Conversations

00:00 At a rural picnic spot in the dark, a young man suddenly disappears. 00:04 You could nearly say an alien took him away because he's just vanished. 00:08 When more clues from that night surface, something doesn't sit right. It's nonsensical where the stuff is. It's been scattered. I'm Rob Bergen. Join me as I investigate what became of Jack in the new season of Unravel. Is it a murder? Is it someone just gone missing? You know where my son is. Search for the Unravel podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. 00:32 This is an ABC podcast. 00:34 Today, in the 50th anniversary of NAIDOC week, I wanted to bring you my conversation with Dr Anita Heiss. 00:41 Anita is a Wiradjuri woman who grew up in Matreville, which is a working class suburb in Sydney near Botany Bay. Today, Anita lives in Brisbane. She spent much of her life pushing quite successfully against people's expectations of the kind of woman that some people think she ought to be. 01:00 She's described herself as a concrete Koori with Westfield dreaming. 01:05 The traditional lands of her people are in central west New South Wales in the Bathurst region. 01:11 This land was isolated from the British settlers who came over with the first fleet until 1814 when a road was built over the Blue Mountains and the town of Bathurst was founded. 01:25 Contact between the Wiradjuri people and the first few British settlers was, at first, reasonably friendly. 01:32 But the local people were eventually violently evicted from their lands to make way for sheep and cattle stations. 01:40 This marked the start of the Bathurst War, a frontier war between the Wiradjuri and the British. 01:49 The most famous of the Aboriginal leaders at the time was a warrior named Wyndredyne, whom the British called Saturday, because that was the day when most of his raids took place. 02:02 Anita's written a novel which is an epic historical fiction rooted in those events, and Wyndredyne is at the heart of it. 02:11 It's also a love story that has to hold its lovers together in an upended world. 02:17 Anita Heise's book is called Direya Awata. 02:21 Hello. 02:22 It's lovely to have you back. 02:22 Thank you very much. 02:24 A concrete query with Westfield dreaming. Now, I think I know what that means. What does that mean to you? 02:29 Well, it just means I embrace my urbanity. It's meant to be funny. It's satirical. People don't need to be offended or be upset or think too seriously about that. And it was something I coined probably that million years ago when we first spoke. So it's something that was used when I was much, much younger. 02:46 Heiss is a very European name. It's your dad's name. Tell me about your dad. 02:50 Yeah, my dad, Joseph Heiss, so Heiss means hot in German, so I'm never changing my surname because when I go into classes and teachers say to me, oh, would you like the students to call you, Aunty Nita? And I go, well, Aunty Nita, Dr. Hot, whatever. Lady hotness, perhaps. You know, Professor Hot, Prof. Hot. 03:09 My father was born... 03:11 In a little country town called St. Michael in the Lunga in Salzburg, the base of the Kutchberg Mountain in 1936. 03:19 And in his late teens, I think he was 20 when he got an assisted passage out to Australia on a ship. and met my mum at a party in Pagewood. He couldn't even speak English then. He was a carpenter by trade. And to get jobs back then, he would have to knock up, for example, a little stool, a little milking stool, because he went to Tasmania for two years to pay off his fare. And he'd have to knock up a stool to prove his handiwork. And then he comes back to Sydney. He's living in Pagewood with other Austrians. People I grew up with that we regard as family and met mum and, you know, she just giggled because he was speaking in German or an Austrian dialect, which I will say my mum now speaks. 04:01 And he stalked my mum back in the early 60s. 04:05 In a charming way. 04:06 Well, in those days it was called courting. However, like I talked to kids in schools, I'm going, do not follow women. Do not sit in your car outside a nightclub. But because he didn't have the language skills, he didn't feel comfortable. And all the couriers would go dancing in Australian Hall on a Friday night and he would just wait for mum. And mum tells me these stories where she would say, the girls would say, Els, is that Joe behind us on his motorbike, you know, following the taxi or whatever. He would just wait for her out the front and follow her home and... That was the sort of thing my father would do. 04:38 And my mum tells me that one time her parents said, for goodness sake, go and speak to that man who's been driving up and down the street and sitting on the doorstep since five o'clock this morning. And so he was committed from day one. And my mum was raised very, very Catholic, so she wouldn't have been easy and she had all these older brothers and so forth. She was the baby of the family. And when they first met, is it okay if I just tell you this story? Yeah. Because I think it's the greatest love story, which is why I'm still single, because I want what I grew up with. 05:08 I want, I've seen this, this absolute love, respect, completely different human beings. So my dad had spoke very little English. He was forced to learn it really quickly because he just fell in love with my mum. My mum was living with my great-aunt Mary in Redfern at the time. My mum told me that their first date, they went to the Lawson Street... 05:30 And I'm sure mum told me they saw a Greek film. I'm like, well, neither of them spoke Greek. Mum didn't speak German. Daddy spoke English. And I thought, oh, no, there must have been Pashing, which is not allowed, right? Not on the cards. But my great-aunt Mary said to my mum, you know, you have to be careful. You know, these new Australians, they carry knives. You know, because racism went both ways back in the day. And I'll never forget that. It was a time when there was racism against migrants as well, obviously. And so I think they were bonded by being different in society. 06:02 They also had a very strong, really, really strong work ethic. And I got that from both my parents. 06:07 But isn't that just rationalising something? Is it? Well, insofar as clearly your father took one look at your mother and thought, I need her in my life. 06:16 Yeah. And he was a long way from his family. And my mum's family became his family. But, you know, she tells me this story. She said, oh, you know, my mum didn't know what spaghetti was. Like, why would she know what spaghetti was? And my father told me, he wanted to fatten her up because she was so skinny. My mother's wedding dress fit me when I was in fourth class. She was so thin and he wanted to fatten her up. And she said, oh, what is this? And he said, spaghetti. And he told her it grew on trees. So she believed him. And I just love these things because the innocence and the naivety and, you know, she was clearly not worldly. 06:50 She was born on a Rambi mission in Cowra and then on Brungle mission in Brungle and then moves to the city and meets this Austrian man who apparently went out for beers the night before the ship was sailing and he was meant to go to Canada and he got on the wrong boat. Really? 07:06 Really? Well, I don't know. You don't know if that's true. 07:09 My dad couldn't ski. My dad couldn't swim. My dad had no sporting capacity whatsoever. But brilliant, brilliant craftsman in terms of being a cabinetmaker and so forth. And excellent dad jokes. 07:20 So you grew up in Matreville then, which is near La Perouse, where Aboriginal people have been for tens and tens of thousands of years. And what was the house like you grew up in? 07:29 So Dad made everything pretty much. So, you know, throughout the house, beautiful handiwork, woodwork and tables. And I've got one of the tables that he crafts. It's got like a heart, burnt heart in this wood. So we'd have these Austrian plaques from all the states of Austria alongside boomerangs and landscapes. And in the kitchen's this big photo behind glass of this barbarian castle and so forth. 07:54 So since he's used to doing everything himself, was he a thrifty man? 07:57 He was so tight. It's not funny. I taught my dad how to spend money and he was horrified if I would use a credit card. I was paying for my car one day. 08:08 What did you use a credit card for? I said, Dad, I pay my rent with a credit card. He was horrified. If you cannot pay cash, you can't have it. 08:15 But I remember in primary school buying probably carnations from the local florist at Malibu and waiting at the end of the street to give them to dad, to give to mum. And then this, I'll never forget this because for my father, this was a really big thing because he was tight. 08:30 My father built the first skateboard ramp at Bondo Beach because he worked for Waverley Council for decades, right? He had the Waverley Council combi, which was used for the libraries to move the library books around from libraries in Waverley. Yeah. And he was known as Joe the Carpenter. Everyone knew Joe the Carpenter in the white combi van, right? So Joe the Carpenter, Uncle Joe, Big Joe, that's what he was known as. So he knew everybody, everybody knew him. 08:54 One time he'd forgotten his wallet and it was Valentine's Day, right? 08:59 And he borrowed $20 from George, who was the famous lifeguard down there, to buy my mum roses. And so that was a huge deal. I love that he did that because he would never do it. And even if he would go without lunch rather than ask somebody for money to buy lunch, right? So he did that. But my dad, he would buy a card for mum and then leave it in the paper bag and put it on the kitchen table, maybe not anything written on it. And I just love that. Yeah, I love that. 09:25 You write in your memoir that he could yodel. Did he ever yodel around the house? 09:29 I don't know why I said that. I went to primary school one day and I said, yeah, my dad will come up and yodel. And then mum come home and said, and he just told the teacher you're going to yodel. No, not officially. 09:39 You just said that at school? 09:40 Yeah, I think I said that at school. But I tell you what, on Christmas Day, though, every year, he never, my dad never said he was really homesick, but we listened to Johann Strauss and Mozart and everything every Christmas. So that's what we would have playing. And every Christmas we still do it. We have schnitzel, right? That's our Christmas fair. None of this turkey stuff. Yeah. 10:01 So that's your dad. That's my dad. Then is your mum, Elsie. 10:05 What was she like? Elsie Mary Williams. What do people say when you say you're her daughter? 10:11 Oh, can I too? People who don't even know my mum ask about her constantly. They tell me how much they love her and why they love her because my mum, she's just a joy to be around. She's very kind and compassionate and gentle and she's always dignified. Well, when there's other people than family around. She'll let you know what she thinks. But she would never shame anybody publicly. She will listen before she responds. And she taught me to be dignified in the face of adversity. 10:41 She carries herself well. 10:42 She carries herself well. 10:45 All my old people do. All my elders do. And so I think it's the younger generations because we're so angry about how our old people were treated that we have this different level of confrontation within us. And my mum was very passionate about the church. Yeah. 11:03 How involved was she in the church? 11:04 Well, she was key to the establishment of the Aboriginal and Catholic ministry in Sydney with Father Frank Fletcher. So she was key to setting up the Reconciliation Church at La Perouse, which was the first time a physical building and space had been gifted, for want of a better word, to the Aboriginal community. Yeah. 11:23 She welcomed two popes to Australia. 11:26 She welcomed two popes? 11:27 Welcomed as in terms of, you know, welcoming them to country and city and so forth. So one was at the race course, 1995. Right. We've got a house full of pope photos, mum and pope photos. If you came in the house, all you need to do is just say something about Catholicism or ask about the pope and you're in and she'll do the tour of the pope photos. We have very different views on the church and it's the one thing... 11:51 that we have argued about over the years, but I'm, you know, mature enough to know that whatever brings people comfort and faith. But so she, then she welcomed Benedict. So we're watching it on the news, my friends and I, on the TV, like it's live to air on something. Anyway, and she leans in and, I don't know, they do some sort of headbutt thing to do, and people are teasing me, I'm like trying to tongue kiss the Pope, but she speaks to him in German. But she also went to the 1998 Synod and all these people are coming and whispering to the Pope. And so all these sets of rosary beads appear and he blesses all these sets of rosary beads. 12:26 So she gives me a set of rosary beads. And I carry these rosy beads because I have this view that if, and I travel too much for work, that if anything happens, if the plane goes down, I'll survive and I'll be the Stuart diver because I need to write the story and those rosy beads are going to save me. 12:41 You write in your memoir that as a kid growing up in Matrival, walking home from school was a bit of a fraught exercise. Who were these kids that gave you a hard time? 12:50 Isn't it funny, Richard, that there's moments that happen in your life that stay with you forever. And unfortunately, they're often the bad ones. So I went to a little school called St Andrews at Malabar with a pizza hut church, we used to call it. And these are also in the days when people walked to and from school. Like it was completely normal for a five or six-year-old to walk a kilometre to school. And I ended up leaving next door to this school called Soldier Settlement in Malabar. Mount Treville on Lawson Street, and there'd be this gang of boys and one was named Troy. And, you know, I was a little kid. 13:23 They were clearly older than me and big, and they were boys. So there was this absolute fear because they were boys and they were older and they were bigger. And they would sing out, you know, I don't want to use the word, but ABO and, well, I just had to use to say ABO, Coon, Chocolate Drop, Cocoa Pop and all these sort of things. And I didn't even know what those words meant, right? And it got to the point I'd just go home crying. And I remember my mum just saying to me, they're just jealous you've been kissed by the sun because I was the only brown kid around. 13:56 And I literally believed... 13:59 that the son had puckered up and kissed me. So I'm like, they're just jealous. And the next time I see them, I say, you're just jealous. 14:04 And how old were you at the time? 14:06 I would say I was six. 14:08 Was it the first time you think that someone was telling you who you were supposed to be in this world? 14:13 No. I remember kindergarten at that school where my sister said to one of her friends, oh, my sister's a really good counter. She can count to 100. And the person said, wow, that's really good counting for an abbo. 14:30 So this expectation was that we were not smart and couldn't do those sort of things. And I remember, okay, so back then you would have been called a dibba-dobba. But the next day I'm in the classroom and I'm in the middle of my mum and the teacher of that class and she's saying to me, tell me who said it. So there was at least some action from the school going, that's not how we... speak here, whether or not that was because they understood that this was racism or because you just didn't behave like that as a Catholic and a Christian. 15:02 And I would say that would have been the same in my high school as well, that not necessarily that we're anti-racist, but as Christians, we do not speak poorly to each other. And I remember being... 15:14 Oh, in second class, I think it was. And the best looking boy in the class. And I would have said we were mates. I had a 50cc Honda, 50cc. So I became the popular girl with the boys. They wanted to come out and go on the minibike. But I remember him coming out and calling me an abbo at some point for some reason. I don't even know why. But all the mothers knew each other because they all did the church thing together or they played tennis or whatever they did together. 15:39 And I must have told mum that night because then she's rung up this mother and must have said Anita's come home very upset. We don't use that language in this house. And then he came up and apologised to me the next day. So in hindsight, there was direct action in those moments where I was upset by words that I didn't understand, because they never came with any meaning. So, I mean, my parents didn't sit me down and say, you're an Aborigine, you're this, you're that. You know, they just dealt with the fallout of crap that happened around us. 16:11 And I never saw my parents as black and white. I just saw my mother was absolutely beautiful and my father was always covered in sawdust. That's how I remember them. 16:21 It sounds like... 16:23 The thing you've just told me is about, again and again, a recurrent theme in your life. People will say, I need to, or this, or that. So you're going to be this, that, or the other thing. And you can't be that thing. And if you do that other thing, then that's done in bad faith. 16:35 Or if you do the other thing, if you succeed. So I work from a position of excellence. I'm surrounded by First Nations peoples who are at the top of their field, whatever that field is, or they're just working hard at whatever they do. And, you know, I had a court case against a journalist, I use that term loosely, some years ago, and that was really about... other people wanting to prescribe who we are and how capable we are, what we look like, where we live, what our beliefs are, where we should go to school, what we should look like, rather than us saying, hey, we define who we are and there's going to be a public conversation about identity and who we are, what we look like, where we work and so forth. 17:12 We're going to drive that conversation. And I want to put us as an author into the literary landscape the way that I see my people, myself, my colleagues, my friends, my family. People say to me, gee, you write men as if they're really kind and nice. I go, well, the men in my world are. So I'm just writing about the people that I know. And I mean, through my writing, I also want to show that you can coexist peacefully when there is respect and love. So my father and my mother taught me that. 17:45 My dad had no idea about who my mother was. He was an uneducated man. He didn't finish school. Mum finished her certificate of basic adult education at 41 or something at Randwick TAFE. So, you know, what they had in common were shared family values and... the importance of family and supporting each other and a hard work ethic. I am also, I have always been, as I got older, incredibly conscious, very, very, very conscious of what my parents sacrificed for me. 18:17 My mum'd worked 16 years of a night at the Matriville Drive-In, come home 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock at night and then would iron and make lunches till three in the morning, right? 18:27 My father would leave home at 6, 6.30 in the morning, come home in the afternoon covered in sawdust, have afternoon tea, go back out into his garage. He'd be working till six o'clock at night and then he'd come and have dinner and collapse in front of the TV. 18:39 They gave their children every opportunity to have the education that they never had because they knew... 18:47 that the only way that we would have the best lives was to have a good education. Then I did my PhD, but I'll never have to get in my PhD. I lived down the road from my parents. I used to use their printer and their ink and I printed my PhD out as a yellow paper draft, 130,000 words. 19:03 So that's a lot of words. And my father said to me, oh, what's this? I said, oh, that's my draft PhD. He said, well, it's not very much, is it? But he had no idea. I said, that's four filing cabinet drawers worth of information and years in his research. But how would he know? Like, he didn't finish school. He's a carpenter by trade. But when I graduated... And I graduated out at University of Western Sydney. So mum and dad come out to the graduation, hasn't started. And my dad's got this three-piece suit on. This is a man who's in stubbies, blue singlet, work boots covered in sawdust, brill cream, right? 19:37 So what was it for him to dress up in a three-piece suit? 19:38 It was a big deal. Like, you know... He very, very rarely wore a suit. And so he comes in and he's really sharp in this grey suit. Then he buys me the plaque and he orders all the photos and he buys me this, you know, the graduation bear thing, which I have in my Holden Cascada in the back seat, if you don't mind, driving around with me. And I said to my brother, because my dad's tight, don't forget, because he's put five kids through school, right? I said, Dad, did you tell like win some money or something. Mark said, no, Anita, he's just very proud of you. 20:10 So I'm so glad that I graduated because that day was for them. And then we all went out for lunch in Glebe and there was my supervisor and some very good friends of mine and mum and so forth. And we had this lovely lunch. And then all of a sudden, Dad's disappeared. He's paid the bill, also a big deal, because he's paid the bill and he's left. 20:30 So hang on, where's your father gone? He went home. He went home. He went home. He'd just had enough. 20:35 He'd reached his social capacity for the day. He paid the bill and he left and went, it's like, where did Dad go? Oh, he's gone. 20:42 He gave you everything he had out of that day. 20:45 That memory is in my top ten memories of my life, yeah. 20:49 Now, did you have any traditional language as a kid? 20:52 No, I didn't, Richard. I started learning the Wiradjuri language at the age of 50. 20:58 I got invited to go and present in the course at Charlesford University on Wiradjuri country in Wagga Wagga. And one of the subjects in the course was nation building. And I presented in that in that class. And then Uncle Stan Grant, Dr. Uncle Stan Grant. 21:13 Like Stan Grant's dad. Dad, yes. Stan Grant, we know from the telly, yes. Yes. 21:17 And so Uncle Stan Grant, I guess he's our patriarch of language in terms of all the material we've got here. And the late Dr. John Rudder had pulled together a whole lot of resources, the dictionary, grammar book. We have so many resources. We are very, very fortunate. Yes. 21:34 And is it because of his Stan Grant Senior that the Wiradjuri language is one of the most fully recovered and constituted Indigenous languages in Australia? 21:41 I would say absolutely, hands down. And he has created this beautiful core group of other language teachers, Letitia Harris, Yari Lambshead, Lloyd Dolan, Aunty Elaine Lomas, who's Uncle Stan Grant's sister, so we call her Bajaja or Aunty Swanee because she's a man Swans fan. And there's been, over the years, cohorts, many cohorts now, hundreds of people, non-Indigenous people as well, who have gone through the Wiradjuri Language, Culture and Heritage course, a grad cert at Charles Sturt University. 22:15 I can't think of a more important cultural enterprise in this country than this. Can you? No, I can't. 22:20 Okay. So you go in to learn Wiradjuri and you would have gone in, I know, no doubt with all your heart and soul. But, Matt, it's hard to learn a new language after the age of 30, isn't it? 22:29 Well... I sat down on that first day and looking at the assignments and I'm going, oh, my, how is that even possible? And Uncle Stan Grant presented me with the kit of all the books and so forth, which was an absolute honour and gift beyond being just here's a gift of books. And so I enrolled. 22:47 And then I deferred because I realised it's down on country, on my country. And I lived in Macingen in Brisbane and I thought I need to be able to give this 100%. And so when I finally started, the first night I'm there, I've got all the books out on the bed and I'm going, I am never going to get this. I'm in the classroom and I'm watching people and former students come in on the first day and they sit opposite you and it's the most beautiful teaching and learning experience you could ever have. I can't even explain it to you. So people come back just to help and assist and so forth. 23:18 And making it all sound really easy and I can't even say hello who I am and where I'm from and I'm sitting there going, I'm never going to get this because, Richard, what you have to do is you have to let go of everything you've learnt. 23:31 in English. 23:33 It's a completely different grammar system, right? It's not a translation of English because there wasn't English. So if I can give you an example, the title of my previous historical novel is Bila Yarudangalang Dere. So Bila means river, Yarudang means dream, galang is the plural, so many dreams, and dere is the action of having the dreams. 23:57 right? So I'm not very good at this. I can tell you for the first six weeks, I was saying the title of my own book wrong, right? I can't remember. It's the most horrifying story after I've done this, gone viral doing what I thought was the first one take wonder of this is how you say the title of my book. 24:12 You have to not think in an English mind. And so I thought I'm never going to learn this. And so I'm in class and one of the teachers says, because it causes me anxiety. And the teacher says, it'll all fall into place when the ancestors know you are ready. 24:30 So then I'm just relieved of all the responsibility because I go, Well, don't stress. When I'm ready, it'll all happen. And eventually, I think you have to let go of the anxiety around that. But you would think, like, I've got a PhD. I'm not a complete idiot. I mean, you'd think I'd be able to learn some of it. But it's really hard because we're all still stuck in this English, the way we were trained in English. But for me now, I can't imagine writing a book now, whether it's a rom-com or whatever, that doesn't have... 25:02 my language in there. And I would tell you, I always thought, I have a very small vocab in English and I'm the person that used to be there back in the day when we had proper dictionaries, where I'd be reading a book and I'd have a dictionary there. And I used to think that used to distress me because I wanted to be a writer. And then I realised that it's actually about the story. 25:22 It's about the story because you can be the most eloquent, elegant writer, but if you haven't got a story, it doesn't really matter. But what I realised when I did and is the vocab that I was missing was the Wiradjuri vocab. Because I can tell you writing about Wiradjuri people values, Nurembung land, Mi'i Gun, family, and all those sort of things, Yinjamata, notable love and respect and love, writing about all those things, using the language from the land where the story is set is so much more significant, so much richer, so much deeper and has so much more relevance. 26:05 And so I feel like Those two books and the books moving forward, because I've got another historical novel in the pipeline, is my very, very, very small contribution to the maintenance of Wiradjuri language. 26:20 When you write a book, my experience of writing a book, when you arrive at just this right word in English, it's really lovely. It feels very satisfying and you just feel this unusual sense of satisfaction. I wonder what it's like to arrive at the right Wiradjuri word for something. Have you had that experience? Yes. 26:37 I think, well, there are a set of words that I use every day in my everyday life that I share with other people. And I feel like for me... And what are those words? Well, yinjimara, which means respect, to honour, to be polite and gentle. Mandangu is thank you. Norobo dundu, I love you. I say that to my niece every time I speak to her and friends. 27:03 Marumbang balang means... 27:05 Excellent or deadly. You know, we got deadly from the Irish. You know, I've done this whole connection with the Irish in the new book as well. 27:13 And so I feel like arriving at the right word in the story is about... 27:20 A few things. One is about making sure that it works in the storyline, but also every single word that I put into a story for me is about offering a reminder to the reader that wherever they walk in Australia, they walk on country that has a first language. That's not English. English is the dominant language and that's the reality and that's what it is. But I want... If the one thing that readers walk away with from my novels is that, is that they go, oh, right, okay, where am I today? 27:51 I know that wherever I am, English is maybe second, maybe third, maybe fourth language. 27:56 Anita, you're a city girl, right? I imagine there'd be so much in Wiradjuri language that would speak of and to the land. Can you do that thing where you can slow down and sit in the land and the country and just hear those words and understand those words? 28:11 I think for me what I tried to do was, apropos of that, is through the character Mina. She sits by the river, by the billa, and her love asks what she's thinking and she's eyes are closed and she's visualising and she's explaining to him that what she hears and what she sees around her. So it is, I think there are words and ways to talk about Nurembung, to talk about country in the language from that land. 28:44 And I mean, I've done the best that I can do. I know that I've given it everything I can, I could to make it the best representation as possible. So I think, I think, yes, you can. 28:56 It seems to make you happy. I've just noticed how you're smiling as you're giving me language. 29:00 Does it make you happy? It makes me feel very lucky and blessed because I've sat in a... It does make me happy. It's a small act of sovereignty. You know, you may... We never see the sovereignty of the land, but... 29:14 And being able to reclaim language goes, well, it says, well, you can't control what language I use today. You could control it back then. You know, there's many, many, many, many stories of Aboriginal people being flogged, having their language flogged out of them and having to speak English. It was illegal to speak, you know, to speak language. It was illegal to dance and practice ceremony and so forth. So I feel happy, but I also feel there's some... 29:44 There's some sadness in it because when I was learning, I was in a space where there were women who were much older than me and they were learning what they should have been learning at school on the mission, yeah? 29:55 But it seems to me like there's almost a very, very, very basic and simple pleasure in feeling the word roll off your tongue. 30:01 Yeah, absolutely. 30:01 Absolutely. 30:04 I should say Nawa. That's yes. 30:06 Okay. 30:08 One of the characters in the book is that Wiradjuri warrior I mentioned, Windradine, who was a real person, historical figure from the early 19th century. How did you first encounter him? Do you remember reading about him? 30:20 Yes. It was the late 1980s. 30:23 The late Mary Coe Wiradjuri woman wrote a very short biography called Wendredyne or Audrey Currie. And I read it back then. It was published by Black Books, I believe, who were attached to Tramby, Aboriginal College at Glebe at the time. And I read about this very proud, strong, brave resistance warrior by the name of Wendredyne, whose born name was Wienmuldyne, which means firemaker. And And I think you mentioned in the intro that he was known as Saturday because the authorities believed all the revenge attacks, which is what they were when they were Rojo warriors, would... 31:04 have acts of revenge following violence against their people. 31:08 The murders. 31:08 And unspeakable violence and brutality against the women, right? And so many of these attacks happened to have occurred on a Saturday. So they believed that he was planning them for Saturdays. I'm fairly sure back in the 1820s that no Wiradjuri person was working to a Western calendar. 31:27 You don't reckon he had the calendar pinned to a tree? No, I'm fairly sure. Saturday, better go out and do some mischief, that sort of thing. 31:33 But there was absolute strategy because those attacks were often surprise attacks and so forth. So it does actually ignore the fact that there was strategy. But he was also a peacemaker. 31:48 because he led Windradine, was born circa 1800, died 1829. So a young man, but led a delegation of people, not just Wiradjuri people, over the mountains into Parramatta, the end of 1824 in December, to meet with Governor Brisbane, just before he lost his role, to bring about peace. There was a bounty on Windradine's head of 500 acres and 32:13 And there was a state of martial law too. 32:15 Martial law was proclaimed on the 14th of August, 1824, because there'd been so much violence. And this proclamation of martial law was meant to end the violence. However, it just exacerbated the violence, particularly the impact it had on Wiradjuri peoples. But there's a line in there that says women and children were to be spared, but violence against Wiradjuri people was only to be enacted if every other attempt at peace had been exhausted. 32:43 But what that translated into, essentially, was open slather against Reggie Bill. 32:48 That's a loophole. You can drive a covered wagon through. 32:51 Yes, absolutely. And that had devastating effects. And then it got to the point there'd been so much bloodshed and death prior to the proclamation, and then it just... 33:02 multiplied that Windrudein, you know, said we have to find peace. And so that's what led to the meeting in Parramatta. 33:11 The accounts we have indicate that those first white settlers that went over the Blue Mountains into the Bathyseria had fairly affable relations when there was a kind of a tiny minority amongst the Wiradjuri. And that changed once those stations were built and Wiradjuri people were fenced off their own There's attacks, there's counterattacks. And we know that the violence against the Waratari took place for sure because the local newspapers boasted of the violence that was perpetrated against them. 33:39 And they're called the Bathurst Wars. They were noted as the Bathurst Wars. And there's a public historian by the name of Stephen Gatz and he wrote a comprehensive piece of work called Guchara, the Bathurst War, the First Bathurst War. And... 33:55 I mean, I would not have been able to do my work without him having done all this incredible research. And that documents pretty much everything and it's absolutely devastating. So I can say to you that... 34:09 My book, Dereyawatta, speaks to the overall violence, the frontier violence and so forth, without the detail of every single incident because Stephen had done that. But I rest assured that readers will absolutely understand the depth and the impact of violence and what Dinawan Jirubung, Uncle Bill Allen, is a direct descendant of Wendredine calls the Homeland Wars. And, of course, we know that Henry Reynolds calls them the forgotten wars, the wars that Australians have conveniently chosen to forget and not discuss and not talk about and not engage with and not accept as part of our history. 34:51 Oh, my God, there was a state of martial law. Exactly. 34:55 And it's interesting because we've just had the commemoration, the 200th anniversary, Marshall on the 14th of August recently. I was in Bathurst for that week. A program designed by the Wiradjuri Traditional Owners Central West Corporation, Aboriginal Corporation, And a program called Duloin, which means Absolute Truth. And in that program, there was a conference speaking to the Proclamation of Martial Law. There was a whole range of activities that week, which I feel was... 35:27 gave, you know, were examples of cultural revitalisation with basket weaving and possum skin making. There was lots of storytelling. There was artist talks. There was also films and so forth. Uncle Bill launched today or what throughout the library. But most significantly was a corroboree atop of Walu, which your listeners will know as Mount Panorama. 35:49 And, you know, there hadn't been a corroboree there for 200 years. 35:54 And so it was an incredibly moving moment of unity because there were both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people there. There were dancers from across New South Wales. 36:07 But I can't help feeling it's also a moment, it was also a moment of that entire week and every time I talk about this book is re-traumatising. It's a reminder of this is what happened. 36:19 that that land and why in my novel the prologue and the epilogue are through the voice of Nurembung, through the voice point of view of the land, is because that land is seeped in the blood of our ancestors. 36:32 It's a very, very old story that when people want to take something that's not theirs and they decide they're going to take it anyway, they'll need to dehumanise the people they're taking from. This is one of the oldest stories of humanity. It's what happened to Wiradjuri people very clearly. So there's all those references and those boasting accounts I was speaking about in the local newspapers to the subhuman status of the Wiradjuri people. But then at the same time, it's recorded of one British observer who met... 37:00 He said of him, quote, he was a man of very fine figure, very muscular, a good model for the figure of Apollo. So on the one hand, these are subhumans. On the other hand, he's been likened to a Greek god. 37:14 You make all that, Anita. What a strange thing it is, isn't it? 37:18 Well, I think there were, in life generally, there are different perspectives through different lenses and there is an example, a living example still, in Bathurst there's a property by the name of Bruce Dale that is owned by the Sutters. It was owned by the Sutters during the Bathurst Wars and a story has it that Wyndredyne went... 37:42 to Bruce Dale with conflict on his mind and William Sutter spoke to him in the Wiradjuri language. And there was born an allyship before there was allyship. But obviously it's uneven because, you know, the Sutter's owned the property and something and so forth. But that family was safe from any harm during that period. 38:05 which the other settlers weren't, and Wiradjuri people had safety there. What that should teach all of us is that this peaceful coexistence can exist when there's respect and so forth. So William Sutter had learnt the language so he could... relate to the local Rojo people. So I think there's different lenses that people see the world through. And that person who saw Windrude Dine and described him as, you know, a form of Apollo, saw a different human being or saw him, or maybe they didn't see him as a human being, but saw him as a figure of somebody else. 38:40 I'm not sure. 38:41 Today, during NADOC Week, you're hearing the story of Dr Anita Heiss. There's also a love story. 38:46 It's always a love story, Richard. I know. 38:48 You're talking about love again. 38:49 I believe in love. 38:50 I know. It's nice to talk about love. I love talking about love. 38:53 You're bringing history to life dramatically, but you're also doing something else in having this love story. Why do you like... This is a really corny or silly question, but why do you like to have love stories in your books? 39:04 Well, because Aboriginal people in this country are never represented... 39:10 like every other human being, of having capacity to love, of having compassion, of loving as human beings and all the emotions that come with that. And I want the world to understand that we, like I said before, we've been living and loving on this land for millennia, loving as human beings, loving each other, loving the land, loving and respecting the landscape and so forth. And so that's one reason. I want them to understand that we love like everybody else. with passion, with fear for our children and so forth, with that love that my mother had for me when I was upset as a child, just like other parents. 39:45 I also grew up in a house with, you know, Austrian father, Aboriginal mother, where race was never discussed. It was just love of the other human being, love and respect and adoration. And also in this particular story... but also in Billa and also in Barbadwire and Cherry Blossops, which is about the Cowra breakout. There's a love story there because I use the two characters to drive the story. And in this particular story, Dan O'Dwyer is an Irish political convict because, of course, I learned that there were hundreds of Irish political convicts shipped to Australia following the uprisings that they had in Ireland against their government being absorbed or becoming part of 40:27 Yeah, Ireland being the first colony of the British Empire. 40:30 So the Irish saw that as the death of their sovereignty and I thought we have so much in common. And so I wanted to bring that connection between the Irish and their desire to reclaim sovereignty and our desire to maintain sovereignty. 40:47 And so I used this love story to show that particular part of history as well. 40:55 When you're writing a book, you are wanting to reach a lot of people. I know you're a hospitable writer. You believe in pulling up a chair for anyone to sit in and read your book, right? Is that a fair assessment to make? 41:06 I would like my stories to reach as many people as possible, yes. 41:10 But even when you write like a hospitable writer, there is often like one kind of person you're writing for at the same time. Do you have that figure in your head? 41:18 I tell you what my fear is when I, in terms of who I'm running for, for those, all those books that are based on country. So the Bathurst, my family aren't from Bathurst. It's a variety of country, but I had to build relationships there. My family are from Brungle and Tumont and I've got, you know, connections in Wagga and Griffith and so forth. So, All those stories, who I'm writing for is I'm writing for the people who are from those places. So I remember ringing up my Letitia Harris saying, I'm really worried. She said, what are you worried about? 41:48 I said, I'm worried about the community. I want to get it right for the community. She said, you're part of the community too. You need to stop worrying about what other people think. But, I mean, the language stuff, I send out drafts. I get lots of people to read and so forth. So I'm writing. I do have people in mind. It's not necessarily the book club people. It's not... It's not even my publisher. Of course, you know, I want them to publish it, but they've already signed the contract. It is like, who are the group of people who need to really embrace this story? And it's the people where those stories are set. 42:20 Right from the get-go, you've always tried to thwart anyone's kind of narrow expectations about what you're allowed to be in this world. 42:26 Don't hear the word thwart very often, do you? 42:28 No, and I've just said it, yes. And even lest you hear the word athwart, but here we are. 42:34 Oh, dear. Yeah. 42:36 Do you think when you're writing two of other young Aboriginal women who might be reading your book and take some heart from what you might be wanting to present about the narrow choices that might be being presented to them? 42:48 Yeah, well, because I've written a few books and I have four, five, five, six books, I think, that really focus on particularly contemporary First Nations women, nearly all of them were adjury, in urban centres. And I am writing books for them or books, that have women in them like them. So when I started writing what was chick lit back then and now known as commercial women's fiction, I was lying down on, I was lying down at Maroomba Beach reading some of my most loved and adored Australian women writers, Linda Javen, the late Rosie Scott, the late Georgia Blaine, excellent literature and, and mentors of mine, but I never saw First Nations women who lived in cities, who had ties to community, who had dating issues, who went to university, had career aspirations and so forth. 43:38 And that's why I started writing those books that then did quite well. I was the first person to write Aboriginal women into Australian romance. And we've only just had the second person, which is Mel Sayward, release a book called Love Unleashed. And so I was overwhelmed by how many women, and even today, that was 2007, not meeting Mr. Right, avoiding Mr. Right, Manhattan Dreaming, Paris Dreaming and Titus all have been repackaged. So many women, First Nations women, say, that's my story. Or some of them, I would have given that guy another chance. 44:10 He was fictional. So, you know, I didn't really date him. But, you know, I think we're not enough to sustain a publishing venture. There's not enough of us as readers to buy enough books, right? And I want to sell tens of thousands of books because I want tens of thousands of people to engage in our stories. 44:26 But I do want... I do want us in the literary landscape. I do want us published in every single genre. I do want us to be seen for the dynamic, sassy, smart, sexy, capable, strong, flawed women that we are. So we're all the things. 44:44 I want Australian women of all backgrounds to connect to the women in the stories and say, well, I'm just like you in that we have all the bodily functions. You know, the next book's going to be the women with menopause. We have all the same things. It doesn't matter where you live or how rich or poor you are. We all bleed. We all have menopause. We all have those things, right? It's got nothing to do with socioeconomics or geography or cultural background. So I want them to say we also have, if we're fortunate, beautiful relationships with our women. 45:13 sisters or titters or BFFs, whatever you want to call them. 45:17 But there is a complexity also to our lives that I want people to understand as well. Not be disturbed by, not be concerned by, not ask us a thousand questions by, but just understand this is my life experience. Even though I want to go shopping or do spa day with you, I need you to understand that this, this and this as well. 45:38 More power to your arm and to your typing hand and to your brain and heart as well. Just finally, you're also involved in a publishing venture. Are you now in charge of a kind of a publishing imprint? Is that what's happening? In charge. 45:50 I am. You are the imprint, are you? I'm the publisher at large of Bungie. This is my imprint. 45:57 established by myself, but with the open arms of Simon & Schuster. So it was an imprint within Simon & Schuster. It is about showcasing and publishing First Nations authors, mainly in commercial fiction and nonfiction, but using... For me, it's about building the First Nations publishing sector. So we're using the skills of First Nations authors graphic designers for our covers. We are using proofreaders and editors. The logo was designed by Ascariot Media. 46:28 Bunji is a word meaning to share with me, which is what we do as writers, Richard, as you know, we're sharing. And so my first book will be out, my first acquisition, I should say, will be out in December and it's Stan Grant's latest book called Muriang, Song of Time. And it is a beautiful meditation on life, land, his father, God, there's science, physics, music, poetry. It is absolutely stunning. Meditation on life made me sob when I read it, the first draft. So I'm doing that. 46:59 I'm very excited about it. I've also signed Larissa Berendt, who is going to do, she's reimagining Pride and Prejudice through Who Leans. It's going to be amazing. And we'll be releasing Tasma Walton's I Am Meditation. 47:12 which is a historical novel about one of her ancestors who was abducted by sealers off the coast of Victoria and held captive for 34 years, which is an incredible story. Again, who are the savages? 47:26 What a pleasure it is always speaking with you, Anita Heiss. Thank you so much. 47:30 Thank you for having me. 47:31 Anita's latest novel is called The Paradise Pact. This conversation was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal peoples. The producer was Alice Moldovan. Our executive producer is Nicola Harrison. I'm Richard Feidler. Thanks for listening. 47:45 Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.