The Sausage Tree

By Rosalie Medcraft and Valda Gee

The Sausage Tree celebrates the favorite childhood game of the authors Rosalie Medcraft and Valda Gee. This award-winning memoir tells of the sisters' childhood spent during the Depression in smalltown Tasmania. For the family of nine, thrift was a virtue and home-grown food and hand-made clothing a necessity. In later years, they learned of their Aboriginal heritage as descendants of Manalargenna, leader of the Trawlwoolway people of Cape Portland in north-east Tasmania.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Queensland Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780702250262

Book preview

Copyright

The Sausage Tree

Rosalie Medcraft and Valda Gee are sisters.

Rosalie lives in Ulverstone on the north-west coast of Tasmania and works as an Aboriginal Studies resource teacher. She has been involved in writing Aboriginal Studies guidelines for Tasmanian schools. Rosalie enjoys reading and doing crossword puzzles. During the warmer months she bike rides and loves playing tennis with some of her fourteen grandchildren.

In 1987 Valda completed a bridging course with the University of Tasmania and went on to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Aboriginal Studies. Valda is president of the Exeter (Tas.) Elderly Citizens Club and is a former committee member of the Aboriginal Child Care Association (Tas.),

Rosalie and Valda are descendants of Manalargenna who was the leader of the Trawlwoolway people in the Cape Portland area of north-east Tasmania.

To Mum, Dad and Peter

Introduction

We have chosen to call our childhood memoirs The Sausage Tree to commemorate one of the childhood secrets which binds our now scattered family. The focus of our outdoor games, the sausage tree stood in our front garden in Lilydale, Tasmania. Our imaginations transformed its wide shining leaves into fat sausages. The sausage tree was also a good place to hide.

Many years later when Dad rebuilt the fence he trimmed back the sausage tree as it was in his way. The tree didn’t take too kindly to this treatment and in due course it withered and died. We all felt that part of our childhood had gone forever. It now lives on in the title of our book.

After Dad’s death in 1985 we finally felt free to acknowledge another deeper family secret: the Aboriginal heritage our parents had fervently guarded from us for so many years. As children who had inherited cotton hair from our mother, we were naturally curious as to why our father’s family had black curly hair and a darker complexion than we did.

During her teens Valda began to ask questions about the differences, and as she received no answers she let the matter drop. Later in our lives when we again queried Dad about our grandparents’ lives and his own childhood, he told us what we were asking was a load of old rubbish. Dad’s brothers were equally as secretive. They told us we wouldn’t find out anything as it was too well hidden. That statement spurred Valda on in her quest to unravel our family tree.

Fortunately we had been told the names of our great grandparents and where they had lived. After many years of searching through microfiche at the state library, Valda and her daughter Marianne discovered the reason for secrecy. Dad’s family were Aboriginal and they had obviously not wanted us to know. The reasons for secrecy can only be surmised, as the true answers will never be known.

Looking back on our childhood we cannot recall knowing anyone who acknowledged being Aboriginal. Perhaps in earlier years the family had suffered the bitterness of racism that we have since heard the Elders speak of. Because of the harsh treatment received by Aborigines since European settlement of Tasmania, maybe the family thought they were protecting themselves and us from the trauma of prejudice that others suffered. Perhaps the pages of history can supply us with the unspoken answers.

Although acceptance and reconciliation have become ongoing goals of everyday life today, sadly that has not always been the way, as during the early settlement of our island there was an attempted genocide by the government of the day. Our history goes back many thousands of years, but written history began with the arrival of settlers, soldiers and convicts. There was little interest in finding out about beliefs, ideas or the way of life of the original owners.

By 1833, after thirty-five years of conflict between the Aborigines and the new arrivals, 183 settlers had been killed at the cost of between three and four thousand Aborigines. In a misguided attempt to rectify the injustices inflicted on the Aborigines, about 250 people, remnants of the fragmented tribes, were transported to Flinders Island, the largest island in the Fumeaux Group in Bass Strait. Here an attempt was made to westemise, Christianise and civilise the group who were denied their natural pursuits of hunting, fishing and performing their tribal customs. The drastic change in lifestyle soon saw them succumb to illness. Ever present was homesickness for their homelands.

In 1847, after just fourteen years, only forty-four adults remained on Flinders Island. They were transported to south-east Tasmania to another unsuitable site at Oyster Cove. Many of today’s Aborigines still live near Oyster Cove in the Huon area.

Years before white settlement and for years after, sealers who operated out to the Furneaux Islands had abducted tribal women from north-east Tasmania. Many sealers had two or more women who clubbed the seal pups to death, cooked the meals, dived for food and bore children. These children were the forebears of the Aborigines who today identify Cape Barren Island just south of Flinders Island as their homeland.

We are among the many descendants of Dolly Dalrymple who was born in 1812 and named after Port Dalrymple at the entrance to the Tamar River. Dolly’s mother was Worrete-moete-yenner who was married to a sealer named George Briggs, and her grandfather was Manalargenna, leader of the Trawlwoolway people of Cape Portland in the north-east of Tasmania. Manalargenna died on Flinders Island.

At about two years of age, Dolly was taken into care by a Dr Mountgarrett and his wife in Launceston. Dolly left the Mountgarrett house when she was about fourteen years old. She later married an ex-convict named Thomas Johnson and they had thirteen children. Dolly and Thomas became successful farmers and timber merchants in the Latrobe district on the north-west coast. Their home Sherwood Hall has been moved from its original site and reconstructed in the popular park area of Bells Parade at Latrobe. Dolly and Thomas were Grandad Johnsons’ great-grandparents.

In 1912 the Tasmanian Government passed the Cape Barren Island Act. This was to establish a reserve for the Aborigines who lived on the island. One section of the Act dictated that if a white person married an Aborigine they could not live on the reserve or visit it after dark. It wasn’t until 1951, the year I went to Teachers’ College, that the reserve was closed. Many families were relocated in substandard housing in Launceston where they finally overcame racial hatred, prejudice and rejection.

We were taught in school that all Tasmanian Aborigines were dead, but over the past two decades the fact that there are indeed Aboriginal people in Tasmania has been gradually acknowledged. Despite the attempted racial genocide of Tasmanian Aborigines, almost eight thousand Aborigines now live in Tasmania—including Flinders and Cape Barren Islands.

To us, being Aboriginal is not how we look; it is how we feel from within. We knew we were different and with discovery of our heritage came the desire to interact with other Aboriginal people in the state. Through community organisations, we met other Aborigines who were learning about, and proudly acknowledging, their heritage. Opportunities arose that in previous years would have seemed impossible.

As our personal circumstances changed, our lives seemed to veer onto a different path and lead us in new directions. In 1988 Valda enrolled in a bridging course at the University of Tasmania in Launceston. In her quest to learn more about our people she took an Aboriginal Studies course by correspondence through Adelaide University.

The year 1992 was a memorable one for both of us. Valda graduated from the University of Tasmania with a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Aboriginal Studies. I was appointed Aboriginal Studies resource teacher in the northwest region of the state. During the writing of the Aboriginal Studies guidelines I became aware of the lack of suitable reading materials that have a Tasmanian background. One of my co-workers goaded me into writing a few short stories based on my childhood reminiscences. Memories came flooding back as I jotted down a few ideas. I enlisted Valda’s help when I realised I couldn’t do it alone, as within three days the short story concept had changed to a book.

The manuscript, which we edited ourselves, was originally written in longhand. As we progressed we began to wonder what we would do with it when we had finished. While visiting a friend at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission office in Hobart I found the answer in a three-year-old entry form outlining the David Unaipon Award, a writing competition for unpublished Aboriginal writers.

Inspired by the thought of entering our manuscript we soldiered on, setting Easter 1994 as the target date for completing our as yet unnamed manuscript. We were afraid that if we waited another year we would tire of our project, lose momentum and perhaps never complete it as each day seemed to bring a new recollection. In May we entered the manuscript in the Award and in August were notified that we had won.

We were also motivated not only by the desire to document a part of our family history for future generations, but to share with a wider audience our memories of growing up in a fiercely devoted family who found fun and laughter, even in social and economic adversity.

Rosalie Medcraft

Ulverstone

March 1996

1

The early years

Join us on a trip down memory lane as we recall the Great Depression and its aftermath when our parents struggled to raise their seven children. Journey with us through our memories of growing up in a different era—a time when ethics were strictly adhered to, punishments for us for misdemeanours were harsh and the ability to enjoy ourselves depended on our initiative and imagination.

We grew up in Lilydale, a small country township whose inhabitants made a living from timber milling, dairying, apple orcharding and small mixed farms.

Our father worked in the timber industry, firstly camping away on the slopes of Mt Arthur where he worked as a bushman felling giant trees with a cross-cut saw and an axe. This was always referred to as bushing. The logs would be collected by a man driving a team of horses and dragged through the bush to the mill a few miles away where it was sawn into timber of varying lengths and thicknesses ready for sale in Launceston.

Dad would leave home at 5.00a.m. on Monday morning with his food carefully packed in a fine jute