Discovering the secret of my Aboriginal past

About one year ago, whilst sitting at the kitchen table with Mum, she let go of a truth bomb.

She was recounting the story of how my Great-great Grandmother Emily, came to be alone and pregnant trying to survive in the south-west of Western Australian around the turn of the 20th century.

“And there she met your great-great grandfather -  a part-Aboriginal man.”

I almost sprayed out my tea all over the table.

“What?”

Before Mum could take another sip, I missile launched her with questions. For years she had known my interest in the history of the family as I was always plaguing her with questions about her relatives and she was always very up front about them all.

So and so had a baby at 16, such and such suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, your Great-Aunt took her own life – it’s safe to say Mum’s side of the family were riddled with their complexities and we were a family that loved to dissect them all over a cuppa and a chat at the kitchen table.

However, I was 36 years old and had never, ever been told that there was Aboriginality in the bloodline.

I knew why I had not been told, of course. Because being Aboriginal was associated with shame.

I had grown up hearing them called “boongs” and as the butt of disparaging jokes that compared them to turds, criminals and basically the waste of human society.

It was not desirable to be Aboriginal.

Apparently Mum had only found out herself in her early twenties when her Aunt, sworn to secrecy, told Mum at her kitchen table.

“Well..” I urged Mum. “Tell me the whole story.”

Around the turn of the century, in a small town around Manjimup in the South-West of Western Australia, my Great-great grandmother Emily, in her late teens, met and fell in love with a charming man who promptly impregnated her. For whatever reason he told her he could not marry her, possibly because he was married to somebody else.

In those days, being pregnant and unmarried was an abominable sin and so, attempting to sort the situation out, Emily’s brothers rode out on their horses to meet the man who refused to claim responsibility for their sister. The man would not face either her or her family and rode away on his own horse leaving her high and dry.

Emily’s parents, unable to live with the shame of their unmarried and pregnant daughter, kicked her out of the house and she was left alone to fend for herself in the bush around the region of the Blackwood River, somewhere near what is now Bridgetown in South Western Australia.

Alone, pregnant and vulnerable in the bush, Emily attempted to build herself a humpy – a shelter made of tree bark and sticks.

To eat, she did her best to catch, skin and cook rabbits and other small animals.

After a time, she met a local part-Aboriginal man by the name of Charlie Simpson. He worked as a farm-hand on a local fruit orchard. He saw her situation, got to know her as a friend and after a while a relationship blossomed and he asked her to marry him.

Living in the Bridgetown region, Charlie supported Emily by working as a farm-hand until he was able to purchase some land and start a small orchard for himself.

He and Emily went on to have eight or nine more children and sustained their family whilst enjoying married life.

I will be forever grateful to this part-Aboriginal man who found my Great- great grandmother, sheltered, protected and cared for her and became her husband.

Sally Morgan’s story My Place was one of my favourite reads as a child. In her book, Sally describes the discovery that her Grandmother was Aboriginal; a fact her family denied due to the stigma at the time.

Sally was told the family was of Indian descent.  

Little did I know there was some parallels to Sally and my story, albeit my own Aboriginal heritage is more diluted.

Like Sally, I always wondered why I was very dark-skinned; “brown as a berry” I remember my Dad saying to me often. Curious parents would ask me after school as I played on the grass in the front lawn “where are your parents from?”

There were discussions about family histories – about the Cornish having been invaded by the Spanish during the 16th Century and that must have accounted for my “throwback” colour.

My Grandfather’s family on my father’s side immigrated from Cornwall and Devon. My Grandmother’s family on the paternal line were Scottish and English.

On my mum’s side of the family, things were a little more hazy but I understood they were English and Irish.

My mum’s father left when she was three so she didn’t know the family well but from stories her mother and aunt told her, she understood he was English and Scottish, born in India.

I vaguely remember someone mentioning that there could be Italian in the lineage, which is why I had olive skin. I would later discover this was a complete lie.

The only thing to do after hearing my Mum’s story was to take a DNA test. After all, Mum can be prone to exaggeration and has told a few fibs in the past (a necessity to survive her difficult childhood).

Sure enough, the results came back and Charlie Simpson showed up as 3% in me. The Aboriginality is there, small, but still present in my genetic make up.

“Did you know anything at all,?” I asked Mum.

“Well” she said, “Gran Gran used to tell me to never come home with an Aborignal.”

My Great-grandmother Rose (Gran Gran) believed that being Aboriginal was an incredible source of shame. At the time, Aboriginal people were thought of as second-class citizens of society and ridiculed for their “primitive” customs and social disadvantage.

Personally, I could not be more intrigued and thrilled with the knowledge of my Aboriginal ancestry.

I have always found the culture to be beautiful – the rich connection with land, the healing, the spirituality, the Aboriginal recognition of others as kin. The gentle softness with which I’ve heard the older women speak and the wisdom of those who caretake the land. If you have ever had the pleasure of taking an Aboriginal tour with Greg Nannup you will know what I’m talking about.

To my great-grandmother (Gran Gran) I am so sorry you grew up thinking you needed to be ashamed of who you were. I want you to know I was delighted to hear I have Aboriginal ancestry.

I love the culture, I love the people, I am eager to know more about the beauty of their way of life and the pain of their past and present.

To my great-great Grandfather, (Charlie Simpson), the man who took my Great-great Grandmother in. I want you to know that I could not give you more respect. Thank you for taking in the woman who was to become your wife and future mother of your children.

Your kindness, compassion and protection of Emily shows the type of man you were. It was not about skin colour, but about the union of two people that came together and thrived in their companionship and were able to build a solid foundation together.  

Thank you for rescuing my Great-great grandmother Emily and being the father you were to my beloved Great-grandmother Rose.

I won’t know for sure why my skin is so olive whilst my parents are so white, but if it is a throwback to my Aboriginality, even just 3%, then I’m extremely pleased.

With love,

Rebecca.