text: Sensitive data for Australian Aborigines. Suicide. Phenomena ************************************** Australia does not have castles, nor have I ever been in a castle. The official date of European occupation occurred on the 26th of January, 1777. The dark history of colonisation started the terror forever placed in the ancestrial genetic memory of all Aboriginal people continuing today. On January 1st, 1901, a group of hairy, long bearded, glim men sweltered under canvas shelters established the Commonwealth of Australia for Whites to govern in their own right. The washout photographs remind me of garden gnomes piled together in the overgrown weeds and grass of an abandoned house. The sensitive land energy, the Ley lines, the Dreaming paths became agriculture, mining, and cattle stations to fill our coffers. The original nomadic caretakers were hunted, killed, or indoctrinated with Christianity, and children put in reserves stolen from their families. They were depersonalised, demoralised, and segregated as slaves and non citizens. As a child, a mansion was a double storey brick house with three or four bedrooms with maybe a shed and chicken coup in the backyard. The old, large residences in my hometown of Ipswich, often from wealthy landowners, once boarded and lodged house staff, such as cooks, nannies and farmhands. In my childhood in the 1970's. Ipswich was built up and I rarely travelled to Brisbane. There was a song called "Little Boxes," sung by Malvena Reynolds, a Californian lass. I remember once a week, the higher primary school grades, grades 4,5,6, and 7 would be tuned into ABC radio for children's singing lessons broadcast, today that would be probably be called a podcast. Before the broadcast at 2pm would start, we would be instructed to find our music books, printed and delivered to our school before each school term in our desks. We had four school terms per year and between the earlier school terms, usually two weeks holidays and end of year term, a six week holiday. Our music books, under our table, on an open wooden shelf, would be found and opened on our desks tops in a sort of passive military fashion; that day, we turned to page 42. The broadcast did its usual format of playing the full song first. There would be a basic discourse and a space in the broadcast of around 15 minutes, where the teacher and class discussed the context of the song and its deeper meaning. Little Boxes was a satire on suburbian housing development. We would then learn the chorus followed by the verses. I still remember today joyously singing with the rest of the students., "Little Boxes on the hillside little boxes made of ticky tacky... ...Little boxes all the same..." My husband belonged to the middle class, he worked a teacher's job. Mine was a sewing job from home where I could work and mother my kids. We were renting and, to our delight, had saved money for a bigger family home, one where I might have a sewing room. The local Queensland Times newspaper, each Saturday, printed a life out local real estate section. There in the tiolet, my only private place and refuge of uninterrupted reading, I saw our home! A fibro teal house, with three bedrooms and sleep out. The price is $35,000. We bought the house, now our home. I remember being told to always start a garden first, as an established garden, in the future, could add at least $20,000 to the sale of property. Tall gum trees and two Acacia trees shaded the property, so we added rose bushes, salvaged native cuttings and ground covers from our late afternoon pram walks, bought shrubs, and hung old man's beards in the front garden on the Acacia. The shade gave easy growth and along with summer high humidity and rainfalls the samplings flourished. We polished the floors, fixed the plumbing, painted the walls, and hung fairy lights on the verandah. Soon, we had our own oasis. The local children would say to my daughter, as they walked home together after school that our home was "The Witch's House" I got to know all three neighbours adjacent to us, we lived near a bend in the street. One an older lady with disabled adult son, another a married couple expecting their first child, and the last a couple of childless Swingers. Danni, the Swinger, would often visit me in the afternoon for a cup of tea and chat. I think she was basically lonely, but i could not dismiss the fact that it was around 3pm, the time our school would finish and my husband would usually arrive around 3.30 pm, where she would sheepishly smile at him entering the front door. That day, my 3 year old son sat on the lounge, sheet draped over him talking to his imaginery friend. Danni heard him. "Does he do that often?" With a raised eyebrow, I replied, "Kids have imaginary friends, " Danni persisted, "I knew the last owners of this place. I visited them once here, and it put chills through my spine!" Half heartedly, tired from a sleepless night, I gave, "Ah ha" Danni persisted, "Mrs Rodgers across there had to have her house blessed. A child spirit switched on her television, flushed her tiolet and could be heard laughing and playing with two other spirit children. She taped it so she would be taken seriously by the catholic priest" Squinting my eyes and looking at my tea, "Yer?" As Danni left, "He could be talking to one of those spirits?" I said nothing. Two years later, the memory of what Danni had said come to mind, when the usual smell of burning toast came from the kitchen, the usual cafe curtains rolling and tangling themselves on the curtain rod above the kitchen sink, the usual feeling of the house feeling 40 degrees Celsius occurred on that winter's day. I wondered? To put an end to thoughts, I had time on my hands as my son was in Grade one then. I decided to visit the City's house and land history library. A beginner, I asked for assistance from the grey haired volunteer librarian. Scattered copies of our land and home covered the table to reveal our land was once a rental home for defence personnel. The original home was destroyed in a house fire June 23, 1978. The land was left vacant until 1983, where a private buyer built our current home. My first thought was our home was very differently structure from the layout of all the old Officers homes built around us. It was the same cheap fibro, yes, the same all the other houses in the neighbourhood however the house layout was different. Our bedrooms were larger, we had a sleep out and we had heaps of storage cupboards. The wood floors were mahogany coloured and tight in their placement. The kitchen and entrance was where the original homes loungeroom was. Our laundry was outside and we had a large wheelchair access ramp to our backyard. We had a lock up carport also! A hasty, investigative, fast car drive took me to the Queensland Times archives at Warwick Road, Ipswich. I explained, "Um I'm researching a house fire that happened June 23rd, 1978 at 9 Berry Street, Leichhardt". After showing my drivers license of the same address, I was lead to a dim lit room. A large square dinosaur computer hogged the space and chair was available. The secretary pull a square box from the archived high shelf labelled with a sticker, "June 1978". A microfilm roll was placed on a gadget and rolled out and fastened to a permanent empty roll on the left hand side of the viewer, so the film would roll. The computer screen, revealed photographs of the day after the fire. The front page showed the construction of a new shopping centre. There was a car yard sale, adds for Holden's and the next page had a car sale yard for Fords and Country Women's association stall of knitting, crocheted coat hangers, shawls and a close up of a group of women posing casually. The secretary invited me to sit. I was shown how to operate the machine by pushing a fast forward button and as the film noisly whirred thru the contraption. There it was! Cover story 25th June, 1978, "House Inferno kills Leichhardt mother and three children" The secretary interrupted, "It's 10 cents per photocopy?" After a couple of hours, I left with a manilla folder of papers of information about our home. My husband browsed that, "Well we have a bit of a haunting here then?" "Hmph, yer guess so?" Each afternoon, I would tend to our garden, it was relaxing. Hand hosing our herb section near the mailbox. Mrs Rodgers saw me, quicly went inside her house, a her screen door banged. I looked up from my meditative state. Next, she returned, walking towards me with letters in her hand. "Hi Georgia" Extending her hand,she passed me the letters wrongly delivered, "New postman I think" They were mostly junk mail except for a Christmas card. "Sorry, I forgot all about them" Smiling and rolling my eyes, "It happens" She stood still. "Hey look" I said walking to the tap, with her following, I turned off the water supply and spied her out of the corner of my eye as I rolled up the hose on a partly rusted car tyre rim bolted to the stump. I casually spoke, knowing she had something on her mind. "Do you want a cuppa" The tension went from her body, "Yes, that would be nice lovey". The kettle boiled and small talk followed something deeper. She broke the ice of polite conversation to her own subject, her son was moving into State care, as he needed extra care. Saddened, I listened to the brief details, but they were very brief, I felt like she had not finished. "Your husband mentioned you know about the fire?" My mind changed to a different gear. "Yah" I replied fumbling the tea cup "What another cuppa?". Shc followed me to the kichen with her cup. I rinsed our cups placed new teabags in them and got the milk from the fridge. She persisted, "The family was a nice family. The kids were friends with my son and daughter you know. It was tragic. Our loungeroom windows cracked from the heat..." Going to our lounge with new fluid, "... When the new people built, they had teenagers. They would often travel and those kids would have noisy parties..." I remembered myself , those time in the 1980s. The Airforce kids were called "RAAF (Royal Australian Airforce) brats". I had attended Ipswich State High. The RAAF brats stuck together. I was included at school with my age RAAF friends but never allowed to go to the parties. "Too Wild", my father said frowning. Mrs Rodgers touched me on my hand interrupting my thoughts. "At the parties, the kids would get drunk and hold seances with oujii board..." Her eyes grew large as she clutched her tarnished silver cross securely on her necklace, draped near her heart. Her cashmere jumper so soft reminded me she was a conservative, neatly presented person even in her home clothes. "...My daughter was at one of those parties, where they summoned the dead mother and her kids. I remember her banging on our door, "Mum, let me in", she yelled near midnight. "Our Kelly had the hairs of her head standing on ends, her face was white, and she was shaking" In the disclosure, Mrs Rodgers said our home had to be exorcised. The house was freezing even in the middle of Summer. A dark heavy shadow enveloped the house. A rancid smell of sulphur would catch her nose and stay in her nostrils when the wind blew from that direction. She would emphasise, "I said my protection prayers for my family and the neighbourhood. I was worried" The previous owners had strange things happen like doors opening and closing by themselves, the lights flickered all day, curtains would plait, spectres appeared in their garden, but the worst could not be ignored! Mrs Rodgers asked me for a paper and pen. She scawled our front porch, horror rocking the pen, to sketch an outline of what looked like two oval sticks in the ground at the base of our stairs, Pointing Mrs Rodgers exclaimed, "I saw that myself! They found the handle of their two knives, which disappeared found buried so the blades stuck up. Mrs Smyt was pushed by something at that staircase. She fell rolling and grabbed the rail to be pierced in her thigh by that knife." Mrs Rodgers pointed at the left knife. "I mean lucky her. she was able to stop her fall or who knows? Blood! ambulance! And the likes". I learnt a fairly happy family became angry, fighting. The kids were having nightmares, they became more than rebellious and the marriage was strained with Mr Smyt loosing his job. The eldest child was killed in a road accident, so bad the police could not identify him. And Mr Smyt hung himself exactly where Kelly told me they had the oujii board. A catholic priest and his trainee were called to our home. The exorcism started. The loungeroom where the seance occurred was the pit of activity. The blinds rolled up and down by themselves. The main window glass bubbled inwards, then pushed out exploding shatters of glass out towards the street and then pulled back in to be its original state. The house temperature went below zero and then orange light moved with an airy, gluey force through the house returning to blow both priests off their feet, onto the floor. Their clothes were scorched and their body and face had third-degree burns. A loud otherworldly voice on the exorcism tape yelled, "Get out!" Mrs Ridgers finished, "As it started, it finished!" Peace was returned to our previous owners home with the price of cataclysm, a child's and husband's death, and a knife accident. The youngest training priest left the priesthood. Mrs Rodgers lightened up, "They say that poor young fellow, the priest, went to Byron Bay Hippy community , probably smoking dope, to forget. Bless pom and his poor soul" We were living in an Australia's Amityville horror house and like the American current owners, had really not experienced any phenomenon that could be not explained. Our toaster was quirky. Some of the mold growth suggested artisian waters from earlier mining, not recorded, and maybe causing heating or coldness in areas of the home. My son had grown and forgotten his imaginery friends opting for computer games like Sim City. If we were haunted, at the very least, it could be tolerated!