'Carla' and Collet Barker
All of the Aboriginal groups who populated the
vastness of Australia used fire; for warmth, for cooking, and for the hardening
of wooden weapons such as clubs and spears. In the desert regions, with the
tinder dry spinifex and the dry climate, the people could get a fire going in
virtually seconds, and even today fire is used by them to stimulate growth, or
to harvest animals for food. In the cooler and damper climes, some form of
portable fire stick was carried. In the south west coastal region of Western
Australia, the smouldering bark carried under their kangaroo cloaks, was called
the carla,
or fire bark. I have been carrying my
carla
for Collet Barker since 1956.
Although I was born in the town of Mount Barker,
three miles from the summit which lends its name to the district, and spent my
first two years at nearby Littlehampton, it wasn't until ten years later that I
first heard of Captain Collet Barker. There was a combination of reasons for
this. Firstly, my parents moved to Whyalla on the western coast of Spencer Gulf
when I turned two. Secondly, at the age of three and a half years old, I
contracted an illness which saw me hospitalised in Adelaide for the next four
and a half years. in 1954, when my parents moved to the Adelaide suburb of
Grange, I finally came home, though I was still bedridden for another two years.
In 1956, I staggered off to Grange Primary school with my crutches and splint,
and attended school physically for the first time. I was in grade four, and the
teacher was Mrs Renfrey.
At the front
of the class room was a large up-right white plaster relief map of South
Australia, and Mrs Renfrey delighted in regaling us with stories of the early
explorers of the region, beginning with the mapping of the coast by Flinders in
the Investigator in 1802, of his meeting with Baudin at the aptly named
Encounter Bay, and later of Charles Sturt's epic journey down the river Murray
in 1829-30. This excited me, because we were living in Sturt Street, Grange. I
was even more excited though, when she told us of the spearing death of Captain
Collet Barker at the mouth of the Murray in 1831, because by now I had
rediscovered the region of my birth, and I was familiar with the isolated and
impressive 'mountain' at the edge of the Mount Lofty Ranges, which had been
named in Barker's honour. Later in 1956, we moved onto Willow Bank, the farm my
mother took possession of when her Father died, and during my early morning leak
off the elevated front verandah, 'The Mount' could be clearly
viewed.
As the years passed, and I
became interested in the Aboriginal culture of Australia, (an interest which
eventually saw me living in a remote desert community as the arts organiser in
the late 1980's) my fascination with Barker never waned. The release of the
Mount Barker Council book, The Mountain
On The Plain by Bob Schmidt in 1983 provided
some more dramatic detail of Barker's death, and got me thinking seriously about
writing his story. It was the release of a scholarly book called
The Commandant Of
Solitude however, in 1992 which really opened
up the potential for me. This book was the 'breath on the
carla'
which fanned the fire of my obsession, because
it contains the complete journals of Barker's life as the Commandant at the
remote Raffles Bay settlement on Australia's remote north coast in 1828-29, and
later at Albany on the south west of Australia. Barker supervised a small
contingent of soldiers and convicts at these settlements, and also conducted
explorations of both regions. Of particular interest to me, however, was his
enlightened attitude and rapport with the Aboriginal people of these
settlements. His excursions into the bush with his hosts, the friendships he
developed , and his interest and documentation of their culture, empathise the
tragedy of his death. The killing of Barker was no doubt caused by the
resentment of his executioners towards the sealers on Kangaroo Island, who had
constantly ill-treated them. Of course they had no knowledge of Barker's
enlightened views.
Barker died alone,
and his body was never found. My goal is to nurture the faint ember of his
existence, like the carla
of the south-west people, into the nurturing
and cleansing fires of the northern regions.
The
carla goes back to the classroom of 1956. The
fuel is the vast research I have been doing for many years. I now have to
nurture this wisp of smoke into a flame of substance. - Wish me
luck.
Posted: Sun - March 18, 2007 at 12:58 PM
