NUMBATS AND WANDOO TREES

When I came once a month for the board meeting, I decided to tell a story and teach basic reading and writing in the morning before the other members arrived. It wasn’t to be schoolwork. Only those who wanted to would come. I told an ancient Greek fable in verse. The kids tried to copy some words down from the black board or went over already written words, but Jay left and sat outside and wrote. The board members arrived with a representative of the Department of Family, Youth and Community Services. Jay had sellotaped her writing on the big white fridge. It stood out.

A FABLE

It was some time after she had learned basic bee keeping that she decided not to wear gloves and veil. Walking naked among the hives she felt the warm whirring of wings as the hairy pollen laden bees returned. She lifted the woven reed cone & saw the industrious myriads of geometricians. She was not stung. She put her finger into the sweet ooze at the wax lip, and dabbed her breasts. She walked back thru the high grass fields, pleased that the tiny creatures licked at the circle centres of her breasts.

The visitors were shocked. It was pornographic. Dennis was so pleased. He said it was not at all obscene. It was innocent and childlike. He couldn’t understand all the words, but it was beautiful. It was educated. It was about trust. She trusted nature. He said that there was nothing sexual about it. It was the opposite to the self-harm cuts on her arms. It was about enjoying life. If only she would speak. This was the first step to the end of the ‘**** you’ attitude. She’d put it on the fridge so everyone could see. Jay was exposing her heart. She wanted to share. This was her trusting us. We shouldn’t condemn her.

The departmental representative took it down and referred to the protocols. She pointed out that Dennis wasn’t a psychologist or a sociologist. He hadn’t even got Higher School Certificate. What right had he to diagnose? The place may have successes written up by Newcastle University statisticians, but all of the emphasis on daily rhythms, part-singing and bread baking, pickling, jam jarring, and organic gardening was profoundly unprofessional. The water colour therapies had no relationship to re-integration programs. Immediate implementation of Social Interactive role playing, was a legal requirement. Jay’s pornography showed perversion was behaviourly reinforced. Dennis wasn’t hurt by that. He humbly said, “I’m not clever like all yous. But the most important thing in life is to understand each other, and live with yourself. All of these kids have a sort of hole in the middle of them. I want them to be creative in life. Yous lot from the Department haven’t seen the ex-marujuana smokers. None of them are dirty. And yet the shared spit of spliffs handed round encourages personal dirtiness. And all the participants are clean not because of the rules, but because they are becoming social. The speed takers learn to be calm inside when working with bread dough. The heroin users always think we are idiots as we work and not survive like them on big money deals. The cokeheads are always a bit cold and arrogant because their minds are clever while their eyes and ears are dull. These can awake up to joy that isn’t sexual, painting colour washes, one colour over the other. This

is all hard to explain. You either see it or you don’t. The kids do.” The official replied that rules must be set and obeyed. I tried to defend Dennis. “He’s talking about morality. You are talking about rules. Should we be citizens because we obey the law through fear of punishment and because it is the law? Or should we not commit crimes because we sense the needs and rights of others.” She replied that we are dealing with juvenile criminals and shouldn’t be too precious. She brought the meeting back to Jay’s obscenity. Dennis tried to put his view.

“You object to a girl who doesn’t talk to us or others, who has just found she can express big thoughts by writing. You haven’t criticised the dead souled zombies that are sheltered in other places. You criticise a girl for coming alive! A few months ago she came to us clear of drugs but she’d been bruised by street living and prostitution. Would you have made a fuss if you’d seen her as a punk goth sitting around snarling at role playing? This writing of hers, I can’t pretend to understand it, but it shows she is alive under all of the defences. One day she’ll talk without toughness. She is really a gentle good girl who found that what she has done to survive has stopped her from surviving. I reckon she’s probably cleverer than all of us. She’ll ..”

The meeting became very quiet as participants knocked and brought in a pot of tea and warm buns. The disquiet was made worse when Jay pinned a note on the notice board. “Our cow does yoga. She chews grass and swallows, then she sicks it up into her mouth and chews it again until it is pure. Indira’s shit smells better than police state fascists.” It didn’t help the situation although I thought it was funny and laughed. The meeting began again. Dennis said, “I started this place because I’d worked in others. Perhaps I was wrong but I’d like to give it a go.”

The meeting went badly. The debts were too great to continue and the funding promised in parliament had not arrived. Denis and Josie were invited to meet the Minister. But first they had to prepare individual programs for each participant with aims and objectives and means to evaluate them in both the short and long term.

The board and the staff worked night and day. One evening when I was visiting to help with the rewriting of the submission, Jay came and spoke without swearing. “Could I read the guidelines? I’ll give them back tomorrow.” I gave her a photocopy. The next day after milking and letting out the chooks, she handed me eight neatly written pages. She sat beside me and said, “Dennis is lovely but he’s innately naive. Instead of trying to convince the stoneheads, why not make our program fit the protocols? Look at the words they use. Motivation, reinforcement, program periodic evaluation, short term evaluation, overviews, linear approaches, aims, objectives and evaluation in terms of these. Social interactiveness, stress modification, verbal transactions and behavioural contracts. We should use these words too, and write up something that makes us look like one of their places. I’ve done a few sample goes. If we don’t want to be numbats without wandoo trees, we must do what it takes to survive. Can I break rhythm and have a sleep? I’ve worked all night.” All of this was said without a curse. Of course she could go. Dennis said his eyes were hurting and watery so could I read her work out. I could see tears on his face.

He read. The submission was a good start, much better than theirs. Naturally they’d have to change the minister’s name from Mrs Alfoil, but there was now a way in.

The individual programs and assessments were a problem because of client confidentiality. Dennis thought the staff should show notes on Jay to Jay even if she couldn’t read the other assessments. She quietly sat reading. “****,” she said. “You are all kinder to me than I am to you. I’m sorry. I can’t help myself. I was trying all the time but I was a bit crazy. You guys don’t know how the world works. You don’t know how there are rules everywhere just ****ing waiting to be broken. Why hadn’t you registered Brute? He should have always had a collar and a tag. Why haven’t you got a bell on Cat to save birds? You lot wouldn’t be able to organise a **** in a brothel. You can easily restructure the program. You have nothing on Confidence Building. Why not let me write something on pets and farm animals as therapy. Cows are so ****ing huge to a city girl. Bees are dangerous until you know what’s what. Just caring for Cat helped me understand that I wasn’t the only one here. Going for a walk each afternoon with Brute was better than listening to all the ****ing holy singing. You have no idea how terrifying hens are if this is your ****ing first time with them trying to get eggs. This is me being me. But can I write it up in terms Mrs Metalfoil can evaluate? I’ve seen the

****ing stupid comments the bitch made on the work Joey did on staff meetings. They want to know about your meeting structures, not about participants being discussed. No wonder she wrote PRIVACY ISSUES all over the nonsense about staff thinking of each of us before sleeping! I’m glad you do, but think of who is reading it and write about minute taking. I’ve got to milk Indira or her titties will be blocked up. God, you lot are idiots.” When she came in from milking she asked me if I wanted back the D. H. Lawrence book I’d read on the train to Gosford, and left absent-mindedly on the table. She’d learned The SNAKE by heart, and loved the story of the MAN WHO

TEXTS FOR READING English

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March 2013

DIED. I said I thought Lawrence would have loved her creative writing. But they must all focus on the submission. We worked together.

At the meeting in the city the Minister and officials didn’t look at the paperwork. Although the stats showed the program had good results, (in fact better than recognised programs and much more cost effective if funded), the organisation needed to employ eight more staff to work shifts as house parents. They needed relief and there must be demarcation so carers couldn’t supervise laundry, and so on. She proposed that the land and the buildings be sold to an evangelical organisation for the cost of the bad debts. The philosophy which worked would be kept, and the staff retained. No bank would give them a loan. They went away and discussed it and agreed. They had no choice. The board dissolved.

Jay, saying goodbye, gave me as a gift the lawyer’s envelop with a story in it to read on the train.

FABLE

The last of the centaurs sweated, gasping in his dark cave pit at the back black recesses of the mind. He was more alone because none believed in his existence. On triangle temple tops he had been frozen in friezes in the instant of being stabbed by exalting Titans, who would later fade too into invisibility. Yet, once the heroes had all come to him in the wild places for knowledge. Why? Who knew the navigation paths of migrating birds or the mysteries of a hanging swallow’s nest in the eaves, held by spit and straw? Who knew the geometries of spider’s webs barely visible to man except on dewy mornings? Who knows how the wild cat instinctively understands how to deliver her kittens? Who knows how the kangaroo survives drought? The dumb beasts are dumb. Just that. They cannot speak to men. And they have so much to tell. So the centaurs, both wise animals AND men, were created by the mind of God, to whisper Nature’s secrets.

But the beautiful scarred centaur must die, ignored, because no one now thinks to ask questions. Perhaps it is right that man steps into the rigid stone triangle of thought? If humanity could glimpse the vast complexities of life on earth, they would grow mad with guilt. Let us leave the old centaur to pant.

A week after the sale increased funding was announced. The community became another swinging doors temporary respite facility for young people.

Twenty-three years passed. I was limping down Macquarie Street from the library when I saw a smartly dressed woman in her 40s wearing a barrister’s wig. She was striding with purpose. She approached me and said, “Are you Mr David? I’m Jeannine. Do you remember me as Jay? Do you remember the kangaroo cull? I’m now getting enough corporate briefs to cover the pro bono work, my real work, against feed lots and live animal exports.” She handed her files to her clerk and opened her wallet and showed me the photo of a seventeen year old smiling student. “My daughter Josefina,” she said. She added with pride, “She was arrested last year for protesting outside an Indonesian abattoir.”

Text and picture by David Wansbrough