Belonging Rosemary Sayer

I saw the painting as soon as I stepped into the room. Aboriginal artist Loreen Samson’s canvas immediately took me back to my teenage years of arriving in the Pilbara. I saw her vivid salt ponds through the oval window of a plane when I was circling the Karratha Airport for the first time about to land and undertake the start of a new life. I felt the churn of nausea in my belly and my clammy hands at the remembered sense of unknowing contrasted with a great appreciation for a land that would come later. As I looked at the painting the two feelings rubbed against each other like two hands trying to get warm. This land would become my home, a place of belonging, but the first time I saw it I was bewildered and just a little frightened. For Loreen Samson, whose family insisted her work still be hung in the exhibition even after she passed away, capturing her traditional land on canvas became her life’s work in Roebourne, close to Karratha.

I swapped my aisle seat with my mother so I could look out the plane window. The flying had been smooth but for the last hour she had been sighing and quietly saying ‘no’ under her breath in the hope that I wouldn’t hear her. What was out there? I looked through the oval and saw a red sandy desert for as far as I could see. I saw what looked like gullies where water may have once run. I closed my eyes and made the vision go blurry like it did when I forgot to wear my glasses. Now it looked like a patchwork quilt of different shades of ochre, brown, grey and black. It looked like Loreen Samson’s painting. I felt totally disorientated. Two hours before mum, dad and I had been sitting in the suburbs of Perth drinking coffee thinking things felt pretty much like our previous home in Tasmania; our home that had been left behind. Dad had searched out new job opportunities in the Pilbara in Western Australia. Initially it seemed to me there was nothing out there. By concentrating on the colours, I could keep the greasy ball of nausea at bay.

Sitting in the row in front, Dad turned around excitedly to point out the other window as we started to descend. I dragged my eyes away to look at what seemed like white and grey round ponds. They stretched into the distance with the sun bouncing off them like lances. It was almost too bright to continue to stare. Dad happily explained it was part of a salt mining business called Dampier Salt located close to where he would work for the giant iron ore mining company called Hamersley Iron. Loreen Samson sometimes painted the salt ponds spread throughout her traditional lands.

I could feel mum almost begin a panic attack. Her body began to tremble, and she whispered harshly to dad ‘what have you done? It’s like Siberia on one side and the Sahara on the other. Where are the trees? Where are the people?’ I curled my twelve-year old body into my seat to make myself as small as possible, sucking a butterscotch sweet to stop my ears from popping. They continued their exchange in hushed voices while the pilot announced our descent. As the plane bumped down on a thin strip of tarmac next to the salt ponds, small buildings and a few stringy trees came into view. We circled around to stop in front of a large tin shed with a sign proudly announcing Karratha. A furnace of dry heat enveloped us as we dismounted the stairs and walked towards the unimposing building. Dad was bursting with impatience to begin. Mum and I just wanted it all to end and for our lives to return to normal. We wished for the verdant green, the blue mountains, and the meandering rivers of Tasmania.

Homesickness, isolation, and loneliness can consume you if you let it. At Christmas that first year, as the temperature steadily climbed to its usual daily maximum of 36 degrees, mum insisted on cooking the full turkey roast with gravy and vegetables. The three of us sat under the air-conditioning not saying much. Dad tried to be jolly, passed out the crackers and tried desperately to make us laugh at the corny jokes. Suddenly, about halfway through the meal, Mum turned her plate upside down with a bang on the festive table, burst into tears and ran to the bedroom. I can still remember my shock at seeing her do something like that. She was always the calm parent, the quiet organiser, the one who didn’t raise her voice much. Dad and I sat still and looked at the gravy stain spreading across the white linen tablecloth. I tried to capture the little Birdseye peas that rolled around like marbles. Mum eventually came out of the bedroom and spent the rest of the day, red-eyed in her chair, knitting, but not talking. I tried to read, and Dad went outside. It was, however, a turning point. The next day the three of us sat at the same table and mum announced we needed to try harder to make our new life work. We couldn’t go back, so we had to go forward. She had a list in her head of all the things we would do. She would start a garden and join the bowls club with Dad to meet people. We would visit art galleries and places of historical interest. I would be allowed to join the school swimming squad and play more hockey even if it meant travelling 200 kilometres for a game on the weekend. ‘You’ll drive her, of course, Colin - just like you always have,’ she said. Dad nodded quietly through all this and was also given the task of devising regular outings and trips so we could learn more about the place we had made our home. Bordered by the Indian Ocean to the west and extending across the Great Sandy Desert to the Northern Territory border in the east, the Pilbara is one of the largest regions in Western Australia. That didn’t deter us. Dad planned small one day outings and longer trips over weekends. Slowly over time, I discovered a vibrancy and character unique to the Pilbara. Its rugged ranges, gorges, ancient landscapes, and waterholes drew me. I wanted to be in it; part of it; experiencing the drama of the place. I wanted to belong here.

I smile at Loreen Samson’s work again noting that she was a multiple Cossack Art Award winner, a renowned regional exhibition. We attended the exhibition each year at the historical town of Cossack just 20 kilometres from Roebourne. It was a strange place popular with tourists, a palimpsest showing the land of the traditional owners overlaid with the north west’s first pastoral, gold rush and pearling port. Restored National Trust bluestone architecture was scattered about and reminded everyone of the colonialisation of these lands.

Today, as I breathe deeply, I can feel the power of Loreen Samson’s art immersing me once again in her traditional lands. As one of the Ngarluma/ Yindijibarndi people, she was a driving force and respected elder in the Roebourne Art Centre for nearly thirty years. Her art speaks to me of the unknown and of eventually belonging. I wish I had known her.

Author’s note

Drawing on her own experience of living in the Pilbara during her teen years, Rosemary Sayer responds to Loreen Samson’s Salt Ponds. Memories of flying into the unknown over deserts and salt ponds from a life in Tasmania to a life in the Pilbara colour the writing. As the family struggles to adapt to their new life, homesickness, isolation, and loneliness are explored in the search for belonging in the Aboriginal lands of the region.

Rosemary Sayer is a former journalist who has written three non-fiction books. In 2019 she completed her PhD at Curtin University which explored her dual interests of writing and human rights. In recent years she has worked as a sessional lecturer, tutor, and research assistant in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, and at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University. She is currently an Adjunct Research Fellow at Curtin. She is a passionate advocate for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers and serves on several boards of organisations that provide aid and services.