‘The Spoon’

‘Cousin Jackie…? Cousin Jackie…?’

I could hear Happy’s soft words coming from outside our place as I sat by the fire waiting for my breakfast of Johnny cakes and treacle.

I lived with my mum, dad, three sisters and two brothers in a shanty house on the Yumba – the fringe camp outside Charleville where all us Blackfellas lived in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Happy lived about one hundred meters away with his family and was a frequent visitor to our little shack. He would come to borrow a coal from our fire as their fire had gone out during the night and there were no matches to be found to light another.

Happy had a lightly built frame, always dressed in a pair of shorts, but never a shirt, and his hair resembled that of a tribesman from the highlands of New Guinea because it stuck up really thick from his head.

I remember the spoon was made of a rather strong metal, probably with a copper base, and its appearance was quite unique, with its own personality depending on its use at the time. It was blackened by coal and large enough to hold a boiled egg. The spoon had multiple tasks which were certainly not limited to its designer’s original plan of eating food! For Happy’s family, it was also used for opening beer bottles, cooking and carrying borrowed coal embers.

He would always come with ‘the spoon’ in hand to carry the borrowed coal back to his home nearby.

As a kid of maybe five or six I would wonder, if he came only to ‘borrow’ the coal… Dis that mean he planned to return it after they lit their fire?

After Dad had poked around in our fire and gathered a sizable coal onto the spoon, he would hand the spoon back over to Happy and off he’d go running, being very careful not to lose the coal on the way. I watched as he stopped occasionally to blow on the coal so it wouldn’t go out before he reached his house.

When Happy returned home with the spoon, carrying the borrowed coal, it would be placed on the table alongside the fire where it would lay exhausted from carrying the hot coal.

Once the fire was going and producing sufficient heat it was time for the porridge to be cooked. Auntie Joansie would take the spoon and use it to stir the porridge and dish it out for her hungry family to enjoy at Happy’s house.

Lunch and dinner would take on a similar role for the spoon as Aunt would either cook a big pot of soup or a delicious stew and the spoon was swung into action again, stirring and tasting the mix.

Pension day was the best day for the spoon, as Aunt, her partner and some friends would sit around the fire and have a few drinks, yarning about anything and everything and of course the spoon would be there listening and ready to open the beers in its dutiful role.

It wasn’t the most attractive looking spoon – all bent and twisted, I suppose you would even call it ugly, but to the Mitchell family it was like family. It was literally in everything they did.

It was in the mid-sixties and leading up to the 1967 referendum that governments decided that Black fellas living in town camps and reservations had to move. Move to where was anyone’s guess. This meant that Happy’s family, the Mitchells, would have to move.

The day I watched the family pack up their belongings was a very sad day. Not only were they leaving a place they called home but their relationship with the spoon would come to an end. It was lost in the move.

Fast forward fifty years to 2015. It was the year ‘Sugar’ Ray Robinson held the Yumba Reunion in Charleville. Aboriginal families from far and wide were invited to attend, and attend they did! Hundreds of Murris travelled to take part and listen to stories being spun, and the Mitchell family were there to participate.

Zona Martin, my mother, was also in attendance and a legendary story-teller in her own right. One story in particular she told was the story about the spoon and its frequent travels between the Martin and Mitchell households carrying embers. This story was welcomed with delight, and to the newer Mitchell offspring, it created excitement and interest.

Later in the evening everyone was gathered around enjoying each other’s company and yarning on when Ninny, one of Auntie’s daughters, turned up with the spoon in hand crying with joy and happiness and much to the disbelief and surprise of everyone seated there.  She had found the spoon in the dirt and dust of the old campsite!

I can only imagine what the old spoon would be thinking as it was being passed around for everyone to hold and admire… ‘My family has returned after all these years and found me lying in the sand! At least fifty years has gone by and I know Happy will never hold me in his little trembling hands again while we run carrying the coal, but I’m sure glad that my family has come to take me back to where they live, I’ve been so lonely here without them.’

Tiddlo, another one of Auntie’s daughters, told me Ninny has taken ownership of the spoon as she was the one who found it, but assures everyone it has taken pride of place sitting on the mantelpiece in the living room of their Toowoomba home.