A Waltz for Matilda (54 page)

I have never tried it again, partly because it did scare me a little, but also because if it didn’t work I’d look stupid, standing
stock-still trying to become a tree. Like everything from making a good cake to the five-times table, I expect turning invisible needs practice.

The ways of looking at the land to tell if there will be rain, or good grass, or bushfire, are just a few of the many strategies those who live with the land and watch it can use to tell what will happen — anywhere from tomorrow to two or even more years’ time. I only know the signs that the land where I live tells me. These will be different in other areas. As I have said before, while this is a book about all of Australia, the land in the book is the land where I live. We are a small nation, but a very big country, made up of many regions, each with its own weather, climate and lore.

The methods of treating fly strike and other sheep instructions in this book are those of the 1890s.
Do not use them
— they can be dangerous for both sheep and humans.

Old recipes for fruitcakes and puddings tell you to take the seeds out of the raisins. These days most raisins have the seeds removed or they are from newer varieties of fruit that have small seeds. But old raisins had big seeds, almost like apple pips, and if the seeds weren’t taken out you had to spit them out, which was bad manners.

There was no such league, though there were temperance leagues and women’s suffrage leagues, and very often they would have the same members. For convenience I have joined them in this book.

These days many people drink alcohol without drinking too much or too often. But back in the 1800s drunkenness was not just common but the norm for many men after work. Many, perhaps most, shearers drank their entire pay cheque then moved onto another shed where they would have board and lodging till they could have another ‘bender’. In the days when few women had the chance of a paying job, families suffered extreme hardship and frequent violence from men’s alcoholism.

The Temperance Movement didn’t want people to stop enjoying themselves. They helped women feed and educate their families, fought for the vote for women and for equal rights for Aboriginal Australians. My paternal grandmother, Jean MacPherson French, was a member of one such league, and fought diligently for the right of Aboriginal Australians to vote and to be counted in the census. It was her phrase that I have borrowed, spoken after a visit to an Aboriginal comrade’s home: ‘It was spotlessly clean! Spotless!’ There was no greater compliment my grandmother could pay … except perhaps when she spoke of Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal people to say: ‘Australia has finally found its Robbie Burns.’ I wish that she — and the other women who gave me so much — could have read this book.

Many characters in this book die. This is what happened a hundred years ago — people died more often, and younger, than
they do now in Australia. Women and children were especially vulnerable, with no antibiotics, no vaccination for polio, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and other great killers, and poor medical hygiene in childbirth.

Hey You would have been part dingo, part cattle dog. The Australian cattle dog (also called the Queensland heeler, or the red or blue heeler) was recognised as a separate breed by 1890. Its ancestors include the dingo, an English herding breed called the Smithfield and the smooth-coated Blue Merle collie.

This song, ‘The Song of the Union Man’, comes from
Shearers’ Record Newspaper,
January 1890, as recorded in
Sydney Folklore
— Section 2: Labour History.

Henry Lawson spent little time ‘out bush’, but his poems and stories described the bush as it really was, unlike other romantic stories made up about it. There are many phrases in this book that are used in homage to his work, from Mrs Heenan being ‘past caring’ to ‘Grinder’s Alley’.

Matilda would have assumed that there was only one Chinese language. Chinese migrants to Australia in the 1800s came from
many areas and used several languages. Two of these are used in this book, assuming that Mr Ah Ching and Mr Doo’s family came from different regions of China.

My grateful thanks to a dear friend, for providing the words in the text that a Chinese man might have used in Australia in the 1890s, and the information about the bow that Matilda makes in chapter one. If I have used them in the wrong context the mistakes are mine, not hers.

Note:
These are not as the words would be used or spelled these days, but are from 1890 or even earlier.

Qing An: a suitable greeting from a young girl to an older man

Duo xie: words of thanks

Gai ri zai lai, qing zou hao: ‘Come back some day and take care on your way home, please’

Once more, I apologise for the racist terms used and assumptions made by some of the characters in this book. There is no way to show the rural Australia of the 1890s — or the effects of that racism — without them. If anything, I have enormously softened both the racist language and the racist assumptions likely to have been made — much of which I remember from my own childhood, decades later.

Several readers have questioned the phrase ‘just one buck’ used by the Drinkwater boys to describe killing an Aboriginal man. I have heard the word — and ‘doe’ for a woman — used several times, including once by ex-Prime Minister Mr Malcolm Fraser, when he was interviewed about the often deadly racism that horrified him in his youth and helped convince him to work to combat it.

Aboriginal men, women and children were still being hunted out of farming areas in the 1890s, often in retaliation for eating the sheep or cattle that were taking the place of the native animals that had once grazed those same lands. The false accusation that ‘natives’ were cannibals was a common one in the 1890s.

Aboriginal men, such as Peter and Michael Sampson in this book, even had to lie about their heritage to join the army. It wasn’t until 1917, when the army was desperate for men, that Aboriginal Australians were allowed to openly join up.

To say ‘I am proud to be Australian’ in no way describes the depth of love and identification I have for this land. But it is worth remembering that our country united to become one nation partly to keep out those who weren’t white English speakers, and that the religious freedom mentioned in our constitution was meant to ensure that Irish Catholics were free to worship, rather than the many religions of today’s Australia.

Our constitution has changed since Federation — notably in order to give women the vote. Our nation has changed too. But we can still perhaps understand it better if we know where we have come from. The past is not always comfortable, but it is part of who we are.

The song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ arose from a collaboration between A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, who wrote the poem in 1895, and Christina Macpherson, who was responsible for the earliest version of the music.

Over the years, a number of different versions of the song have been sung and recorded. The National Library of Australia refers to three versions, one being Paterson’s and another being the arrangement by Marie Cowan in 1903. We cannot be certain whether Cowan obtained the original version directly from Paterson, or whether she heard it sung and transcribed it.

However she came to write it, it is Cowan’s version that most of us recognise, and which is sometimes referred to as the ‘popular version’.

Readers interested in more information on this most famous of all Australia’s ‘bush poems’ can go to the National Library of Australia website: www.nla.gov.au/epubs/waltzingmatilda

A Waltz for Matilda
could not have been written without the wisdom of seven generations of women, some only slightly disguised in this book. My great-grandmother Emily Sheldon, great-great-aunt Nin Edwards, grandmothers Thelma Edwards and Jean MacPherson, and mother, Val French, are the women of the Temperance and Suffrage League, who fought — and in my mother’s case still fights — for their ideals. The women of our family tend to be long lived, and pass on their stories — and their passions — to many generations.

Auntie Love is many women, some of whose names I don’t know or don’t have permission to give, but who include Oodgeroo of the Noonuccal people (I knew her as Kath Walker), Maureen Watson and the others who tried to pass on to rootless city kids a sense of land and of belonging, as well as Neeta Davis and Jean Hobbins. Miss Thrush and Gillian Pauli have nothing in common except the dedication and generosity they gave to their students. I suspect that Peg Job and Virginia Hooker — both of whom listen tolerantly to the latest historical obsession
for at least an hour more than politeness and friendship require — are somewhere in this book too. The young Matilda owes much to tens of thousands of letters from young people. Young people — like Matilda — often see the world with a clarity that adults are too preoccupied to remember.

A Waltz for Matilda
has also been blessed with the ‘two Kates’ — Kate O’Donnell, who began the work on this manuscript, and left for the birth of her bonny boy, Clem, and Kate Burnitt, who took over in a seamless transition, checking and rechecking every phrase, making sure that the vision in my mind’s eye was intelligible for the reader. Liz Kemp brought the brilliance of her insight to the first draft of this book. I am a far better writer for knowing that Liz, with her critic’s eye, will read the manuscript.

This book is also partly the vision of two other exceptional women: HarperCollins associate publisher Lisa Berryman, and friend (and volunteer editorial advisor) Noël Pratt. Lisa is the rock of my professional life; Noël is the rock of friendship, wisdom and generosity. This book owes more to Lisa and Noël than I can express.

Jackie French
is a full-time writer and wombat negotiator. Jackie writes fiction and non-fiction for all ages, and has columns in the print media. Jackie is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular children’s authors. She writes across all genres — from picture books, humour and history to science fiction.

Historical
Somewhere Around the Corner • Dancing with Ben Hall
Soldier on the Hill • Daughter of the Regiment
Hitler’s Daughter • Lady Dance • The White Ship
How the Finnegans Saved the Ship • Valley of Gold
Tom Appleby, Convict Boy
They Came on Viking Ships • Macbeth and Son
Pharaoh • The Goat who Sailed the World
The Dog who Loved a Queen • A Rose for the Anzac Boys
The Donkey who Carried the Wounded
The Horse who Bit a Bushranger • Oracle
The Night They Stormed Eureka

Fiction
Rain Stones • Walking the Boundaries • The Secret Beach
Summerland • Beyond the Boundaries
A Wombat Named Bosco • The Book of Unicorns
The Warrior – The Story of a Wombat
Tajore Arkle • Missing You, Love Sara
Dark Wind Blowing
Ride the Wild Wind: The Golden Pony and Other Stories

Non-fiction
Seasons of Content
How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri
Invaded My Maths Class and Turned Me into a Writer
How to Guzzle Your Garden • The Book of Challenges
Stamp, Stomp, Whomp
The Fascinating History of Your Lunch
Big Burps, Bare Bums and Other Bad-Mannered Blunders
To the Moon and Back • Rocket Your Child into Reading
The Secret World of Wombats
How High Can a Kangaroo Hop?

Outlands Trilogy
In the Blood • Blood Moon • Flesh and Blood

School for Heroes
Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior
Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs

Wacky Families Series
1. My Dog the Dinosaur • 2. My Mum the Pirate
3. My Dad the Dragon • 4. My Uncle Gus the Garden Gnome
5. My Uncle Wal the Werewolf • 6. My Gran the Gorilla
7. My Auntie Chook the Vampire Chicken
8. My Pa the Polar Bear

Phredde Series
1. A Phaery Named Phredde
2. Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce
3. Phredde and the Zombie Librarian
4. Phredde and the Temple of Gloom
5. Phredde and the Leopard-Skin Librarian
6. Phredde and the Purple Pyramid
7. Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team
8. Phredde and the Ghostly Underpants

Picture Books
Diary of a Wombat (with Bruce Whatley)
Pete the Sheep (with Bruce Whatley)
Josephine Wants to Dance (with Bruce Whatley)
The Shaggy Gully Times (with Bruce Whatley)
Emily and the Big Bad Bunyip (with Bruce Whatley)
Baby Wombat’s Week (with Bruce Whatley)
Queen Victoria’s Underpants (with Bruce Whatley)
The Tomorrow Book (with Sue deGennaro)