I Knew You'd Have Brown Eyes by Mary Tennant Page A

look quite different.’
    As we approached Gapuwiyak he pointed out the lake. I felt excited about the adventure I was embarking on.
    ‘That’s Lake Evella,’ his voice echoed in my headset.
    ‘It was named after the wife of the first missionary who started up the community of Gapuwiyak in the 1960s. The Aboriginals call him Bapa Sheppy. Short for Father Shepherd. He built a timber mill and employed all the men in town.’
    ‘Does it still operate?’
    ‘No, unfortunately.’
    ‘Why unfortunate?’
    ‘Because there’s no work here. The Aboriginals live on government handouts now.’
    We flew over the tiny town.
    ‘I’m buzzing them,’ the pilot explained. ‘It tells the townspeople we’re here.’
    ‘Looks pretty small from here!’
    Sure enough, as we approached the dirt strip I saw four or five vehicles tearing up the dust. I stepped down the stairs and a tall red-headed woman who looked to be in her forties greeted me.
    ‘Hi, I’m Marie,’ she said. ‘You’re my replacement.’
    We jumped into a blue Toyota troop carrier with most of the other passengers from the plane. Marie knew them all by name. One had a small baby.
    ‘She’s returning from Gove Hospital where she had her baby.’
    ‘Oh, the women don’t have their babies here?’
    ‘No, they have to go to the hospital in Gove.’ She saw my disappointment.
    ‘I thought I needed midwifery to come and work here. I was hoping to get some deliveries.’
    ‘Oh, don’t you worry about that, you’ll get your chance. The young ones often abscond from the hospital and turn up on your doorstep. They hate the hospital.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Too cold. They hate the air-conditioning!’
    Our first stop was the clinic. I followed Marie into a small room inside a transportable building – a donga. People were seated in a row at the entrance, chatting in an unfamiliar language. Soon we were standing in a tiny treatment room, where three Aboriginal women were attending to patients.
    ‘These are the health workers,’ Marie said. ‘Maynbunu, Yannanbuy and Dhulpuwawawuy.’ She indicated with a low hand. ‘It’s rude in their culture to point directly at someone, and don’t pat a child on the head – that’s rude too.’ She turned to the elder of the three.
    ‘What skin name will you give her, Maynbunu?’
    ‘Don’t know Yapa, we need to ask that old lady with the white hair.’
    Marie explained to me that when an Aboriginal person dies, they are not allowed to say their name again, so if someone has the same name, they make up a name that usually describes the person, hence ‘that old lady with the white hair’. ‘Yapa’, I learned, was the word for sister. On cue the old lady arrived in the clinic. People made way for her. She commanded respect.
    ‘Wamutjun,’ she pronounced, after carefully looking me over. I looked at Marie for an explanation.
    ‘That’s your skin name,’ she said. ‘It denotes how you relate to everyone here. And it means that Maynbunu is your aunty, so she’s responsible for teaching you.’
    Over dinner Marie gave me a crash course in Aboriginal culture.
    ‘How old are you?’ she asked.
    ‘I’ll be twenty-five in July.’
    ‘You’re very young to be taking on a position like this.’ By now we were washing the dishes. ‘And I don’t know what you’re going to do about that hair.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ I said self-consciously sweeping up my long curls.
    ‘There’s a lot of head lice here.’
    ‘Are there any other white people living here?’ I asked.
    ‘A bookkeeper and his wife. Four teachers, who are two married couples, and a mechanic, his wife and two children.’
    I was the only single white person. It occurred to me that like me Marie had embarked on her career in remote places as a young nurse – she had previously worked in PNG – and was now in her forties and single. I made a mental note to get out of this place before I got stuck.
    That night I dreamed of head lice, black faces and