The late NANCY CATO wrote a poem back in the 1980s that daughter Bronnie Norman thought reflected the mood of the times as we approach the vote. She wrote: “Nancy was very passionate about Aboriginal rights and the denial of their wisdom and heritage. She would have been campaigning FOR the Voice!”
Murdering Creek! Who was it murdered here
in the early days, when the Blacks were fierce and wild?
We think of the settler alone in his crude bark hut,
or away from home, leaving his wife and child …..
Uneasy, like ghosts of the dead,
the paperbarks crowd on Murdering Creek today,
above their white reflections in pools of water dark and still.
Even at noon they seem to remember the night
and huddle together in fear; yet out on the lake
sun drenches down in glory, day’s at its height,
clouds are rounded and golden, sky’s serene,
and doubled and trebled in the water’s trembling mirror
white egrets wade, the black swan glides and feeds
above drowned hills and downward-pointing reeds.
Murdering Creek! Silent and dark it flows
between its sheltering banks, among the wild
tangle of creeper and fern, where long ago
a helpless man was killed with his wife and child.
A travelling Kabi making his noonday camp,
spears laid in the grass, no thought of fear.
As he lit his fire, his wife prepared the meal,
and the white men with their guns came creeping near …
A crash and a cry and a leap as the rifles flamed …
A family died, and Murdering Creek was named.
