ME: [Speaks Yawuru]. Can everyone hear me? Yeah. My bugarrigarra, my story is about traveling to Broome in the early eighties. I would’ve been about eight, nine years old. I grew up in Derby, but I got family on both sides. My mum and dad’s from here. So my grandfather, Tommy Edgar, was a very cultural man. And every weekend, or not every weekend, every this time, every year, Barrgana season, I used to, no, he used to come and pick us up.  

Why? Because we used to see the wiyawiya flying everywhere, the dragonflies, and we could feel the cold. So I knew grandfather was coming to pick us up from here. So, there was one year he came to Derby and I knew he was coming because like I said, it was cold. Then he come pull up in our old house, on stilts back in those days, and he come pull up in an old Ford and we was coming back after school that time. And he said, come on, come on kids. Pack your bags, me and my sister. Let’s go to Broome. And we got happy me and my sister, we didn’t even bother about even telling mum and dad. We just said, come on, let’s just get our stuff, let’s chuck it in. Let’s chuck it in the car. Let’s go, let’s get out of here. This is our time for having fun, ‘cause we knew that our grandfather always used to go fishing everywhere.  

So anyway, we jumped in the car. And back in the days, back in the eighties, the roads weren’t as good as today. They were really narrow. Every time we passed trucks and cars, we had to go off on a dirt track. And when we arrived at the Roadhouse back in the eighties, there was only one Roadhouse and that was the Derby Roadhouse. And that road Roadhouse wasn’t big. And we didn’t have luxury back then, so that roadhouse was more like a domestic house, like a lounge really. So, grandfather told us, go on, go in there and get your drinks. And probably just a couple of little lollies. ‘Cause back then it was only sarsaparilla. I don’t know if any of you remember the cool drinks sarsaparilla and ginger beer? But yeah, that’s all we had. But anyway, we had to get all our cool drinks and whatever and then jump back in the car.

And it wasn’t like we had the luxury of traveling, you know, about two and a half hours. It was like six, seven hours just to get to Broome. And we didn’t travel straight through. It was like, we pulled up halfway to Nillibubbica, and grandfather said, come on, help me get all the stuff out. We are having tea now, we are having billy on the fire now. And I’ll go get goanna. So anyway, he’d make the fire, put the billy on, make the damper. He was that good, being a man, making damper. He made damper and made the fire there for us to have a cup of tea while he told us to wait there. Wait, now I’m just going over here. And he come back, he come back with this big jalingardi, goanna. Anyway, he cut that up, got it already in the fire.

And we were still waiting, waiting, waiting for a feed. And he said, no, wait, wait, I just gotta do something else. So I watched him from the old car there, the Ford there. And, and I was watching him and he, and he walked in the back and he picked up his little tomahawk and he walked towards the trees, big trees. And I seen him maxing this tree, you know, that really axing. And when I looked, he, and I said, oh, he’s holding something. And then he said, quickly, go back and get a bucket in the back of the boot. So I quickly ran and I come back, I come back and he said, quickly, quickly put it underneath. And you wouldn’t believe, he just held that broken big branch. Guess what came out? Pure, beautiful honey just come, just piling into that bucket.

So it was heaps of honey. So we had honey and damper, we had jalingardi, um, goana, and we had our little cool drinks and probably little lollies, but that’s all we had. We didn’t have the luxury like today. Oh, we can get all these beautiful foods and all these drinks today. But yeah, anyway, on we went, we jumped in after all that had our lunch. And then that, that took about probably an hour, an hour and a bit to two hours, then probably another, another three to four hours getting, getting to Broome. But anyway, we knew it was getting closer to Broome. ‘Cause you know why? ‘Cause we remembered the Shinju Sammy, the Shinju sign there coming up, it was on Cable Beach Hill then. Now they don’t even hardly show it anymore. But that’s how we used to know when we are coming up for Broome, they used to have that Shinju sign there.

They don’t show that anymore. But anyway, as we came into Broome, we knew we was getting excited. Oh yeah, we coming into Broome. So anyway, we seen all these people. And Broome is, Broome was really multicultural back then, and beautiful people, families used to mix in together. You could smell the fire or people cooking in their backyards, you know, it either gotta be cockels, or [speaks Yawuru], you know, Lee Shells. We was coming into Broome and coming into my grandmother’s place. And in this old stilt houses where today, there’s a lot of flats on that area right now. And that’s near the airport area. Now my grandfather, my grandmother and grandfather used to live there and there was only four big backyards. And all in them backyards people used to cook a lot of oysters and cockle shells, Broome used to be plentiful. So anyway, every time we used to come and we pulled up, me and my sister and my grandfather, and we could smell this aroma, you know, of cooking. It smells like fish, fish and stingray and cockles and crabs, you know, that must be grandmother outside cooking up a big feed. But anyway, we waited for that. And when we pulled up, you know, it was, oh, we had heaps of feed.  

And then the next day Gran said, come on now, you just gotta have a sleep now, tomorrow’s a big day. So anyway, at this time now last year, I mean this time, but, uh, those, back in those days, we had to get up early, chuck everything in the car, then straight to Blackberry Tree, which is off Crab Creek.

A lot of our people used to go and sit down there. But anyway, we went there in the morning and tide was coming in and we caught heaps of salmon. Blackberry Tree was really rich back then. It wasn’t like today, too many boats today. You could go there and you could just almost throw a line and get a bite straight away. But it’s not the same like before. But anyway, we went fishing that day. A tide was coming in and Gran caught, a lot of salmon and bluebone that day. And we waited, then we waited for tide to go out.  

And then me and my grandfather, Tommy Edgar, we followed the tide right out. And you wouldn’t believe, he made me, I was only about eight, nine years old at that time. And you wouldn’t believe, he made me walk that distance. As you see, the tides now today followed right out to the edge. And you wouldn’t believe he made me carry hessian bags full of fish. And we used to catch heaps out there.  

So we’d, we’d be walking back, you know, come on, my grandfather say, come on, we need to move now. That tide is, you can feel that wind on one side of your body? And I said, yeah, I can feel it on the other side. Well, come on, we have to move now. This tide is coming in. So anyway, it was like this, we started walking back this kind of day now, and it took us a while to walk back up to Blackberry Tree from being right out there. And I started to get worried as a little girl, you know, hang on, it’s getting dark, I can’t see.

And grandfather said, it’s okay, just, just follow that fire up there. It was pitch black. Just follow that fire. That’s your grandmother cooking feed up there. But Broome is different now for fishing. It’s not plentiful like before, like it used to be really rich in Blackberry Tree and Crab Creek for cockles. I mean, families used to go walking out there and heaps of ’em. And families used to, you’d always smell that Cockles cooking in the fire in Broome. So anyway, that’s my story. And Broome has changed over the years, but our culture will always be the same. So, thank you.