kind of just change.
Like... it went quiet.
I don't know how it happened that quick.
- So was it still inside?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or had it moved?
It disappeared or something?
It just disappeared.
But it was really like...
Well, we found out...
'cause we asked everybody afterwards,
we said, you know,
'Who used to live there?'
And they said
that there was an old whitefella,
old cattle drover used to live there -
a skinny fella with a hat.
He used to live there.
- He was a bit of a racist.
- Mm.
- Yeah, he didn't like blackfellas.
- Mm.
So I reckon he was angry
that we were there, eh.
- Yeah.
- I reckon...
Old mongrel.
Yeah, and you know what that old woman
said to us afterwards?
She said, 'Ah, don't worry about him!
He's always pushing me around.
He's always choking me,
always picking on me. But he's alright.'
The ghost was always choking her
and picking on her and he's alright?
That's what she said!
Yeah.
Anyway, a couple of days later,
we gone, bruz,
we took off.
How was that? Was that alright?
- That was deadly.
- I don't know.
Thank you
for telling me your story, Steven.
- That's alright. I think I got it all.
- Ma.
When I was around about 28 years of age,
I lived just around the corner
from where I'm living now
at O'Sullivan's Beach and, um...
A friend of mine rang me up
and wanted me to come over and see her.
I started driving over there
and, um... I think, with this story,
like, I was stoned.
I was actually stoned and cruising
from there to my mate's house
and on my way to my mate's house,
I just...
The whole car just went really cold...
and I just felt really
in an anxiety sort of space.
I don't know. All of a sudden, I just,
like, looked in the rear vision
of the mirror and she showed herself.
And I just started freaking out
'cause I'm thinking, 'I'm stoned!
This is bullshit! I'm hallucinating!
Like, this isn't something...
This is crap!' You know?
So, I pulled into a friend's house
halfway through,
um... 'cause I was freaking out...
and I just stayed there and I just
told her what I had witnessed.
I was like, 'Nah, it's probably
'cause I'm stoned.'
She was like, 'These things happen
when you're stoned
and when you're not stoned, '
and things like that.
And, um...
I sat there for a good couple of hours
until I was right,
until I was straight and stuff
and then I jumped back in the car
and I went to drive off
to the other person's house
and she revealed herself again.
I was like, 'What the hell's going on?
Is this real? What the hell?'
And she, um...
Nana just turned around
and said, you know,
'You don't need to be doing this, '
'cause, like,
I was on a really bad road.
So she said to me, you know,
'I'm always here for you.'
'Cause when she was gone,
it was really... really hard
to deal with my life,
because she was my rock
and my foundation.
And... she was always there
to help me sort things out
with my parents and stuff like that.
So, um... so within that moment,
it was just like,
'I'm always here for you.
If you ever need me and you need a...
All you need to do is ask
and I'll support you.
And sometimes you'll see me
and sometimes you won't.'
So that was my road to healing, I guess.
That was my door open.
It was my way of understanding
that they do exist on the other space
and, um... I'm never alone
and they're always with me.
That they actually help me understand
death and the greater space.
Especially for Aboriginal communities,
like loss and grief.
Can you tell me about
the second encounter, please?
Yep.
My niece was born at 25 weeks old
at Flinders Medical Centre
and, yeah, we...
We were already told
that there was a very small chance
that she would survive.
And we were very grateful
because, you know,
she got to a point,
Taylah actually got to a point
where she was OK, you know?
Like, she'd been in intensive care,
of course,
when she was only 25 weeks old,
so she was going to be in there
a long time,
at least till she hit her 40-week space.
And she passed away
at three months old in there.
They, I...
I remember there was a big scare.
She was basically breathing on her own.
You know, we've got beautiful photos
of her in the bath
in the hospital
and everything like that
and we were so happy, you know.
We thought, 'Wow, she's going to be OK.
She's going to survive.'
And then, within a week,
she deteriorated,
and the doctors said that her lungs,
they'd given...
every kind of drug they could
for her lungs to take effect
and, um...
I prayed and... of course, asked Nana
to be there, like,
to help her heal and things like that
and, within a week, she was right!
So, like... I was like... 'Yes!'
You know?
This is saying thank you, you know?
Um...
So she was OK for about three weeks
and she started doing really,
really well.
And the lungs started to work
and things.
And then after, then she would've been
about 2.5 months old by then,
and we were really stoked, we really
thought she was going to make it.
My sister got a phone call saying that
she's gone into... respiratory problems
and...
and that, basically, we're keeping her
alive because we can't do anything.
We don't understand
why this has happened.
Again, I prayed and I asked Nana...
to help, and...
I very strongly said, 'It's time.'
That's what I heard.
That it was time.
And that there was nothing more
that they could physically do here
and that she would...
It's time.
And, um...
Oh, yeah, I cried
and tried to understand it.
So, yeah, I kind of knew
that it was time,
even though I couldn't tell
my sister that.
I just knew that I had this... um,
relationship, spiritually, with Nana
and Nana knew that I obviously
had been strong enough to be chosen
to be able to have this strength
to help my family through it.
Or had tools, myself,
to be strong enough to get through it.
So we went to the hospital
and we went to see her
and I took my daughters to see her
and we had photos and everything.
Then they were explaining the procedure
of palliative care on an infant,
where they give her a drug
to slowly slip away safely,
even though their body's not stressing
or anything like that.
So all the family came to the hospital
and my sister said that she couldn't
do it, she couldn't be there overnight -
they said they'll probably
lose her overnight
and my sister,
the nurses asked her to stay,
and she, um... my sister just broke down
and just said she can't do it again.
'Cause she'd already lost her son
at six months
when she was six months pregnant before.
And so she asked me whether I would stay
at the hospital that night
in case she passed and I said I would.
So in the evening,
they left and they went home,
and I stayed in those little rooms
just outside the hospital,
just outside where the babies are.
And I stayed there with a friend
that night.
And it would've been about four o'clock
in the morning,
I swear I heard a big bang on the door,
'cause the nurses said,
'If it's going to happen,
then we'll come knock on the door
and be prepared to be with her,
hold her until she goes.'
I heard a big bang and I just fly up
and open the door,
and there was no-one there.
And it was either because my body
couldn't sleep
because I was prepared for the worst
and I just felt like
that was just the calling...
Nana was trying to prepare me,
that it was nearly time and stuff.
So then, we were very lucky
that it didn't happen that night.
But I did fly up and I went in
and see what was going on,
and they said, 'No, no,
there's no change or anything.
She's still just... We're just keeping
her in that space. In that live space.
We'll wait till your sister comes back
in the morning and we'll go with it.'
So she didn't go then.
So my sister and my family
all came back -
Mum and that came up for the day,
and we just sat in the room together,
just cuddling her
and spending time with her.
And they said the palliative care,
so that she would be relaxed,
they took her off everything
and they put her in the room with us.
And we were there the whole day,
basically,
and I had no sleep
and we were, of course, stressing
and worrying - not knowing
when it's going to happen.
But we were...
We tried to make the most of it
and we were singing My Girl, the song
My Girl, we were singing that to her.
And I felt really, really tired
and I went to lay back on the bed
and, as I lay down, I just felt, like,
something touch me on my face
and tell me, 'It's time.'
And I thought that,
I thought I was hearing things.
And I know
it was definitely Nana's voice
and that's what spins me out
because from the moment of prayer
and then, you know, within 48 hours
that we were in this space.
And it was like Nana was saying,
'Right, I'm here, it's five o'clock.
I'm here and a quarter past five,
she'll pass,
and I'll be here to take her.'
I told my friend and I said,
'Look, I just heard Nana.
Nana's here now.'
But I couldn't see her.
I could hear her.
I watched my mum.
My mum was video-taping
my sister holding my niece,
and they were singing My Girl,
singing it over and over...
and I just watched the clock.
I just watched it count down.
It was like the longest
15 minutes of my life, I thought,
because I was just watching everyone.
Everyone's happy - really, really happy.
Yeah, I was just watching the clock
and it got closer and closer,
and I just heard Nana say to me,
'You need to get up and you need
to stand behind your sister.'
And I did.
And I just watched Mum and my sister,
was leaning over my sister
behind the chair,
I'm sitting like this.
And I just watched Taylah.
It was a couple of minutes
before it hit the 15 mark, and 15 past,
and I was back and forth,
watching the clock,
watching my niece's face.
And then it hit
and I watched my niece,
and I just...
It's like a stillness in time.
And I just watched my niece
open her eyes and just...
take a deep breath...
close her eyes...
and it was right on
a quarter past five.
And I just heard Nana say,
'Oh, she's OK. I've got her.'
And I said to my sister, 'I'm going to
get the nurse to come and check on her,
because I think she's gone.'
So I did and the nurse come back
and she checked her heartbeat
and she had gone.
And then I was into
the next space of grief.
But it was so happy.
And I couldn't tell my family
at the time,
but I had to tell them later
and my sister was grateful, you know.
Even though
she's not much of a believer...
But I just had to say to her, you know,
'You're not alone. She is here,
and Taylah's here with you all the time
and so is Trey.'
And that was basically that story.
Thank you.
There's a light shining bright
in the dark, dusty night
As I travel along on my own
And I whistle a song to travel along
To keep all my fears away
There's a place over there
that we call Goomboon's Lair
And there's spirits around
this old town
And we're all well aware
of the devil dogs there
Coming out during cold winter times
Every night, we just pray
that the ghosts won't come our way
And it's scary walking alone
So we sing holy songs
as we travel along
Hoping angels will brighten our way
But tomorrow's a dawn
and in the light of the morn
We realise life is just a dream
And the screams that we hear
are only our fears
Something we have to conquer in time
There's a light shining bright
in the dark, dusty night
As I travel along on my own
And I whistle a song as I travel along
Hoping angels will brighten my way.
So, Delise,
thank you for telling us your story.
This is perfect for us.
This is exactly what we need.
You know, we're looking for connection
that Indigenous people have
to the other side, you know,
to family that have passed on.
So, please,
can you tell me about your brother?
Yeah. Yeah.
He was born after I had
my two kids to Mum's third marriage.
I didn't know him as a person,
sort of concentrated on my own two sons
and I never had much to do with him.
Mum's 80th birthday
was going to be held at my place
and he was in a panic
because he hadn't bought Mum a present.
So we agreed to meet
and I took him to the shopping centre.
He chose a nice diamond chain pendant.
I would have liked to have time
to sit and talk,
but the party was happening that night,
so it was rush, rush,
get home and prepare.
He told Mum
that he enjoyed our time together
and that he wanted
to get to know his big sister,
but it wasn't to be.
Well, I didn't know him that well.
That day that we went shopping
was the first time in 39 years
that we actually... were alone together.
We just never crossed paths that much.
I'd worked up
in the Northern Territory for 12 years
and life just rolled along.
Anyway, he called to visit that day
and Mum was there visiting
from the country.
She was staying with me.
Little did we know that would be
the last time we'd see him.
Two days after that,
he took his own life.
Mum was devastated.
The funeral was conducted
in the afternoon.
The lady celebrant, it was done
with compassion - a lovely lady.
I had chosen
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
to be played
as he was taken out of the chapel.
His brothers, his male cousins
and close mates filled in the grave.
Everyone was invited back
for afternoon tea
and a slideshow of Geoff
in his younger days as a teenager.
It was probably a week later
when I was back in the city,
I was about to go to bed.
Mum was ringing a lot.
She was still distraught.
And I was trying to help her
in any way I could.
One night, I was so exhausted
and emotionally drained,
I went to bed.
I turned the light off,
I heard this distinct sob.
I just froze - 'Oh, my God. It's Geoff.'
He's sorry that this thing has happened.
I decided I wouldn't tell Mum
'cause she was still too upset.
This went on for some weeks.
Not consistently -
it was every couple of nights.
Sometimes I wouldn't hear it
for four or five nights.
Then I'd hear it again.
I wasn't afraid,
but I found it so distressing
to hear the sadness -
the sadness of his sob.
I hopped into bed
and turned the light off.
And I heard the sob again.
I laid there and I shed a few tears
and I said, 'Geoff.
It's OK, matey.
It's OK.
Grandmother and Grandfather
will be there with you.
They'll look after you.
And it's OK, Geoff.
It's OK to move on.'
I turned the radio on.
I heard this music,
and I thought, 'I know this music.'
And I heard it.
It was He Ain't Heavy...
He's My Brother.
I knew then that that was him.
I just thought, 'Be free, Geoff.
Whatever happened, be free.'
I've never heard it since then.
About my experience -
it was '96, '96 -
and I was on...
Thursday Island at the time.
I was eight months pregnant.
I was staying
at my cousin sister's house
on TI - on Thursday Island
and, um... it was night-time
in the room.
Now, I'd made my bed on the floor.
I'd taken the mattress,
placed it on the floor
and, I was sleeping on the floor.
It was comfortable for me
to sleep on the floor at the time,
but my husband
was sleeping on the bed.
So just as I was falling asleep,
as I was dozing off,
I, uh... I could feel a hand on my face,
on the side of my face.
It was pushing me down into the pillow.
You know? It was just pushing me down.
And I, uh... I couldn't move.
You know, I... I... I was struggling.
I couldn't move at all.
I was just stiff, you know? I was stiff.
And I tried to move my fingers,
but I couldn't move.
I was completely stiff.
It was like all the energy
had come out of you?
Yeah. It was like I was paralysed
and I couldn't move, you know.
And this thing
was just pushing my head
deeper and deeper into the pillow.
And I felt like I was getting pushed
into this big hole, you know.
And it kept pushing.
But, you know...
and I'm a Christian, you know.
I believe in God.
And I just... I said to this thing,
you know,
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name.'
And it came off me.
And I sat up
and my heart was beating so fast,
like, I was so scared.
And I was just sitting there
trying to catch my breath
and I turned and I said to my husband
who was sleeping on the bed,
you know, 'Come down here
and sleep with me on the mattress.
Like, something was...
it was trying to suffocate me.'
Into the pillow, eh?
Well, I told him, 'Come down
and sleep on the mattress with me.
Something was trying to suffocate me,
like, spiritually.' You know?
- Mm-hm.
- It was trying to suffocate me.
And he came down off the bed
and he made his bed,
he slept next to me on the mattress.
And, you know, he had dozed off,
he went to sleep.
But I couldn't go to sleep because
I was still afraid, I was still scared.
So I just laid there,
you know, for a while,
and then I could feel myself,
like, dozing off.
I could feel myself, like,
starting to fall asleep again, you know?
And then it happened again.
You know, this hand
on the side of my face, pushing me.
And it all happened so quickly, like,
just pushing me into my pillow.
And I... it felt like I was going
into this deep, dark hole.
You know, this hand was pushing me
into this deep, dark hole.
And then I woke up and I was
floating above myself, you know.
I looked down,
there was my husband and there was I -
we were both sleeping on the mattress,
but here I was.
- So I was out of my body.
- Mm-hm.
I was floating above the bed.
And I looked around the room
and I looked into the corner
and there was this black woman -
a woman was crouching in the corner.
And, you know, she had...
her skin was all folded over,
you know, like, folded and wrinkly,
like, um...
- You know those dogs?
- Yeah, the...
You know, dogs with the folded skin?
Oh, what's the...? I can't remember.
You know what dog
I'm talking about, eh.
I don't know the name
of that particular dog,
but you know what dog I'm talking about.
Well, that dog,
the one with the folded skin,
that's what her skin looked like,
you know?
You know,
and getting back to that woman,
she had folded skin and she was
just sitting there, staring at me.
And as soon as I saw her,
I was afraid,
but I knew that God was on my side,
you know, 'cause I'm a Christian.
And I said to that woman,
or that thing, in the corner, you know,
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name!'
You know?
And that... that woman, it stood up,
but it had no legs.
It stood up on its arms, like this.
You know?
And I said to it again, you know,
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name!'
And it started crawling along the walls.
You know?
Crawling along the walls, like this.
And it was crawling,
and I was floating and I was looking
and I was saying, 'I see you
and I rebuke you in Jesus' name.
I rebuke you in Jesus' name.'
You know?
And it... it was crawling along
and it was, like, looking at me,
and looking like this
and crawling along the wall.
Moving with its hands?
Moving with its hands. You know,
it didn't have any legs, this thing.
Just moving across the wall.
It had red eyes glaring at me, you know.
And when I said
'I rebuke you in Jesus' name',
you know, 'cause God has
more power over the creature,
and this thing, it just basmout.
Like, it turned to ash.
- Ash?
- To Ash.
You know, turned to ash and, like smoke,
it just went underneath the door,
underneath the door.
It went underneath and it went outside.
Because I worship the Creator,
not the creature.
My God is more powerful.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for telling your story.
It's beautiful.
Au eswou.
This story I'm gonna tell happened
about 11 and a half years ago.
We were travelling...
travelling from Alice to Adelaide.
We got about 100k's out of Coober Pedy
and it was very late.
And we're travelling and I was looking
forward to getting to Coober Pedy
to have a stretch and a drink.
And so we got about... probably
about 80k's out of Coober Pedy,
and we're driving along and I'm just
looking to the side of the road -
Mark's driving,
all the kids are in the back -
and I spotted this young girl.
I reckon she would've been
about 11 years old.
So from where the road is,
she would've been probably
about 100m along the fence line.
And this young girl was, sort of,
she was walking along the fence line.
And for a stage,
I could see her whole body -
her legs - she had long legs
and long arms and a fragile body
and she had a white dress on.
I just was looking at her,
then I thought,
'I wonder what that girl's doing
walking along the fence line.
It's gonna be nightfall in an hour.'
Anyway,
it was just a thought at that stage.
And I just watched her and she just
kept walking along the fence line.
So I said to Marky, I said, 'Did you
see that girl walking along the fence?'
And he said, 'What girl?'
I said, 'There was a young girl there.
About 11 years old.'
And I said, 'What do you reckon she's
doing walking along the fence line?
There must be
an Aboriginal community close by.'
It just really bugged me and I said,
'Oh. You know, it's gonna be dark soon.
We should turn around
and go back and just check on her
'cause she might be, you know,
walking into town
and she's got a long way to go.'
You know, like, by this stage,
I think we were around
30k's out of Coober Pedy.
So he sort of said, 'OK, then,
let's go back and have a look.'
We drove along really slowly.
And sort of at the stage
where I thought I'd last seen her,
we got to that stage, and I said, 'Oh,
she should be round here somewhere.'
So we had all eyes looking for her -
everybody in the car... looking for her.
Anyway, we couldn't see her
and I said,
'Look, we must've passed her.'
And Marky said, 'Oh, well, never mind,
we'll drive up a bit further.'
So we probably travelled another 15k's
up the road, there was no sign of her.
And I sort of gave up then,
gave up hope of seeing her again.
And I sort of, in my mind,
had come to the decision that young girl
must have lived there somewhere
or she was walking along the line
and she was meeting somebody,
and that sort of thing.
Anyway, so I said to Marky,
'Nup. This is too far. She's not there.'
So we turned around
and started coming back,
and, you know, like,
he just travelled slowly,
and by this time,
it was really coming in to dusk.
So we're travelling along
and everybody's
still sort of keeping an eye out,
so we got back around the place where
I thought I'd seen that little girl,
the last sighting I had of her.
And all of a sudden,
there was a little child
walking along the side of the road.
And everyone sort of said,
'Oh. Look there!
There's a kid there!
There's a kid there!'
So we pulled up.
Anyway, it was a little boy.
So we jumped out of the car
and, 'Hello! Are you alright?'
And he said, 'No.
Mum left me behind.'
And I said, 'Oh, what? Where's Mum?'
And he said,
'Oh, we went... we went hunting
and on the way out hunting...'
They were going to look
for some witchetty grubs.
'On the way out, I'd fallen to sleep.'
And he was probably
about seven years old.
'And I'd fallen to sleep on the way out
and my mob went hunting
and I was asleep in the car.
When I woke up, they weren't in the car,
so I got out to go to the toilet
and look for them.
And I couldn't find them.
And so... I walked back to the car
and the car was gone.
My mob had left me behind.
They must have forgot about me.'
And we said,
'OK, no worries. What's your name?'
And he told us his name was Ringo.
'OK, Ringo, don't worry.
We'll take you home.
Where do you live?'
'In the community at Coober Pedy.'
'That's alright, Ringo.
We'll take you home.'
So we put Ringo in the car,
asked him if he wanted a drink
and gave him a drink,
asked him if he wanted anything.
He really didn't want anything.
And his little eyes were, you know,
a bit frightened and whatever else.
So by this time,
it had turned to full dark now.
And so we've got Ringo in the car,
and as we come up, we could see
the headlights of a big truck
and we could see these two women,
one standing on the road,
and as she spotted us, she sort of
put her hands out and 'Stop!'
And another woman
was talking to the truck driver
and had the passenger door open
and I said, 'Ah, Ringo, this must
be your family looking for you.'
He said, 'Yeah,
that's my nana and my mum there.'
You know, and I had this
big sense of relief that, you know,
Ringo was gonna be
reunited with his family
and they were looking for him
and that sort of thing.
And as I walked up to them,
this old lady came to me.
And I said, 'Are you looking for Ringo?'
And I said, 'We got Ringo there.'
And she just started crying, eh.
And so she was crying and she grabbed me
and then his mother come over
and so Ringo has come out of the car
and they're that happy.
'Oh, Ringo!' You know?
So it was a lovely sort of reunion.
And I was like,
so I said to that old woman,
I said, you know, I said,
'I was looking for a little girl.
Was there a little girl with Ringo?'
She reckoned, 'No, that was his spirit.
That's his little spirit.'
You know, totally disregarded,
like, all my concerns
that there was a...
that I'd seen this little girl
and then I'd found this little boy.
And they just said,
'No, that was his little spirit.
She's looking after him.'
And so that's a little story, anyway.
I always still feel there's
a little girl lost out there somewhere,
walking them lines, the fence line.
Beautiful little black girl.
And that feeling has stayed with me.
You know, it's like there's
still this beautiful little girl there -
a little spirit.
A little protective spirit.
Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Oh, oh
Hurt myself again today
And the worst part
is there's no-one else to blame
Be my friend
Hold me
Wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
I'm needy
Warm me up
And breathe me.
So, Kim,
thank you for doing this interview.
Thanks.
Um, I guess just
start at the start, please.
Um... yeah.
Well, I went over
to stay with my brother-in-law
and his family over in South Australia.
And his, um... For a holiday.
And his family
are the original white people
who've come down from Adelaide,
who settled in the area.
And, um... yeah, they were mostly,
you know, sheep farmers,
but his family were fishermen.
And they settled there.
They call it settling.
And, um... yeah, well, I kept asking
my brother-in-law and my sister...
Actually, I was kind of annoying them
'cause I kept asking them who lived here
before they settled there.
And they were like,
'No, no-one. No, no-one was here.'
And I didn't feel like that was right
because I thought
there'd probably been massacres
on the Yorke Peninsula and that
because it's just, you know,
it's like everywhere else in Australia.
Yep.
'Cause I had a feeling, you know,
that something had happened
in the family's past,
you know, what with claiming the land...
that they lived on.
- I don't think they paid for it.
- Yeah.
So, um, yeah, so he said it was
just a matter of they came there
and they settled there, you know.
It just didn't feel right.
So yeah, so one night,
I went out late,
you know, to go to the toilet
'cause the toilet was outside.
And it was July,
it was freezing cold, you know.
It was a beautiful night.
'Cause it had been windy and cloudy
and that and everything,
but just for a minute,
it actually just - I remember it -
it actually just sort of cleared up.
And it was really, really cold and I was
just standing there looking at the sky.
'Cause they have these
amazing skies down there,
you know, and ocean and that, because
they're right there on the beach.
Wow.
And all of a sudden...
all of these people started to appear
right in front of me.
And, you know,
they wouldn't have been very far -
they would've been about
from here to, say, that rock over there,
so probably not far,
probably about 20ft.
And there would've been
about a hundred or so.
And I didn't count them or anything,
but there was this main man,
front and centre,
and he had on these
beautiful hat and boots and skins.
I wasn't scared or anything.
It was more like, 'Oh, there you are.'
You know? 'I knew you were there
and, you know, thank you.
You know, thank you for showing me.'
- You know.
- Yeah.
Yeah, and, you know,
who was there before.
Yeah. 'Cause I was like,
'Oh, there you are.
'Cause I knew youse were there.'
And, you know, it was like...
it was really, really cold,
but they were all really cosy,
because they had these
beautiful, really striking outfits.
You know, like these beautiful hats
and boots and cloaks
and everything so warm.
Mainly the women and children,
everyone, so warm.
And, you know,
they were just like, I remember,
they were really...
they looked really, really beautiful.
You know, like,
really beautiful and healthy
and, you know, they looked good,
but, you know, there was
a sadness there that I could feel.
'Cause, you know,
even when I was looking at them,
I was thinking that something
had happened to them. You know?
So, yeah.
And that main fellow
who was in the front,
he had sort of black,
sort of wiry hair,
sort of longish and a big black beard.
And he was, you know,
he was a good-looking fellow.
He was probably in about his 40s maybe.
And there was this woman
who was near him, about the same age.
You know, older man.
And there was some other women
and some men, but not many men.
You know, and there was
some boys and girls
and they were more or less
to the side of him
and just behind him a bit, you know.
And...
they sort of come up
and they sort of appeared
and they sort of stayed there
for a while
and then they just faded out.
Which is, um... how I sort of
experience it when I see ghosts.
They all seem to do that.
I don't know what that's about.
It wasn't, like...
It was like, you know...
'cause it was like I was fully awake.
I mean,
I wasn't sleepwalking or anything.
And they were there.
And I had this sense
that this was their country
and that
I was standing on their country.
And you wanted to know, eh?
Yeah, and I wanted to know,
because whenever white people
try and deny things to me
or try and act like things
that I know to be true aren't,
the more curious I get, you know.
And... you know,
they made me very curious,
my brother-in-law and my sister,
when they were saying,
'Oh, no, no-one was here.
No-one was here.'
And I was like, 'No-one?
How could there not be anyone?'
It was like, 'No, no-one was here.
They would've all took off.'
And, you know,
from what people have told me,
the ancestors probably
chose to show themselves to me
'cause I was so curious.
You know, and I'm just lucky
that they showed me, I guess.
You know, it was a real honour. Yeah.
I'm Kenny Dalton. I'm 72.
I was 16 at the time,
and my wife Amelia and me,
we were travelling up to Beerwah,
from Beerwah to Bundaberg.
And I was, um... I was working,
cane-cutting at Childers
for a while there.
And we were staying in this shed.
It was a big shed.
And the shed faced eastward.
And just outside the shed was this hill.
It went up pretty high.
And Amelia and I, we were just
laying there and we were looking.
And on top of the hill,
I saw this light.
It was like, them glow-worms?
What do you call them?
- Fireflies, eh?
- Fireflies. Yeah, yeah.
And it was coming down the hill,
this light.
It was a bluey sort of light.
And it came down the hill, stopped,
just out the front where we was.
And it turned around
and it went back up.
I said to Amelia,
'There's something wrong here.'
So, inquisitiveness... I went up.
And here on top of the hill
was this house.
It had been burnt. Burnt to the ground.
But out the front was all these flowers.
They was in full bloom.
When I went to work, I told the people,
'Where we're staying
on top of that hill, there's a house.'
And this fella said, 'Yeah.
It got burnt down.
The people that were there -
a husband, his wife and their child -
they were burnt.
Burnt to death.'
Because back in '55, '56...
Well, it happened in '52, they perished.
But there was no fire brigade
and things like we got today.
So when I came home that night,
again, that light come down the hill.
They said this woman,
she was a keen gardener.
She put in all the gardens.
And, um... she were mad keen
for gardening.
She was only young - about 20 -
when she died.
Well, when I came home,
I said to my wife,
'Did you get them flowers
from up at the top of the hill?'
And she said, 'Yes.'
I said, 'We better take them flowers
back up.'
So I took the flowers
and I went back up.
And I was just standing there.
There was nobody else around.
And I said, 'I'm sorry.
My wife didn't know what she was doing.'
And I put the flowers back.
And we never seen that light no more.
'Cause I believe,
I believe that when we die,
our body goes into the ground,
our soul goes to meet with our Creator
and our spirits remain.
Our spirits remain.
And I believe that spirit
is still around that house,
'cause that woman
didn't like us taking her flowers.
Yeah...
Well, we decided
to take the rubbish to the tip,
'cause in a country town,
the tip to Aboriginal people
is like... treasure.
A lot of good things, you know?
So we're down there just walking around
and I just go for a stickybeak -
it's just what I used to do
when I was little.
And I seen this square board
upside down on the ground.
And I thought it was
a placemat for the table.
And I'm thinking, 'Oh, yeah, looks good,
brand-new, good condition.'
So I flip it over. Ouija board.
So I jump back.
So you knew what it was?
Oh, yeah, I knew what it was.
I jumped back, wouldn't touch it.
And then I went to my sister-in-law
and said,
'There's a ouija board over here.'
She goes, 'Where, where, where?'
I go, 'No, no, no. Don't touch it.
'Cause it's bad luck.
You're not allowed to touch it.'
She goes,
'Nah, I don't believe in that.'
So she calls her mum, she comes over,
and they pick it up,
and I told the mother and daughter
not to pick it up and take it home.
But the son comes over, he picks it up,
throws it in the boot and says,
'I'll take it home.'
I wouldn't walk in that car.
I wouldn't get in that car.
Wouldn't get in there.
I walked from the tip back home.
Like, it wasn't far.
And the next day...
No... Yeah, no, that night,
they decided to play the board.
And the board goes...
They asked the board questions,
you know, 'So and so and so.'
And the board turns around and it goes,
'I'll get you for...'
'Cause I walked out of the room
and when I came back,
all I caught was,
'I'll get you for that.'
Who... Who said that?
The... The board.
It, like, spelt it out or...?
Yeah, yeah. No, it spelt it out.
And my sister-in-law, she goes,
'Get who? Who are you gonna get
and what's gonna happen?'
And he goes 'you' to her.
Goes, 'You. You'll never have a boy.
Every son you have, I'll take.'
She's now had eight girls.
But, um...
that's part of the board, too -
wishes - or whatever it cast on them.
And Tee-Boy, it said, 'I'll get you.
I'll get someone dearly to you,
you and your missus.'
It took Tee-Boy. He died after that.
And the eldest brother, he goes,
'I'm gonna take
someone you love dearly.'
Took his wife.
And 'cause I was in the room,
it took my daughter.
Mm-hm.
And the youngest brother
who picked the board up,
it said, 'I'm gonna get
someone dearly to you.'
Took the mother.
So the whole family is, like, lost,
it's gone.
One's schizophrenic...
Two's schizophrenic.
One's full alcoholic.
One lost the plot.
One sister died.
Dropped dead, young age, 32, I think.
34... 32.
And the other sister, she lost her mind.
The dad, things are happening to him,
'cause it keeps carrying on.
And my sister-in-law's daughter,
it attacks her.
'Cause they didn't get rid of the curse
from the ouija board -
'cause they didn't know how to do it.
So now it still follows the family.
Yeah. Back in about 1999,
I was at an outstation...
that belongs to my family
and I read about it in the paper.
My old grandfather
and one of my relations... relatives,
we went back out bush to sit down.
But I had been reading about the eclipse
during the weekend,
while I was in Tennant Creek.
And I was explaining to
my old grandfather -
he would've been about 80-odd then -
explaining to him what was
gonna... happen on this Tuesday.
And, uh...
And my other brother's
standing up there,
'Yeah, that's what's gonna happen'.
It was the eclipse of the sun
where the moon comes in the middle of...
between the sun and the planet.
Yeah, so, I told the old fella,
that it's gonna happen today.'
And, anyway, I'm waiting for it
to come around lunchtime.
I'm just waiting for it all day.
And, uh...
There now.
I said, 'There, look Apurlye,
it's coming. It's just starting.
Eh? Eh!'
And he's looking at it,
'What's going on here?'
And he started getting
really uncomfortable,
like, tying his swag up
and going and hiding his head down
under his arm
and having quick peeps, you know,
and me and my brother there
ripping ourselves laughing
because we knew what was going on
but we were just laughing at this old
lawman, Aboriginal lawman, culture man.
And he's wondering,
what's going on with this planet?
This is something that's gonna...
Something bad's happening
around the country. You know?
Someone's destroyed a sacred site
or someone's ill,
some mythological thing
that belonging to the creations
sort of thing was coming.
It was funny, eh?
Oh. Talk about a laugh.
So then it all finished,
then it was really bright again.
So I had to explain what happened
and draw a couple of pictures
in the sand of what happened.
And, uh,
to an old 80-year-old tribal man,
even the pictures
couldn't explain to him
what happened
with the solar system that day.
You know, I think it only comes round
once a blue moon
and it was a good time
to witness it, out bush,
where it's all clear, you know?
In 2009, I went to the National Film
Sound Archive
as a research fellow.
And I was being housed next door to
the National Film Sound Archive -
NFSA building.
Mm-hm.
In a building that I found out
was previously the house
of Sir Colin MacKenzie.
Sir Colin MacKenzie used to be
the head of the Institute of Anatomy,
which was once housed
in the same building
where the NFSA is now housed.
- And this is Canberra, yeah?
- And this is all in Canberra.
I got to learn a bit more
about Sir Colin MacKenzie,
this man who I realised
would have been involved in and oversaw
the anatomical dissection
of Indigenous peoples as specimens,
as scientific specimens.
Mm-hm.
It became intriguing to me
that the parallel
between the National Film Sound Archive
being housed in the very same building
as the Institute of Anatomy,
the place that would have
housed our remains,
the remains of Indigenous peoples,
now housed the representation of us.
So that was the first intriguing
correlation for me.
Then, more and more,
I felt like I was being watched -
first by the portrait.
Studied, almost.
Studied. That's right.
For the majority of my research,
I was living alone.
For a good two and a half months,
I was in this house alone
with the presence of Colin MacKenzie.
About four weeks into it,
I remember laying down in my bedroom.
Each night,
I was terrified to go to sleep.
It had built up so much,
the energy around the nature
of Colin MacKenzie and his work.
And I was dozing in and out of sleep.
I saw this man walking towards me
and he just got closer and closer,
totally in silhouette,
and he walked into my room.
And in his right hand
he was carrying a scalpel.
And he raised his hand
and he sliced the scalpel
through my body.
And I remember the pain of feeling
the scalpel passing through my body,
and I woke up.
It was such a violent swing
of the scalpel
that made me wake up.
I jolted awake.
From that moment on, my research that
I was originally there to do changed.
I was now more and more interested
in what happened
to the remains of our people.
I was increasingly drawn into
the nature of anatomical research.
And I was shown the morgue, which
is on the lower level of the building,
where bodies were kept.
There is one single photograph
in that building now
that shows all the skeletal remains.
That is now
the permanent exhibition of film -
the history of film in Australia -
once housed all the skeletal remains
of animals, people,
the theory of evolution, et cetera.
That's an interesting point because
we're talking back in the days
when they were still looking
for the missing link,
and they thought
that Indigenous people could be
or would have a close connection to
this so-called missing link, isn't it?
That's right. That's right.
And all of the ethnographic work
I was looking at,
which is the anthropometric work,
you know, the measurement,
the archival footage
of people standing up and sitting down -
all of this correlated
to a physical examination...
- Yeah, yeah.
- ..beyond film.
So this was
an intriguing relationship to me.
And I ended up... I became obsessed
with finding out what happened to us
in that building.
I became more and more aware
of spiritual unrest,
um...
people not being returned to country.
I ended up going to talk to David Kaus
at the National Museum of Australia
who now is in charge of
the yet-to-be-repatriated remains
of Indigenous peoples.
His office sits outside about
two or three shipping containers full
of Indigenous peoples' remains
that have yet to be repatriated.
David Kaus himself was involved
in the physical transference
from the Institute of Anatomy
into the National Museum of Australia,
into those containers,
where they now sit.
- To me, their voices are really clear.
- Mm-hm.
To me, the voices of those people
are really clear
and that is...
Um...
You know, it is - it's searching
for connection. You know.
- They've gotta be returned home.
- Yeah.
So what was actually
really quite a dry research topic...
which was looking at the Indigenous
cultural intellectual property
and filmmaking,
by examining the ethnographic works
held in the National Film Sound Archive
ended up becoming...
about... the rights of...
the dead undead...
Mm-hm.
The still-living spirits
of our people,
who have yet to be treated right.
For a lot of reasons,
they're not repatriated,
not knowing where they're from,
those kind of things.
But it was then that this man,
this awful, awful thing
of having a scalpel
cut through my body,
being jarred awake by Colin MacKenzie,
actually, led me on this path
to the very people
he probably would have once examined,
to hear their voice,
and really to work harder
in taking them home.
So, Graham,
thanks for telling us your story.
Pleasure.
I suppose,
just start at the beginning.
Yeah, alright.
Well, when this happened,
we were living in Gove.
Our house had been pretty badly damaged
in Cyclone Tracy
and so we'd been relocated to Gove
and I actually had a project going on
there already.
I was pollution monitoring
at the factory there
and so I was pretty well occupied
but I had a bit of spare time
and I was pretty interested
in what was going on
around the countryside and that.
The thing that was really big
at the time,
and this is the background
to the whole story,
is that, in the '70s, the thing that was
big with the aquarium people
were these fish called rainbows,
and the Germans were really into them
because they were line-breeding stuff,
make fancy designs of fish.
Anyway, there'd been
some collecting trips done
and there was a fishing inspector there
who had a place that he wanted to visit
and he said to me
would I like to come with him
and we go looking for these
little things, these little fishies.
So I was like, 'Yeah!' You know?
'I'm there, for sure.'
So the idea was that we'd spend
the first night on the Cato -
that was a place I hadn't been to,
a place he hadn't been to.
So we took off and we kept going until
we came to a billabong on the Cato
and this was, you know,
this was a beautiful site,
this was lovely, it was magnificent.
So the idea was
we'd spend the night there.
We'd left in the afternoon,
it wasn't dark,
so we said,
'Why don't we just put the dinghy in?'
So it was a steep bank,
so we had to rope the dinghy down,
and I didn't have
any strange feeling here
but Col said to me afterwards
that he had felt a bit strange here.
So we went out, put all our gear in,
we went out in the dinghy
and we were looking for an area
where there'd be some rainbows -
there was obviously
going to be rainbows there.
And upstream, it started
to break up into little islands
but they couldn't have been islands,
I looked at aerial pictures later
and they weren't islands,
but there were channels.
There was no way, or it would've...
I don't know how anyone could've got
to the other bank.
I mean, you would've had to go a long,
long way up to get to the other bank.
And we were going up this channel
and we threw out a line
because we knew there'd be barras there,
and then, all of a sudden,
and this was sort of strange,
the river, the stream,
that was about five or six metres wide,
suddenly widened and there was
an indentation in the right bank
of about three metres or so,
and it came to a point.
And sitting on the point was a girl.
And she was sitting there with her legs
tucked up into the point -
it was an Aboriginal girl,
she was probably, I don't know...
She was a young girl,
16, 18 years old,
conventionally pretty.
But the thing that really got me
was that she was in a dress
and the dress was very, very clean.
Now, if you've driven through
that country
and no utes or Land Rovers in those days
had any air-conditioning,
you'd have just had the windows open and
dust would've been coming in the windows
and I mean, even if she bought
that dress at the mission in Karla
and popped in the car
and came straight over here,
she'd be dirty,
I mean, we were all dirty.
Yeah, yeah.
But she was clean.
I remember it was a pale blue dress
and it had these floral designs -
these flower designs
were in at the time -
yellow with black rings
and white with black rings.
She was just sitting there
and she was, like, clean!
And...
You know... then we looked out,
we kept going towards her
and we looked out to the right
about 45 degrees,
and beyond her, maybe 50, 70m,
there was a lean-to.
Two trees, one with a fork low down,
a piece of timber across,
wired with fencing wire,
and a covering just there, not rusty.
It was... it looked fairly new,
corrugated iron,
and all around there
was like the other place,
like it had been swept
and it was all clean.
Wow.
And anyway, suddenly,
it was a barra, I thought it was
a barra, but Col said it was a saratoga,
started jumping and that distracted me.
I turned around, went, 'There,
let's get this! Let's get it in.'
Then it threw the lure
and I turned around,
and when I looked to the point,
there was no girl.
There was no lean-to.
There was nothing.
And the grass that she was sitting on...
there was no suggestion
that anybody was sitting on it.
She just wasn't there anymore.
And I said to Col, 'Did you see that?'
And he said, he muttered something,
I don't know what he said.
But she wasn't there.
I did hear later on
that an Aboriginal woman
had been taken by a croc downstream
but that was, like, you know,
months afterwards.
All that was there
was they found a piece of tin.
The crocs like chewing on tin -
they like the texture of it.
But, you know, I don't think
it's got anything to do with it.
So it just completely disappeared.
The whole scenario...
the whole... everything.
It was all current. It was all...
And it was just like
everything was clean...
and then they weren't there.
- Did she look at you or...?
- Yeah, yeah.
She looked at us but she sort of...
It was like she was looking through us.
Yeah.
- And... yeah.
- Wow.
She was real, real... She was real.
I think.
There was about 20, 25 people
there - men and women -
and we were introduced to these people
that were going to take us
through the meditation,
so it was this guy - a didge player -
they said we were really in for a treat
'cause he was quite a famous,
well known didge player.
I don't know his name,
I've got it written down somewhere,
but he was going to play for us.
And his girlfriend,
who was an Aboriginal lady,
and she looked very fantastic
and authentic with the painted arms
and bare midriff,
not exposed or anything,
just bare midriff,
and she was covered in, like, bark
or paperbark. Stuff like that.
OK, sort of traditional?
- Yeah, yeah, like traditional garb.
- Mm-hm.
And, um...
and he had this massive didge,
like, not just one of those smaller
ones, it was a really big didge.
So she explained that we should lie down
in a circle on our yoga mats
and, um, go through the process
of relaxation, take a few deep breaths
and she warned us
that we were going to smell smoke.
So, um... we were lying down
and he's in the centre playing the didge
up and down our bodies.
So you could feel this, like,
waves of vibrations coming off
the sound of the didge
and she was chanting and you could smell
the crackle of the eucalyptus leaves
and smell the smoke.
It was really like, um...
just all your five senses
were heightened and it was like...
I felt myself being transported
somewhere.
Like I kind of... Like my body was there
but I was leaving my body.
It was really...
an incredible feeling.
I started seeing out to the left of me
this kind of holographic image
and I couldn't quite work out
what it was.
I mean, intuitively, I could see it
because I had the eye bags on
so it was in my mind.
And, yeah, I just felt like...
you know, things were...
I was being transported somewhere
and I was losing my current...
going to a different consciousness.
It was an incredible feeling.
Ah, I love this song.
So I could see this Aboriginal elder
standing there like a holographic image,
and he was talking to me, like,
I couldn't understand what he was saying
'cause he was speaking in,
yeah, an Aboriginal dialect.
And I was saying, 'I don't understand
what you're trying to tell me!'.
And then he was kind of getting louder
and louder
and I don't do drugs but it was like,
I don't know,
it felt like what it would be like
to be on drugs -
it was really dizzy
and I was feeling really spacey
and he was talking to me.
And then I looked down
and I thought... hang on,
there is a massive rainbow serpent snake
coming up from under my foot
and it's winding its way up my body
really purposefully
and I can see its, like, eyes
looking right at me
and I can see its little fangs
and its tongue flicking in and out
and I am just like...
I couldn't feel my body
and I couldn't move
and I'm just thinking,
'I'm going to die.
Am I going to get squashed?'
And it was moving its way
up my body purposefully
and the Aboriginal gentleman
just kept singing and talking
and trying to tell me something.
And then the snake,
just as it got close to my face,
did this... this magnificent movement
where it just flicked its body around
so that its head
was resting on my throat.
Just like if you were looking at me,
you would see the snake looking at you.
It was a beautiful feeling.
It was like he was protecting me,
like, it was a comforting feeling
and I thought, 'Oh, right,
you're not here to hurt me!'
And all the fear and the anxiety
just dissipated.
The Aboriginal elder, like, he was
far away on the other side of the room
and then, suddenly, pow,
you know, bang!
He was right there,
his face right in front of me.
And then the room started spinning again
and suddenly
we just landed in this place.
It was night-time
and it was red and barren
and I think, maybe,
I was, like, near Ayers Rock.
And there were
all these Aboriginal men
dancing in a clockwise motion
around a big campfire
and I was thinking,
'Wow, I shouldn't be here.'
I was the only woman there and I know
that this is maybe sacred men's business
and why am I here?
Why am I being shown this?
And the Aboriginal man came right up
to me and he was talking really loudly,
like, the sounds were coming
from everywhere
and he had this white paint.
He put some dots on my temples
and dots right under my eyes.
I just felt really... honoured,
like I was being... accepted.
I just felt very, very honoured.
Yeah, and then he just started
to fade away.
Yeah. Anyway, at that point,
I just kind of felt this convulsion
and I landed, like, bang,
back in my body,
back in the North Shore lady's house.
There was no didge playing,
there was... no smoke,
the meditation was over.
I woke up and sat up,
and I said,
'Wow, that was really trippy!'
And the Aboriginal lady was there
and I said...
'I just had
the most amazing experience.'
And she said, 'Yeah, I know.
You saw my grandfather.'
Mm.
And I said, 'Yeah, how did you know?
Did you see the spiders as well?'
She said, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I saw the spiders
but more importantly,
you saw my grandfather,
and that's never happened before -
he's never appeared to a white person
before, let alone a woman.'
And, um...
I get a bit emotional
when I talk about it
but she said
that the reason why he would've...
I would've experienced that
was because I have... because I'm open.
Like, I've got the heart of a child.
And that the rainbow serpent
was there to protect me
and in the Aboriginal...
It means creation and spirit and, um...
Yeah.
- I just felt really honoured.
- Mm.
And it just feels like
it was some sort of initiation
to let me do the work that I do now.
Wow, that's amazing.
Yeah!
Oh, so where do I look, brother?
- Look at the camera or I look at you?
- No, no, look at me here, yeah.
- Look at you?
- Yeah, beautiful. Thank you.
Yeah, well...
Well, we was heading over to Mount Isa.
There was Mum, me and David.
We left Alice Springs
and we were cruising, anyway,
and we ended up in Camooweal.
Our car broke down, you know.
We couldn't get it fixed or anything, so
we were kind of stuck there, you know.
Anyway, I reckon we must've been
going to primary school at the time -
me and my brother -
we were only kids, you know?
Yeah, yeah, that's right. We were going
to that school at Camooweal.
- You know that school there?
- Sort of, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, we were going there.
Anyway...
I reckon we might've been there
maybe four weeks, five weeks.
Anyway...
We were hiring out this big shed,
renting it,
and it was across the road
from that old fuel station there.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And that shed, I tell you, man,
that was an eerie old shed, you know?
Real scary one.
That had a dirt floor
and it had all these big meat hooks,
everything, right down the back.
I don't know what was going on
there before. Anyway...
It had all these old steel shutters.
You know, like them ones you've got
to prop open with an iron bar -
you know, the little iron bar?
Prop them open.
Anyway, you got to use a bit of force
to prop 'em open.
They're not easy to open up.
Anyway, we were staying there
and that big shed we were in,
it didn't have any lockable doors
either, you know.
We used to have to prop up them big...
- Cyclone beds. You know them ones?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, they're heavy - them ones.
They stand the test of time,
I'll tell you, man.
Anyway, we had to prop it up
just to close that main door.
Anyway, look, there was two sheds there.
There was a little basic
small shed there, too,
and it was same as that one -
it had no facilities, no power -
but there was an old woman
staying there. Old woman.
- One old family member.
- Aboriginal one?
Yeah, old woman, old Aboriginal woman.
She used to live there with her husband.
She actually lived there.
We were only renting.
Yeah.
Anyway, a couple of days
before the incident,
the dog that we had that was there,
he was doing all these strange things,
you know?
- Like barking up this tree.
- Yeah.
And it was only a small tree 'cause
it was right next door to that old shed.
You know, right next door to it.
Right along the side there, anyway.
And he's barking up this tree
and he's trying to run up the tree,
and he's falling off and we're thinking,
'What's going on with this dog?'
It was weird, man, really weird.
Anyway, Mum saw that and she said,
'Eh, something happened.'
- Like... like, something bad, you know?
- Yeah.
Like maybe someone passed on
or something like that.
- Like an omen?
- Yeah! Yeah.
Yeah, it was scary.
Anyway, my uncle noticed that, too,
and he said, 'That's real weird.'
He thought something bad happened, too,
'cause dogs don't normally act
like that, you know.
Up trees, barking?
Yeah, he's barking up a tree.
There's nothing up there!
You could see it,
it was only a little tree.
- Well, not that little, but you know.
- Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, couple of days later,
Mum... me and David,
we went into town, 'cause the butchers
were having a barbecue, you know.
So we went in there to have a feed
and it was a good feed.
And then it was getting late
so we all decided to walk back,
you know, to where we were staying
in that big shed.
And it was a beautiful night,
like, a bit like now -
you know, the moon was lit,
you could see where you were going,
it was real quiet, a calm night,
beautiful night.
Anyway, we got back to our shed
and there was family there
camping outside,
a family that had come up
a couple of days before,
'cause they'd come up in a troopie,
about six or seven of them,
and they were all camping in swags.
Anyways, we all said, 'Goodnight!'
Then we went inside and put up that
cyclone bed up against the main door
just to close it, you know, and we all
went to sleep, lying down there.
And I don't know
how long we were asleep for
but all of a sudden, this noise started.
Like, them shutters, they started
to slowly rattle... little bit.
No, bruz?
Yeah, like, intermittently.
You know, like, not at the same time,
different times.
Anyway... it was getting
a little bit louder, more abrupt,
like, aggressive, you know?
- Yeah, yeah.
- Like, angry.
And we woke up.
I mean, I didn't get out of bed,
none of us did.
We didn't know what was going on.
You know, it was pitch black -
we couldn't see anything.
- There was no wind or anything?
- No, there was no wind!
- Nothing! Still, like tonight.
- Yeah.
Like that.
It was a good night.
Anyway, the shutters started, uh...
just kind of be slammed together,
like someone... duh-duh-duh-duh...
knocking them together, you know?
And then, next minute,
that thing - whatever it was -
it started on that door, then,
pushing at that door.
You could see that cyclone bed...
well, not see it but you could hear it.
Hear that cyclone bed moving.
Then all of a sudden,
he pushed that door open
and that cyclone bed went flying!
- Boom!
- Yeah.
And then you could hear this noise,
he come in, like,
'Argh...'
He breathing, you know, like groaning
and moaning, you know?
Carrying on, brother. Carrying on.
And anyway...
I didn't know what it was
'cause it was right up in your face,
too, you could feel it here like this.
- It was in your face!
- Yeah.
Like angry at you.
Anyway...
- What, man?
- You hear that?
Nuh.
I thought I heard something.
I can't hear it.
Bruz, we're still rolling.
You going to sit down?
What's that?
Oh, I thought I heard something,
brother.
Anyway, we, um...
We jumped up out of bed,
well, me and Mum did,
but my brother David, he couldn't move.
He was, like, like, petrified.
- Unna.
- Yeah. Yeah!
- Stiff as a board.
- Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, he didn't move. Anyway...
- From fright, eh, or...?
- Oh, he was shitting himself.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, yeah.
But we all was.
- And it was still in there?
- Yeah, it was still in there!
You could feel it, brother. Yeah.
It was real bad energy.
Anyway, Mum picked him up
and carried him outside
and he was stiff while
she was carrying him, too, you know,
like, he didn't move - he was like that.
And we got him out
and when we got him out,
you know, everything seemed
to kind of just change.
Like... it went quiet.
I don't know how it happened that quick.
- So was it still inside?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or had it moved?
It disappeared or something?
It just disappeared.
But it was really like...
Well, we found out...
'cause we asked everybody afterwards,
we said, you know,
'Who used to live there?'
And they said
that there was an old whitefella,
old cattle drover used to live there -
a skinny fella with a hat.
He used to live there.
- He was a bit of a racist.
- Mm.
- Yeah, he didn't like blackfellas.
- Mm.
So I reckon he was angry
that we were there, eh.
- Yeah.
- I reckon...
Old mongrel.
Yeah, and you know what that old woman
said to us afterwards?
She said, 'Ah, don't worry about him!
He's always pushing me around.
He's always choking me,
always picking on me. But he's alright.'
The ghost was always choking her
and picking on her and he's alright?
That's what she said!
Yeah.
Anyway, a couple of days later,
we gone, bruz,
we took off.
How was that? Was that alright?
- That was deadly.
- I don't know.
Thank you
for telling me your story, Steven.
- That's alright. I think I got it all.
- Ma.
When I was around about 28 years of age,
I lived just around the corner
from where I'm living now
at O'Sullivan's Beach and, um...
A friend of mine rang me up
and wanted me to come over and see her.
I started driving over there
and, um... I think, with this story,
like, I was stoned.
I was actually stoned and cruising
from there to my mate's house
and on my way to my mate's house,
I just...
The whole car just went really cold...
and I just felt really
in an anxiety sort of space.
I don't know. All of a sudden, I just,
like, looked in the rear vision
of the mirror and she showed herself.
And I just started freaking out
'cause I'm thinking, 'I'm stoned!
This is bullshit! I'm hallucinating!
Like, this isn't something...
This is crap!' You know?
So, I pulled into a friend's house
halfway through,
um... 'cause I was freaking out...
and I just stayed there and I just
told her what I had witnessed.
I was like, 'Nah, it's probably
'cause I'm stoned.'
She was like, 'These things happen
when you're stoned
and when you're not stoned, '
and things like that.
And, um...
I sat there for a good couple of hours
until I was right,
until I was straight and stuff
and then I jumped back in the car
and I went to drive off
to the other person's house
and she revealed herself again.
I was like, 'What the hell's going on?
Is this real? What the hell?'
And she, um...
Nana just turned around
and said, you know,
'You don't need to be doing this, '
'cause, like,
I was on a really bad road.
So she said to me, you know,
'I'm always here for you.'
'Cause when she was gone,
it was really... really hard
to deal with my life,
because she was my rock
and my foundation.
And... she was always there
to help me sort things out
with my parents and stuff like that.
So, um... so within that moment,
it was just like,
'I'm always here for you.
If you ever need me and you need a...
All you need to do is ask
and I'll support you.
And sometimes you'll see me
and sometimes you won't.'
So that was my road to healing, I guess.
That was my door open.
It was my way of understanding
that they do exist on the other space
and, um... I'm never alone
and they're always with me.
That they actually help me understand
death and the greater space.
Especially for Aboriginal communities,
like loss and grief.
Can you tell me about
the second encounter, please?
Yep.
My niece was born at 25 weeks old
at Flinders Medical Centre
and, yeah, we...
We were already told
that there was a very small chance
that she would survive.
And we were very grateful
because, you know,
she got to a point,
Taylah actually got to a point
where she was OK, you know?
Like, she'd been in intensive care,
of course,
when she was only 25 weeks old,
so she was going to be in there
a long time,
at least till she hit her 40-week space.
And she passed away
at three months old in there.
They, I...
I remember there was a big scare.
She was basically breathing on her own.
You know, we've got beautiful photos
of her in the bath
in the hospital
and everything like that
and we were so happy, you know.
We thought, 'Wow, she's going to be OK.
She's going to survive.'
And then, within a week,
she deteriorated,
and the doctors said that her lungs,
they'd given...
every kind of drug they could
for her lungs to take effect
and, um...
I prayed and... of course, asked Nana
to be there, like,
to help her heal and things like that
and, within a week, she was right!
So, like... I was like... 'Yes!'
You know?
This is saying thank you, you know?
Um...
So she was OK for about three weeks
and she started doing really,
really well.
And the lungs started to work
and things.
And then after, then she would've been
about 2.5 months old by then,
and we were really stoked, we really
thought she was going to make it.
My sister got a phone call saying that
she's gone into... respiratory problems
and...
and that, basically, we're keeping her
alive because we can't do anything.
We don't understand
why this has happened.
Again, I prayed and I asked Nana...
to help, and...
I very strongly said, 'It's time.'
That's what I heard.
That it was time.
And that there was nothing more
that they could physically do here
and that she would...
It's time.
And, um...
Oh, yeah, I cried
and tried to understand it.
So, yeah, I kind of knew
that it was time,
even though I couldn't tell
my sister that.
I just knew that I had this... um,
relationship, spiritually, with Nana
and Nana knew that I obviously
had been strong enough to be chosen
to be able to have this strength
to help my family through it.
Or had tools, myself,
to be strong enough to get through it.
So we went to the hospital
and we went to see her
and I took my daughters to see her
and we had photos and everything.
Then they were explaining the procedure
of palliative care on an infant,
where they give her a drug
to slowly slip away safely,
even though their body's not stressing
or anything like that.
So all the family came to the hospital
and my sister said that she couldn't
do it, she couldn't be there overnight -
they said they'll probably
lose her overnight
and my sister,
the nurses asked her to stay,
and she, um... my sister just broke down
and just said she can't do it again.
'Cause she'd already lost her son
at six months
when she was six months pregnant before.
And so she asked me whether I would stay
at the hospital that night
in case she passed and I said I would.
So in the evening,
they left and they went home,
and I stayed in those little rooms
just outside the hospital,
just outside where the babies are.
And I stayed there with a friend
that night.
And it would've been about four o'clock
in the morning,
I swear I heard a big bang on the door,
'cause the nurses said,
'If it's going to happen,
then we'll come knock on the door
and be prepared to be with her,
hold her until she goes.'
I heard a big bang and I just fly up
and open the door,
and there was no-one there.
And it was either because my body
couldn't sleep
because I was prepared for the worst
and I just felt like
that was just the calling...
Nana was trying to prepare me,
that it was nearly time and stuff.
So then, we were very lucky
that it didn't happen that night.
But I did fly up and I went in
and see what was going on,
and they said, 'No, no,
there's no change or anything.
She's still just... We're just keeping
her in that space. In that live space.
We'll wait till your sister comes back
in the morning and we'll go with it.'
So she didn't go then.
So my sister and my family
all came back -
Mum and that came up for the day,
and we just sat in the room together,
just cuddling her
and spending time with her.
And they said the palliative care,
so that she would be relaxed,
they took her off everything
and they put her in the room with us.
And we were there the whole day,
basically,
and I had no sleep
and we were, of course, stressing
and worrying - not knowing
when it's going to happen.
But we were...
We tried to make the most of it
and we were singing My Girl, the song
My Girl, we were singing that to her.
And I felt really, really tired
and I went to lay back on the bed
and, as I lay down, I just felt, like,
something touch me on my face
and tell me, 'It's time.'
And I thought that,
I thought I was hearing things.
And I know
it was definitely Nana's voice
and that's what spins me out
because from the moment of prayer
and then, you know, within 48 hours
that we were in this space.
And it was like Nana was saying,
'Right, I'm here, it's five o'clock.
I'm here and a quarter past five,
she'll pass,
and I'll be here to take her.'
I told my friend and I said,
'Look, I just heard Nana.
Nana's here now.'
But I couldn't see her.
I could hear her.
I watched my mum.
My mum was video-taping
my sister holding my niece,
and they were singing My Girl,
singing it over and over...
and I just watched the clock.
I just watched it count down.
It was like the longest
15 minutes of my life, I thought,
because I was just watching everyone.
Everyone's happy - really, really happy.
Yeah, I was just watching the clock
and it got closer and closer,
and I just heard Nana say to me,
'You need to get up and you need
to stand behind your sister.'
And I did.
And I just watched Mum and my sister,
was leaning over my sister
behind the chair,
I'm sitting like this.
And I just watched Taylah.
It was a couple of minutes
before it hit the 15 mark, and 15 past,
and I was back and forth,
watching the clock,
watching my niece's face.
And then it hit
and I watched my niece,
and I just...
It's like a stillness in time.
And I just watched my niece
open her eyes and just...
take a deep breath...
close her eyes...
and it was right on
a quarter past five.
And I just heard Nana say,
'Oh, she's OK. I've got her.'
And I said to my sister, 'I'm going to
get the nurse to come and check on her,
because I think she's gone.'
So I did and the nurse come back
and she checked her heartbeat
and she had gone.
And then I was into
the next space of grief.
But it was so happy.
And I couldn't tell my family
at the time,
but I had to tell them later
and my sister was grateful, you know.
Even though
she's not much of a believer...
But I just had to say to her, you know,
'You're not alone. She is here,
and Taylah's here with you all the time
and so is Trey.'
And that was basically that story.
Thank you.
There's a light shining bright
in the dark, dusty night
As I travel along on my own
And I whistle a song to travel along
To keep all my fears away
There's a place over there
that we call Goomboon's Lair
And there's spirits around
this old town
And we're all well aware
of the devil dogs there
Coming out during cold winter times
Every night, we just pray
that the ghosts won't come our way
And it's scary walking alone
So we sing holy songs
as we travel along
Hoping angels will brighten our way
But tomorrow's a dawn
and in the light of the morn
We realise life is just a dream
And the screams that we hear
are only our fears
Something we have to conquer in time
There's a light shining bright
in the dark, dusty night
As I travel along on my own
And I whistle a song as I travel along
Hoping angels will brighten my way.