The Black & White Braid

WORDS BY BEN ALLMON AND IMAGES BY CARIN GARLAND

Boonah Rathdowney-Road Coochin Coochin Homestead c. 1840 to 1920 Evening, August 2019

We walk into the beautiful dining room, and Tim Bell pulls out a chair for Carin and then me. Arrayed on the table are books. Some are small…others are enormous, the size of a printer, and clearly scrapbooks of some kind.

“This isn’t much, but it’ll give you an idea of some of the history here,” Tim says, as I leaf through the first scrapbook, coming to grips with Tim’s definition of ‘not much.'

Snippets grab my attention – Gertrude ‘Granny’ Bell’s first impressions of Coochin. The sun was setting behind the glorious mountains and tingeing the wonderful crags with rose pink, whilst the distant peaks changed to opal in the afterglow. Watching it, I felt that our newfound ‘Coochin Coochin’ was indeed a paradise.

Next I read her daughter Enid’s words, equally arresting.

Fate had decreed that ‘Coochin Coochin’ should come into the possession of one who would bestow upon it the love and admiration it had not received since the Ugarapuls had been driven out of their beloved valley…

Flipping forwards, I come to a newspaper clipping recounting a ball held in honour of Prince Edward, later King Edward VIII.

The Prince danced all the dances, staying until after midnight, when there was a great crowd of people waiting outside the hall to see him. He wore evening dress and many honours, and did not wear gloves. Among the girls he danced with, were Miss Enid Bell (Coochin, Queensland), who wore shot gold and blue tissue, and gold lace…

I feel a hand on my shoulder, and look up, coming back from the distant past to see Tim.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he says, squeezing my shoulder in a fatherly way, before bidding Carin goodnight. “Make sure you don’t let Polly out when you go,” he adds, looking down at said three-legged canine curled near my foot, ears laid flat and looking worried. In the distance I can hear something, like a big truck maybe, rumbling along Boonah-Rathdowney Road.

“All right, I’m going to bed too,” Carin says, giving the nervous Polly a pat on the way out, and I am suddenly alone with the history, the memories, and the ticking clock. Polly moves restlessly at my feet. I wonder what it is that has her so spooked when I hear that rumble again. It isn’t a truck, I realise.

It’s thunder.

There is a flash of lightning outside, followed by a rumble. Polly edges closer to me.

I’m not scared, her look says, I’m just checking you’re okay.

The lights flicker, and as I sit here at this beautiful cherrywood table I wonder how many people have sat in this resplendent room before me…and who they were. Am I sitting where Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh once sat when they visited in 1948? Or Agatha Christie? I look at my reflection in the window and wonder whether the Queen Mother sat here, looking at herself too, after a night of revelry and laughter. It is surreal. The man who abdicated the throne for love, left it to his younger brother and the father of our current Queen – thereby changing the course of the monarchy and history – may have sat right here…before signing his name on the wallpaper.

It is at Coochin, sitting here reading long into the night, as outside thunder crashes and lightning flares purplewhite across the night sky, where the true enormity of what I am trying to do hits me. I leaf through two centuries of Bell family history…Tim’s great-great-great grandfather Archibald Bell was involved in Governor Bligh’s defenestration and was friends with Lachlan Macquarie. Archibald’s son, Tim’s great-great-great uncle Archibald Bell Jnr, found a way – with the help of local Indigenous companions – over the Blue Mountains known to this day as Bell’s Line of Road. I pore over two family tomes, each at least six inches thick with over a century of newspaper clippings, everything from Bells at local dances to Bells in wartime reports.

Around me are fireplaces, hutches, dressers, and sideboards groaning under knick knacks, souvenirs, crockery, candelabras, photos of family and famous personae of other eras, paintings without number. As the rain beats a welcome tattoo on the roof after months of dry silence, I stare at the images in yellowed newspapers, history assembled in fading dot matrix, faces familiar and foreign. Did Tim say I’d need a week? I know now that I could sit at this table for a year and still only scratch the surface.

I sit there, overwhelmed, my head sinking into my hands.

“That’s my great-grandmother,” a voice says, one that I didn’t expect to hear in here. It is Uncle John Long, sitting next to me, the side cabinet visible through him. His finger taps – or would do, if it had substance – Legends of the Coochin Valley. Written by Enid Bell – Tim’s great-aunt – it is a compilation of cultural stories told to her by Bunjoey, whom the settlers called Susan, 'last of the Ugarapul.'

“Really?” I turn the pages of this small, fascinating book. I read about the creation of the waterholes of the Coochin Valley, dug by Yugoi – Queen Bandicoot – as she dug into the earth to escape a pack of dingoes, and how her final hole was so deep, water gushed forth, filling all the other holes and drawing fish, eels, and mooroo-coochins unto them. Such was the plentiful game of these waterholes, and the gratitude of the Ugarapul, that they composed a corroboree in her honour. I turn the page and read about Enid’s first impressions of Bunjoey, of a laughing black face that inspired instant trust in the young girl. Of Bunjoey’s love of the birds and animals she knew as friends, of how she sang the old corroboree songs to the white children and told them they were Ugarapul children, because they had been born on her country.

I find an article from The Queenslander, also written by Enid, in 1934.

‘Susan knew her race before the white civilisation had swept away its customs and traditions. Though she must be 80 years old or more, the fire of life still burns brightly in her slight graceful form. As she chants the old songs of her tribe, and sways rhythmically, one hears the echoes of the thundering feet of the dancers stamping in rhythm, celebrating the great corroboree festivals—not the corroborees of modern days, regarded in the light of vaudeville entertainments, but the great sacred festivals which expressed the primitive soul of the aboriginal people. When Susan’s soft musical voice repeats the legends of her forebears, we feel that back through unknown and unrecorded centuries a people lived who loved and feared and dreamed as we do now in the same land which then was theirs.’

I look out the window into the garden Bunjoey helped plant, see it illuminated by flashes of lightning, the past illuminated in a new way, revealing how much – and how little – things have changed. History is sometimes like the night, hiding secrets in its black velvet folds…you just have to be watching, and waiting, and looking in the right place when the lightning strikes.

“She was the custodian of many memories, of so much knowledge…do you think she could pass it all on? It would take lifetimes to share what she carried. So,” he says, tapping the book again, “she shared little things that illuminated the bigger picture, and left it to others to fill in the details.”

He looks at me, his eyes penetrating.

“Remember, no one can hold all knowledge. The old people, they never finished a story…it was up to the listener to finish it.”

I smile in understanding, the feeling of despair lifted from me, and Uncle John is gone.

Uncle John Long Tim Bell

You can help.

The Scenic Rim is home to over 860 species of wildlife, many unique to the region, some rare and endangered. This is where they live.

CALL our 24/7 Hotline at 07 5527 2444 to help sick, injured wildlife. We have rescuers and carers ready to help at all hours, day and night.

JOIN US We need new volunteers and we are looking for property owners who can provide a safe new home for displaced and orphaned wildlife. We provide training, guidance and support.