Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, Wednesday, June 26, 2002


SORRY IS NOT THE ONLY WORD FOR IT


FOR old time's sake, John Gregory had thought up a special menu of such delicacies as Mimili Mains - ``freshly opened tin of curried sausages in cheesy sauce spaghetti''; and Pipalyatjara Dessert - ``freshly thawed frozen bread and margarine with live honey ants''. A nice touch for a reunion lunch with our Welsh mate Taffy who I first met on a trip with John to the Pitjantjatjara Lands in 1978 when Taffy was a school principal there. John was president of the Institute of Teachers at the time and, for his sins, now heads the renamed Australian Education Union in SA. Some people never learn. Taffy spent five years in the Pit Lands and the experience changed him, as it would. He last went back three years ago to show some overseas friends where he had lived but could not find the house. What he did find deeply distressed him - the social and physical devastation - and he could hardly speak about it over lunch. He said petrol sniffing was out of control. It was bad enough back in '78. We recalled how, on the night before John and I had arrived, a teacher aide's caravan had caught fire. The aide had grabbed the hose but whole sections were missing where the sniffers had chopped out lengths to use as petrol siphons. The caravan was gutted. A white teacher there had mentioned to me how it was easier to leave your petrol cap unlocked otherwise the sniffers would use a star dropper to put a hole in the fuel tank. Taffy, a good and decent man, always kept his petrol cap firmly secured and went around removing the jam tins of petrol attached by string to the sniffers' faces. He and his staff also used to round up the sniffers first thing, take them to school and give them something hot to eat and drink to try to keep them there. Invariably young men, they were taken out hunting and camping, or set to work dismantling and rebuilding cars ... anything to keep them away from the jam tins. Taffy had a bright idea to have the sniffers initiated as soon as they came of age instead of making them wait until last as a punishment. Once initiated, he reasoned, they came under adult tribal law and their fear of a spear through the thigh might work wonders for their bad habits. Nothing came of it, though. He never once saw a female petrol sniffer back then. Now, as we ate lunch, an inquest was under way into the deaths of three more sniffers, one of them a young mother. A man of humour and wit, Taffy has a lovely Welsh lilt to his voice, an essential part of his identity, and he can still speak the language, boy-oh. Which made it all the more wrenching when he said the kids were not taught in their own language at Pit Lands schools any more - only in English. Absolutely outrageous! Kill a language, kill a culture! Damn the government and curse the education system! Grrr. Except, as Taffy and John said, the Pitjantjatjara were the ones who wanted English to be the language of instruction. They could see plainly enough that those who were educated in English made the money and had the influence. Therefore... The Aboriginal story is always complicated.