Noel Beddoe’s The Yalda Crossing

Linda Burney is the Member for Canterbury, a member of the Wiradjuri nation and the first Aboriginal Australian elected to the NSW Parliament. After the 2011 NSW election, Linda Burney was elected Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and became Shadow Minister for Planning Infrastructure and Heritage, Shadow Minister for Sport and Recreation, Shadow Minister for the Hunter and Shadow Minister for the Central Coast.  On 12 July 2012, Linda Burney launched Noel Beddoe’s The Yalda Crossing at The Sydney Institute.

NOEL BEDDOE’S THE YALDA CROSSING

LINDA BURNEY

I pay my respect to the ancient Gadigal and Wiradjuri. Let me begin by recognising country and saying how much it means to me that Noel Beddoe has invited me to launch his novel, The Yalda Crossing.

This book is about many things. One of them is truth-telling; the capacity of a place to know and own its truth brings about a common purpose and a common understanding amongst the people of that place. It is a fundamental plank to reconciliation. Can I also recognise both Gerard and Anne Henderson; the Lyons family whom I know have made an enormous effort to get here; some very significant Wiradjuri people, including Linda and Anne Coe. Can I also recognise Noel and Vivienne Beddoe, and Gilbert & Tobin partner Danny Gilbert. But in particular the Wiradjuri women that are here. It’s a great honour just to be and speak in front of you.

I have known Noel and his family for many years. I admire him enormously and our friendship and professional respect for each other has endured distance, time, changes of professions, personal and family challenges and the ups and downs of politics. Can I also pay my deep respect to the peoples that this book is about.

It is difficult to know where to start to talk about The Yalda Crossing. Perhaps I should begin by describing how I approached reading this book. The author’s note tells us it is fiction based on real events, and is about the second Wiradjuri war, which occurred between 1836 and 1842. With the terrible culmination on Murdering Island, on the Murrumbidgee River, where 70 people were killed. Firstly, I read the pages one through to 220. Then, when I got to chapter 22, titled “Young James’ Record of the Second Wiradjuri War”, I could not continue, and then I went to page 264, when “young James” walks back into Yalda waters after many years. I then left the book sit beside my bed for some time, not wanting to read about the terrible deed we knew was waiting inside those covers. Last Sunday afternoon, my house was still. So, I read the part that I’d not been able to. I did not read it once, but twice, and some parts of it three times.

Why did I read the book in that order? I, like a number of other aboriginal people here this evening, am Wiradjuri, including my friend Linette Riley. The events being described were real events, and they happened to our ancestors, our relatives. The Yalda crossing was not just about another novel. I knew the country where this novel was set; I swam in that river as a child, as I know some of you did as well. Our country, Wiradjuri territory, is bound by three rivers – the Lachlan, the Macquarie, and the Murrumbidgee. In our language, they are the Kalare, the Wambool and the Murrumbidjeri. I am from the Murrumbidgee end of the Wiradjuri territory.

It is the individual actions of little Sean and Young James in this part of The Yalda Crossing that speak to me most powerfully, the loudest in the whole book. But I will come to that. Noel Beddoe has penned this book magnificently. You can hear and feel the firebird whinny and stamp when James and his father go to the O’Dowds’ property to buy the horses.

You can feel the cold in the attic where young James Beckett reads and re-lives his life after the chance encounter on a stairwell at the queue on that misty, rainy day. You can feel the love grow, and the need for softness by James, for Harriet, from Harriet, his father’s partner. Young James’ description of Harriet captures that; he says of her, “And I see her turn to me in just a moment and look at me, and my heart comes to my mouth. She’s lovely.” But, most of all, you can smell the bush and hear the birds. This description I loved:

Birds were awake and calling. They heard the scoffing of the laugh of the kookaburras, the screeching of the parrot. They can see the splotched shape of trees, deeper shadows and a spread-out stain of the surface of the billabong. You could imagine the magical laughter of the Wiradjuri children. Most significantly, you felt the wrath and the embrace of the land at the same time.

Of course, it is the land, and the conflict over land use, and how ownership of land is perceived, that brings us to that terrible event on Harriet’s Island – an island young James Beckett mapped and named in the book. And, of course, we know it as Murdering Island. For me, The Yalda Crossing is about human relationships and the consequences of the choices we make as individuals. And, of course, at its heart, it is about the violence of frontier life. Not just about, between black and white relationships, but all relationships. The descriptions of one death in this book of a white man graphically demonstrates this. I won’t read it all, but let me read some of it:

He fired, and the smash of the detonation rolled across the grasslands. Young James looked at what happened to the convict’s skull and went to Webb’s log and sat on it. He looked at his boots. Blood had splashed across them, and thin slivers and skull-bone, threads of brain matter from the brain. In a moment he heard another shot. He reached forward and vomited, and vomited again.

There are great moments of tenderness and friendship in The Yalda Crossing. The grudging acknowledgment by the captain towards his son, young James; the love between the Captain and Harriet, and between young James and Harriet; the relationship between Lancaster the scout and young James, but, importantly, the relationship that rose between young James and the local Wiradjuri.

Over the time, I have spoken and written myself about qualities that I believe make a good person, the qualities that a person people look to and believe in. One of those qualities is grace.

So much of Noel Beddoe’s The Yalda Crossing is about grace, the pursuit of grace. There is a description in the book of what grace is – it is young James talking to the scout. He said: “It means living without fear or anger. Finding that you have enough, but it may be very little. Loving without envy. I think it means being calm about life, turning to others with generosity and kindness. I think the Wiradjuri have come to grace.” Ominously, the scout then says: “So they may have, as long as they are left alone.” And therein lies the tragedy that was only ever going to end one way.

Can I come to the moment in this book that caused me to stop reading for a moment. The hunting party had been put together. The captain had divided the men into groups and given them their instructions, and each man had a decision to make. Would they go or not? The very big question is, what would young James do? I will not tell you what he does, but I will tell you what another man decides. It’s the character that we meet very early in the book, a very young, angry Irishman called little Sean and Noel writes that he says: “I’ll not do as you’ve directed” adding “He was big and still in the moonlight. My father moved his shoulders as if to say, we all have our decisions. You’ll make yours.” Then, little Sean says: “I’ll face any man to hold what’s mine. But what you will do will destroy my soul, which means more than the land.”

As a person that holds public office, this struck me deeply. The human condition is a complex thing. I was reminded of a workshop I’d participated in run by Simon Longstaff from the St James Ethics Centre. Simon showed some footage from an American documentary about a terrible war crime committed by the Americans in Vietnam. It interviewed some of the soldiers who participated. One soldier said no. His ethics would not allow it. But it also showed the long-term effects on those that did. When they were asked why, they said we did not raise our voices at the time; it seemed like the thing to do. And, they will never find grace. The point I make is that decisions that we make today will travel with us forever.

Let me conclude by making a couple of points. On the front cover of The Yalda Crossing, Ross Fitzgerald described it as “compelling and important”. And yes, Ross, it is. The Yalda Crossing is also wonderfully penned. The last conversation between young James Beckett and Lancaster, on why we loved children, is deeply memorable. They talk about children that live near Lancaster’s house. He doesn’t know them, but he loves them. They come to the conclusion that we love children because they have done no evil, and can’t imagine evil being done.

The University of Queensland Press have made a fine decision to publish this book. And, Noel Beddoe, you have done much more than a fine job in writing it. I can only conclude by saying that in Noel’s book he depicts the spirit bird of the Wiradjuri as being the Jiri-Jiri. The Jiri-Jiri keep them to their laws and have lives of dignity and grace. Noel Beddoe, the Jiri-Jiri must sing around you as well. It gives me the greatest pleasure to launch The Yalda Crossing, by Noel Beddoe, published by Queensland University Press. A dear friend indeed.