‘That’ll be nine dollars each.’
‘Quiet here today,’ Chrissie commented as I paid him.
‘Don’t get many tourists out here in the heat this time a’ year.’
‘I bet. This is my friend Celaeno. She’s got a pic she wants to show you.’ Chrissie nudged me and I pulled out the photograph and gave it to the man. He glanced at it, then his eyes swept over me.
‘Namatjira. How did you come by this pic?’
‘It was sent to me.’
‘Who from?’
‘A lawyer’s office in Adelaide. They’re in the process of tracing the original sender for me as I’m trying to find my birth family.’
‘I see. So, what ya wanna know?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said, feeling like I was a fraud or something. Maybe the guy faced possible ‘relatives’ of Namatjira here every day.
‘She was adopted when she was a baby,’ put in Chrissie.
‘Right.’
‘My dad died a few months ago, and he told me I’d been left some money,’ I explained. ‘When I went to see his Swiss lawyer, that photograph was in the envelope he gave me. I decided I should come here to Australia and find out who’d sent me the picture. I spoke to the lawyer in Adelaide, but I’d no idea who Namatjira was, hadn’t ever even heard of him before and—’ I rambled on until Chrissie put a hand on my arm and took over.
‘CeCe’s basically come here ’cos I recognised Namatjira in the picture. She thinks it might be a clue to who her parents originally were.’
The man studied the photograph again.
‘It’s definitely Namatjira, and I’d say the pic was taken at Heavitree Gap, sometime in the mid-1940s, when Albert got his pickup truck. As ta who the boy is standing next to him, I dunno.’
‘Well, why don’t me and Cee take a look around the place?’ suggested Chrissie. ‘Maybe you could have a think. D’you have archives here?’
‘We have ledgers of every baby that was born here or brought to us at the mission. And a crate load of black an’ white pictures like that.’ The man pointed to my photo. ‘It would take me days ta go through them, though.’
‘No pressure, mister. We’ll just go take a look around.’ Chrissie shepherded me past a postcard stack and a fridge full of cold drinks to the sign that proclaimed the entrance to the museum. We walked down another dusty path and found ourselves out in a large open space, surrounded by what was a vague L-shape of white huts.
‘Right, let’s start in the chapel.’ Chrissie pointed to the building.
We wandered across the red earth and stepped inside the tiny chapel with rickety benches acting as pews, and a large picture of Christ on the cross hanging over the pulpit.
‘So, this guy called Carl Strehlow came to this mission to try to get the Aboriginals to turn to Christianity.’ Chrissie read the words on the information board out loud. ‘He arrived from Germany with his family in 1894. It started out just like a regular Christian mission, but then he and the next pastor became fascinated with the local Arrernte culture and traditions,’ Chrissie explained while I stared at rows of dark faces in the pictures, all dressed in white.
‘Who are the Arrernte?’
‘The local Aboriginal mob.’
‘Do they still live around here?’ I queried.
‘Yeah, in fact, it says that in 1982 the land was officially returned to them, so Hermannsburg now belongs to the traditional owners.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, it’s awesome. Come on, let’s go see the rest.’
A long building with a tin roof turned out to be a schoolhouse that still had words and pictures scrawled on the blackboard. ‘It also says here that no half-caste Aboriginal was ever brought here by force by the Protectorate. Everyone came and went of their own free will.’
‘But were they actually made to become Christians?’
‘It doesn’t exactly say that because they’d all have had to attend services and Bible readings, but apparently the pastors turned a blind eye if they wanted to celebrate their own culture.’
‘So actually, they believed – or pretended to – in two different religions?’
‘Yup. A bit like me,’ grinned Chrissie. ‘And all the rest of our mob in Oz. Come on, let’s go and have a sticky-beak at Namatjira’s hut.’
The hut comprised of a few basic concrete rooms, and I recognised Namatjira’s face in a picture on the mantelpiece. He was a big man with strong, heavy features, grinning and squinting in the sun, standing next to a demure woman in a headscarf.
‘“Albert and Rosie”,’ I read. ‘Who was Rosie?’
‘His wife. Her given name was Rubina. They had nine children, although four of them died before Albert did.’
‘I can’t believe they needed a fire in this heat,’ I said, pointing at the fireplace in the photo.
‘Trust me, it gets pretty cold at night in the Never Never.’
A painting on the wall caught my eye and I went to study it.
‘Is this by Namatjira himself?’ I asked Chrissie.
‘It says it is, yeah.’
I stared at it, fascinated, for, rather than looking like a typical Aboriginal painting, this was a beautifully formed watercolour landscape with a white ghost gum tree to one side of it, then gorgeously soft colours depicting a vista that was backed by the purple MacDonnell Ranges. It reminded me of an impressionist painting and I wondered how and where this man who had grown up in the middle of nowhere – Aboriginal by birth, Christian in life – had found his particular style.
‘Not what you were expecting?’ Chrissie stood next to me.
‘No, because most of the Aboriginal art we saw in town was traditional dot paintings.’
‘Namatjira was taught by a white painter called Rex Battarbee, who was influenced by the Impressionists and came out here to paint the scenery. Albert learnt how to paint watercolours from him.’
‘Wow, I’m impressed. You know your stuff, don’t you?’
‘Only ’cos I’m interested. I told you that art – especially Namatjira’s – is a passion of mine.’
As I followed her out of the hut, I thought how art had been a passion of mine too, but recently it had got lost somewhere along the way. I realised that I really wanted it back.
‘I need the toilet,’ I said as we went back out into the glaring heat of the day.
‘The dunny’s over there,’ Chrissie pointed. I walked across the courtyard towards it and saw an illustrated sign hung outside on the door.
SNAKES LIKE WATER! KEEP THE LIDS DOWN!
I had the quickest pee of my life and bolted back outside, feeling sweatier than when I’d gone in.
‘We should make a move,’ said Chrissie. ‘Let’s go and grab some water for the journey back.’
Inside the hut that comprised the ticket office and gift shop, Chrissie and I went to the till to pay.
‘You got that photo, miss?’ said the man we’d met on the way in. ‘Reckon I could show it to one of the elders. They’re due here for our monthly meeting tomorra night. They might recognise the boy Namatjira’s standing next ta. The eldest is ninety-six and as sharp as a tack. Brought up here, he was.’