“authority … would have been weakened”. The violence was his way of maintaining control. He’d turned tyrannical in a place he described as akin to “living on the rim of a volcano”.
Curry hated the Palm Island doctor, and his enmity intensified when his wife died in childbirth. Drinking heavily in his grief, and dosed on novocaine for neuralgia, Curry donned a long red bathing suit, a bullet belt, and with a gun in each hand went on a rampage. First he dynamited his own house with his drugged children inside, then he went out to shoot the doctor and burn down the settlement buildings: to kill the child of his brain. As they burned, white officials gave a gun to a young Aboriginal man, Peter Prior, and deputised him to shoot Curry—and then they hid.
Prior was charged with murder and locked up for six months. The charges were then dropped, but for the rest of his life, Prior would dream of Robert Curry.
Tony Koch, a senior writer for the national newspaper the
Australian
, told me he interviewed Peter Prior when he was very old and both his legs had been amputated due to diabetes. Prior started crying because he was scared to die. God said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and he had.
Like Kurtz, Uncle Boss died in a land he had mistaken for his own.
This country made him die
, sang the old people on the mission.
This place he did not belong to. It was this that made him die
.
A FTER OUR MORNING in church, Elizabeth took Boe, Paula and me on a trip to find taro, a tuberous root vegetable that’s a tropical staple. This diversion was not just hospitality. Elizabeth and the lawyers were going into battle together; she wanted to keep them close to her before the inquest began.
Halfway up a mountain, Boe could coax the borrowed four-wheel drive no farther. “Think of Jesus,” Elizabeth urged him. But Boe was an atheist. He parked and lay under a tree while we three women set off through the old mission’s abandoned plantation. I was carrying a shovel, and Paula a pair of Elizabeth’s boots.
Enormous pine trees stretched above us. “This remind me of
Blair Witch
,” Elizabeth said. Along the dirt road, to the right, was a view of the surrounding islands. To the left I could see valleys where wild horses grazed on the banks of a creek.
“How much farther?” I kept asking. “To the bridge,” she kept answering. Through the heat we passed huge grey boulders, wild-flowers, a tree with foliage gathered on each branch like a bouquet. No bridge ever materialized.
I asked Elizabeth about the Tall Man.
“He like Big Foot.” She believed he’d always been in these hills.
The Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner told me that Tall Man stories exist all over Indigenous Australia. In the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land, there are mimihs—tall, thin rock spirits capable of evil. There’s also the figure of Namorrorddo, described by rock-art expert George Chaloupka:
A malignant spirit, a ghostly, spectral figure [he] is usually portrayed in rock paintings as a very tall, thin and extremely elongated being with long slim arms and legs, and with claws instead of fingers and toes. It is not unusual to find images representing this being that are more than 8 metres long. He moves about only at night, when he may be seen for a split second rushing across the sky. When the people see the trail of a falling star they know that it is Namorrorddo going to a locality where somebody is dying. He is said to fly in search of sick people, waiting to rip open their chest, take away their “breath” and carry away their heart. The brighter the star the more important the dying person. When a person dies during the day, their “shadow” is taken away by birds who are said to be Namorrorddo, or who act on his behalf.
I’d seen contemporary bark paintings from western Arnhem Land of the giant called Luma Luma. There was a Luma Luma Street on Palm Island. Elizabeth told me the Tall Man was a traveller, a creature that could
Curry hated the Palm Island doctor, and his enmity intensified when his wife died in childbirth. Drinking heavily in his grief, and dosed on novocaine for neuralgia, Curry donned a long red bathing suit, a bullet belt, and with a gun in each hand went on a rampage. First he dynamited his own house with his drugged children inside, then he went out to shoot the doctor and burn down the settlement buildings: to kill the child of his brain. As they burned, white officials gave a gun to a young Aboriginal man, Peter Prior, and deputised him to shoot Curry—and then they hid.
Prior was charged with murder and locked up for six months. The charges were then dropped, but for the rest of his life, Prior would dream of Robert Curry.
Tony Koch, a senior writer for the national newspaper the
Australian
, told me he interviewed Peter Prior when he was very old and both his legs had been amputated due to diabetes. Prior started crying because he was scared to die. God said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and he had.
Like Kurtz, Uncle Boss died in a land he had mistaken for his own.
This country made him die
, sang the old people on the mission.
This place he did not belong to. It was this that made him die
.
A FTER OUR MORNING in church, Elizabeth took Boe, Paula and me on a trip to find taro, a tuberous root vegetable that’s a tropical staple. This diversion was not just hospitality. Elizabeth and the lawyers were going into battle together; she wanted to keep them close to her before the inquest began.
Halfway up a mountain, Boe could coax the borrowed four-wheel drive no farther. “Think of Jesus,” Elizabeth urged him. But Boe was an atheist. He parked and lay under a tree while we three women set off through the old mission’s abandoned plantation. I was carrying a shovel, and Paula a pair of Elizabeth’s boots.
Enormous pine trees stretched above us. “This remind me of
Blair Witch
,” Elizabeth said. Along the dirt road, to the right, was a view of the surrounding islands. To the left I could see valleys where wild horses grazed on the banks of a creek.
“How much farther?” I kept asking. “To the bridge,” she kept answering. Through the heat we passed huge grey boulders, wild-flowers, a tree with foliage gathered on each branch like a bouquet. No bridge ever materialized.
I asked Elizabeth about the Tall Man.
“He like Big Foot.” She believed he’d always been in these hills.
The Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner told me that Tall Man stories exist all over Indigenous Australia. In the Northern Territory’s Arnhem Land, there are mimihs—tall, thin rock spirits capable of evil. There’s also the figure of Namorrorddo, described by rock-art expert George Chaloupka:
A malignant spirit, a ghostly, spectral figure [he] is usually portrayed in rock paintings as a very tall, thin and extremely elongated being with long slim arms and legs, and with claws instead of fingers and toes. It is not unusual to find images representing this being that are more than 8 metres long. He moves about only at night, when he may be seen for a split second rushing across the sky. When the people see the trail of a falling star they know that it is Namorrorddo going to a locality where somebody is dying. He is said to fly in search of sick people, waiting to rip open their chest, take away their “breath” and carry away their heart. The brighter the star the more important the dying person. When a person dies during the day, their “shadow” is taken away by birds who are said to be Namorrorddo, or who act on his behalf.
I’d seen contemporary bark paintings from western Arnhem Land of the giant called Luma Luma. There was a Luma Luma Street on Palm Island. Elizabeth told me the Tall Man was a traveller, a creature that could
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