Mutant Message Down Under (4 page)

One Saturday afternoon I went to the science museum. The tour guide was a large, expensively dressed female who was curious about the United States. We chatted and soon became good friends. One day she recommended we meet for lunch and suggested a quaint tearoom in the heart of the city that advertised fortune-tellers. I remember sitting in the shop waiting for the appearance of my friend and thinking I was always on time, so why did I seem to have an aura of magnetism that attracts friends with constantly late personalities? Closing time approached. She wasn't going to show up. I bent to pick up my purse from the floor where I had placed it forty-five minutes earlier.

A young man—tall, thin, dark-complexioned, dressed in white from sandaled feet to turbaned head—walked up to the table.

“I have time to give your reading now,” he stated in a quiet voice.

“Oh, I was waiting for a friend. But it doesn't seem she was able to make it today. I'll be back.”

“Sometimes that works out for the best,” he commented as he pulled out the chair across from me at the small round table for two. He sat down and took my hand in his. Turning it palm up, he began his reading. He didn't look at my hand; his eyes remained fixed looking into mine.

“The reason you have come to this place, not this tearoom but this continent, is destiny. There is someone here you have agreed to meet for your mutual benefit. The agreement was made before either of you were born. In fact, you chose to be born at the same instant, one on the top of the world and the other here, Down Under. The pact was made on the highest level of your eternal self. You agreed not to seek one another until fifty years had passed. It is now time. When you meet, there will be instant recognition on a soul level. That is all I can tell you.”

He stood up and walked away through the door I assumed went into the restaurant kitchen. I was speechless. Nothing he said made any sense whatsoever, but he spoke with such authority, somehow I was compelled to take it to heart.

The incident became more complicated when my friend called that evening to apologize and explain why she had not kept our luncheon appointment. She became excited when I told her what had happened, and she vowed the following day to seek the reader and receive information about her own future.

When she phoned the next time, her enthusiasm had changed to doubt. ”The tearoom has no male readers,” she told me. “They have a different person each day, but all are women. On Tuesday it was Rose, and she doesn't read palms. She reads cards. Are you sure you went to the right place?”

I knew I wasn't crazy. I have always considered fortune-telling as purely entertainment, but one thing was for certain; the young man was not an illusion. Oh well, Aussies think Yanks are flakes anyway. Besides, no one seriously considers it anything except fun, and Australia was full of fun things to do for entertainment.

T
HERE WAS
only one thing about the country I did not enjoy. It appeared to me the original people of the land, the dark-skinned natives called Aborigines, were still experiencing discrimination. They were treated much the same way as we Americans treated our native people. The land they were given to live on in the Outback is worthless sand, and the area in the northern territory is rugged cliff and scrub brush. The only reasonable area considered still their land is also designated as national parks, so they live sharing it with the tourists.

I did not see any Aborigines at social functions, nor any walking along the streets with uniformed schoolchildren. I saw none at Sunday church services, though I attended different denominations. I did not see any working as grocery clerks, handling packages at the post office, or selling goods in the department stores. I visited government offices and saw no Aboriginal employees. I couldn't find any working at gas stations or waiting on customers at the chain fast-food shops. There appeared to be few of them. They were visible in the city, performing at the tourist centers. Vacationers observed them on the Australian-owned sheep and cattle paddocks working as helpers, called Jackaroos. I was told when a rancher occasionally finds an indication that a wandering group of Aborigines have killed a sheep, he does not file charges. The natives only take what they truly need to eat, and quite frankly they are credited with supernatural powers of retaliation.

One evening I observed a group of young half-caste Aborigines in their early twenties putting petrol into cans, then inhaling it as they walked downtown. They became visibly intoxicated from the fumes. Petrol is a mixture of hydrocarbons and chemicals. I knew they were potentially destructive to bone marrow, liver, kidneys, adrenal glands, the spinal cord, and the entire central nervous system. But like everyone else on the plaza that night, I didn't do anything. I didn't say anything. I made no attempt to stop their stupid play. Later, I learned that one of those I had witnessed had died of lead toxicity and respiratory failure. I felt the loss as deeply as I would have felt burying a longtime friend. I went to the morgue and viewed the tragic remains. As someone who was spending my life trying to prevent illness, it seemed that the loss of culture and loss of personal purpose must have been contributing factors in the gambling with death. What bothered me most was that I had watched and didn't raise a finger to stop them. I questioned my new Aussie friend, Geoff. He was the owner of a large automobile dealership, my age, unmarried, and very attractive—the Robert Redford of Australia. We had been on several dates, so at one candlelit dinner following the symphony, I asked him if the citizens were aware of what was taking place. Wasn't anyone trying to help do something about it?

He said, “Yes, it is sad. But nothing can be done. You don't understand the Abos. They are primitive, wild, bush people. We have offered to educate them. Missionaries have spent years trying to convert them. In the past they were cannibals. Now they still do not want to turn loose of their customs and old beliefs. Most prefer the hardship of the desert. The Outback is hard country, but these are the world's hardest people. Those who do straddle the two cultures are rarely successful. It is true they are a dying race. Their population is declining by their own free will. They are hopelessly illiterate people with no ambition or drive for success. After two hundred years they still don't fit in. What's more, they don't try. In business they are unreliable and undependable—act like they can't tell time. Believe me, there is nothing you can do to inspire them.”

A few days went by, but never without my thinking of the dead young man. I began to discuss my concern with a woman in the health-care profession who, like myself, had a special project under way. Her work involved dealing with the elderly Aboriginal natives. She was documenting wild plants, herbs, and flowers that might scientifically be found to help prevent or treat illness. The authorities on that sort of knowledge were the bush people. Their track record for longevity and low incidence of degenerative disease spoke for itself. She confirmed that little headway had been made in any true integration of the races but was willing to help me if I wanted to try and see what difference, if any, one more person could make.

We invited twenty-two young half-breed Aborigines to a meeting. She introduced me. That evening I talked about the free enterprise system of government and discussed an organization called Junior Achievement for underprivileged inner-city youth. The goal was to find a product the group could make. I agreed to teach them how to purchase raw material, organize a workforce, make the item, market it, and get established in the business and banking community. They were interested.

At the next meeting we talked about possible projects. My grandparents lived in Iowa during my youth. I remembered Grandma pushing up the window, taking out a little adjustable screen, stretching it to the width of the window as it rested on the sill, then pulling the pane back down. It gave about a foot of screened space. The house I was living in, typical of most older suburban houses in Australia, had no screens. Air conditioning was not common in residences, so the neighbors merely lifted their windows and let the winged creatures fly in and out. There were no mosquitoes, but we did have a daily battle with flying cockroaches. I went to bed alone but often awakened to find my pillow shared by several two-inch, black, hard-shelled insects. I felt the screen would be a shield against their encroachment.

The group agreed screens were a good item to launch the business. I knew a specific couple in the United States to contact for help. He was a design engineer at a large corporation, and she was an artist. If I could explain what I needed in a letter, I knew they could create a blueprint. It arrived two weeks later. My dear elderly Aunt Nola back in Iowa offered to lend financial support to buy the initial supplies and get us rolling. We required a place to work. Garages are rare, but carports are plentiful, so we acquired one and worked in the open air.

Each young Aborigine seemed to slip naturally into their most talented position. We had a bookkeeper, someone to shop for supplies, another who took pride in perfect calculations of our running inventory. We had specialists on each segment of production, even several natural-born sales representatives. I stood back and observed the company structure forming. It was apparent that, without my input on how to do it, they mutually agreed that the person who liked to do the cleaning up, the janitoral duties, was as valuable to the overall success of the project as the people who made the final sale. Our approach was to offer the screens free for a few days on a trial basis. When we returned, if the screens had been satisfactory, the party paid us. We usually got an order for the rest of the windows on the property. I also taught them the good old American concept of asking for referrals.

Time slipped by. My days were spent working, writing training material, traveling, teaching, and lecturing. Most evenings were spent enjoying the company of the young black people. The original group remained intact. Their bank account grew steadily, and we established trust funds for each one.

On a weekend date with Geoff, I explained our project and my desire to help the young people become financially independent. Maybe they wouldn't be hired to work for companies, but they couldn't be stopped from buying one if they accumulated enough wealth. I suppose I was boasting a little about my input into their budding sense of self-worth. Geoff said, “Goodonyou, Yank.” But the next time we met he brought along some history books. Sitting on his patio overlooking the world's most beautiful harbor, I spent one Saturday afternoon reading.

History quoted Rev. George King in the
Australian Sunday Times,
on December 16, 1923, as saying, “The Aborigines of Australia constitute, no doubt, a low type in the scale of humanity. They possess no reliable traditional history of themselves, their doings, or origin; nor, if swept from the earth at the present time, would they leave behind them a single work of art as a memorial of their existence as a people; but they appear to have roamed over the vast plains of Australia at a very early period of the world's history.”

There was another more current quote from John Burless regarding the attitude of white Australia: “I'll give you something, but you haven't anything that I would want.”

Excerpts from ethnology and anthropology of the Fourteenth Congress of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science said:

Next came the history books that say an Australian Aboriginal boy becomes a man by having his penis split from scrotum to meatus by a dull stone knife, without anesthetic, without expression of pain. Adulthood is obtained while having a front tooth beaten from one's head by a holy man wielding a rock, it is having one's foreskin served as dinner to male relatives, and being sent into the desert alone, terrified and bleeding, to prove one can survive. History also says they were cannibals and that the women sometimes ate their own babies, relishing the most tender parts. One story in the book tells of two brothers: The younger one stabbed his older brother in a dispute over a woman. After amputating his own gangrened leg, the older brother blinded the younger one, and they lived happily ever after. One walked along on a kangaroo prosthesis, leading the other at the end of a long pole. The information was gruesome, but the most impossible to comprehend was a government information pamphlet about the primitive surgery that states the Aborigines fortunately have a less-than-human threshold of pain.

My project companions were not savages. If anything they were comparable to the disadvantaged youth at home. They lived in isolated sections of the community; over half the families were on the dole. It appeared to me they had settled for a life of secondhand Levis, a tin of hot beer, and one individual every few years who made it big.

The following Monday, back with the screen-making project, I realized I was witnessing genuine noncompetitive support, alien to my business world. It was truly refreshing.

I asked the young employees about their heritage. They told me tribal significance had been lost long ago. A few remembered grandparents telling about life when the Aboriginal race alone inhabited the continent. Then there were tribes of saltwater people, and Emu people, among others; but quite truthfully, they did not want to be reminded of their dark skin and the difference it represented. They hoped to marry someone of lighter color and eventually for their children to blend in.

Our company was by all standards very successful, so I was not surprised one day when I received a phone call inviting me to a meeting that was being held by a tribe of Aborigines across the continent. The call implied it was not just a meeting, it was
my
meeting. “Please make arrangements to attend,” the native voice requested.

I went shopping for new clothes, purchased a round-trip flight, and made hotel reservations. I told the people I was working with that I would be gone for a while and explained the unique summons. I shared my excitement with Geoff, my landlady, and in a letter to my daughter. It was an honor that people so far away had heard of our project and wanted to express their appreciation.

“Transportation from the hotel to the meeting will be provided,” I was told. They were to pick me up at noon. Obviously that meant it was an award luncheon. I wondered what sort of menu would be served.

Well, Ooota had been there promptly at twelve o'clock, but the question of what Aborigines serve for food still remained unanswered.