Paltis: dances.
Pangkarra: local land.
Parna:
‘Pepa meya’: paper man, or judge. Was an insight into how the Kaurna saw British justice – just a pile of paper.
Peramangk: Adelaide Hills people, enemies of the Kaurna.
‘Pilyabilya’: a stunning butterfly with black, white, red, and yellow markings.
Piltawardli: possum place.
Pindi-meyunna: pit men – white man who has come back from the grave.
Pindi-nantos: pit men’s horses.
Pitjantjatjara: peoples in the north of South Australia.
Pitluri: tobacco found in northern Australia.
Puri: pebble
Skilgolee Creek Block 346: owned by John Adams and Mary Ann Adams. Tim and Tom and part of what is owed to current Kaurna elder Uncle Lewis Yerlopurka O’Brien
Tambawordli: where the Kaurna traditionally held inter-clan gatherings and contests.
Tandanya: or Red Kangaroo people
Tarnda: the totemic kangaroo Tarnda Kaurna dreaming story of a young boy, Tarnda, who brought joy to the life of his aged parents and went on to become a great hunter. In old age, he was transformed into an old man kangaroo and was a great and respected teacher of all the Kaurna men, and was named Monana.
Tarndanyagga: Victoria Square.
‘Turnkiwardli’: tent, an amalgamation of two concepts, cloth and hut; ‘parasol’ was ‘kurotura’, a combination of ‘kuro’, crown of head, and ‘tura’, shade or shadow. ‘
Tindo: the sun
Tjilbruke: the great Tandanya ancestor.
Yammaiamma: the word for teacher and doctor was an extension of the word yamma, which meant foolish.
Wardli (wodli): hut fashioned by Aborigines.
Wauwe Woman: kangaroo woman.
Willanga: ‘the place of green trees’
Wilyaru: scars, the honoured special markings of.
Wiltutti: spring.
Winbirra: flute.
Winda: heavy fighting spears.
Wirra Woman: woman from the Wirra, north of Adelaide.
Wodliparri: the Milky Way.
Wongayerlo: now Spenser’s Gulf.
Yartta: the land.
Yartapuulti: Port Adelaide
Yoko worta bokarra: the tempestuous north-westerly winds.
Yudna wilyaru: the final ceremony for a Kaurna warrior.
Yurrebilla: the ears of the giant ancestor Ngano, who lay sleeping above the wide Tandanya plain.
Wakkinna: bad
Wangutya: a kinsman of Kadlitpinna who was hung unfairly by the British
Wardliworngatti: spring
Worltatti: summer
Windas (fighting spears) and shields, kylahs (hunting spears) midlars (woomeras), wirris (clubs), cuttas (fighting sticks).
PROLOGUE
Court of the Red Kangaroo
A circle of black, wizened women confronts the author.
Grandmothers: Who do you think you are? Are you attempting to write about the Kaurna, the Red Kangaroo people?
Author: Hey who do you think you are? I am trying to write Chapter One.
Grandmothers: We are the Kaurna Grandmothers. And we want to know why you are writing about us? We exist in an oral tradition. We are here to protect our sacred Kaurna heritage. We don’t want white, nosy know-it-alls, poking their pointy snouts into our business. We’ve had it with you whites – a long line of interfering busy bodies – Methodists, Anglicans, eugenicists, doctors, missionaries, entomologists, Darwinians, anthropologists, sociologists, you name it. Why are you writing about us?
Author: Well it’s not just about you – I’m juxtaposing what happened to your people in the Adelaide area in the 1830s, with what happened to my people, Eastern European refugees, in the 1950s.
Grandmothers: Uh oh, you sound like an academic.
Author: Well I’m not.
Grandmothers: Thank our ancestors for that! Save us from the academics. They are the worst of the lot. Academics have prodded, dissected, and analysed us to smithereens. But you are a PhD!
Author: Yes, I learnt to be a researcher, but as you will discover, that skill can come in handy.
Grandmothers: Well at least you’re not descended from the British Imperialists who did us in. But we don’t take kindly to being ‘researched’. We are fed up with the number of trees it takes to pile up the feasibility studies, flow charts, and bureaucratic nonsense you whites seem so enamoured with. And then you ignore crucial research, as witnessed in the Northern Territory today! So why are you writing this book?
Author: Well if you must know, I had a vision to write it.
Grandmothers: Ah, a vision. Now that’s more interesting. We can relate to visions. Tell us about it.
Author: In the vision I was accosted by a bunch of 1950s Adelaide Australians, looking like the gauche country bumpkins they were.
Grandmothers: Doesn’t sound much of a vision. More like a second-rate nightmare.
Author: Just hold your horses – er kangaroos! As a result of what I saw in the vision, I knew I had to confront where destiny had placed me. These misfits were the people into whose lives I, as a small child, had been thrown. I was terrified of them. Can you imagine? I had just finished writing a book about what my family had escaped from, and now I felt compelled to write a book about what we had escaped to. And that’s how you guys come in.
Grandmothers: Us guys? We weren’t even around in 1950s Adelaide. We were virtually extinct. Dispensed with. Put away.
Author: Yes, I know. I didn’t even see an Aboriginal person until I was twelve, and I only recently discovered the existence of the Kaurna race.
Grandmothers: So how do we come into it then?
Author: Ah well, that’s what this book is about. In the vision, your story and my story intertwine inextricably. But if you must have a clue – I saw terrifying images. I clearly saw something disturbing about these 1950s Adelaide people who influenced me and tried their hardest to assimilate me into their way of life; they carried a dreadful legacy. And it took a vision over fifty years later for me to finally understand something that had always lurked around the edges of my consciousness; a truth I am now richer for knowing.
Grandmothers: And that obviously involves us.
Author: Absolutely. Where Adelaide stands was originally your country... for at least forty thousand years, before white man ousted you.
Grandmothers: So you shouldn’t be surprised that we have made our appearance.
Author: