SPINIFEX FAIRIES
“ … The Pitjantjatjara Lands are full of the four M’s – missionaries, mercenaries, madmen and misfits …”
According to my observations, Central Australia’s spinifex fairies are predominantly male.
Some females of the species do exist, of course, but these tend to be classified differently, as “do-gooders” or “bleeding hearts.”
The uninitiated should be informed as to what exactly constitutes a Spinifex Fairy.
Out on the often isolated Aboriginal communities of Central Australia there emerges in time a certain type of white person who, for one reason or another, desperately needs to be accepted by Aborigines as being one of their kind in spirit – not an ordinary old white fella like the rest of the mob, but one perfectly in tune with the tribal man, one who instinctively shares their assumed affinity with nature, sharing their sense of brotherhood, of cultural empathy.
With others, there is a more mercenary agenda, as this account will later reveal.
In reality, underneath all the misguided benevolence, the Aboriginal people of Central Australia amusingly regard their spinifex fairies as eccentrics and, while paying lip service to their patronage, exploit them ruthlessly for every dollar, cigarette and gift of tucker (food) they can extract.
Spinifex fairies are, in the main, good hearted people who fervently believe they hold the secrets to racial reconciliation and social integration. Instead of adopting the typical superior pose of the dominant European, they step down to the Aboriginal level in hygiene, morality, values, attitudes, and anything else that might be necessary in order to achieve acceptance.
Spinifex fairies can be teachers, community advisors, anthropologists, medical staff, tradesmen – in fact, anyone who works on an Aboriginal settlement or homeland in Central Australia.
Often they are individuals with personality problems, social misfits, victims of failed romances, those afflicted with an identity crisis.
Such people firmly believe that they share a “very special relationship” with the Aborigines, that they are the natural intermediary between the tribal people and the highly complex European society.
Consequently, they often find themselves drafting voluminous submissions to the government for funding all sorts of irrelevant and fanciful objects, acting as a liaison between Aboriginal offenders and the police, or negotiating for cheap vehicles, etc.
The opportunistic Aboriginal mind freely exploits such fools, always giving their victims the impression that they are special and indispensable, and even, if desperate, convincing the gullible white bloke that he is irreplaceable. Naturally, insecure types, those lacking a sense of identity, etc., lap this up as nectar for the soul and continue to give, give, give.
Across the vast Pitjantjatjara lands some years ago a young female community advisor – anxious to ingratiate herself with community leaders – fell into the trap of issuing each man an L.P.O. (local purchasing order) to the tune of $50 per week, a ploy designed to buy each man’s loyalty. This illegal arrangement worked well for a time, up to the point when one of her lackeys decided to insist on a two week’s advance. When she refused, he stalked her house at night, hurling rocks and threatening to kill her.
After sunrise, with a police escort, she removed herself and belongings from the community, and her assailant was apprehended, charged and ultimately gaoled.
One of the weirdest specimens was a top-ranking Lutheran missionary we will call Harold.
Usually entrenched for most of the year in a conservative Adelaide suburb with his wife and daughters, the cleric travelled annually to the Pitjantjatjara tribal lands to re-discover his “special relationship” with the dusky brethren.
Firstly, soon after his arrival, the missionary shed all his Eurpean clothing, adorned himself in a nappy-like loincloth (known to the Aborigines as a ‘cock rag’), knotted a grubby red cloth around his forehead and, with his ridiculously white body bared to the sun, he gingerly tip-toed around the rough terrain, uttering many an “ouch” as the sharp, hot stones pricked his uncalloused feet.
Harold delighted in telling his fellow Europeans that he had been “fully initiated” into the tribe, was a true “blood brother”, and enjoyed a “special relationship” with the people.
“The blackfellas like to see a white man like myself stepping down to their level,” he assured everyone. “All the usual barriers are removed when they see me dressed like this.”
One afternoon while driving along a bush track towards Mimili, alongside me an old tribal man, Minyarri, we spotted ahead of us the peculiar vision of a pallid, undressed Harold frantically waving us to stop and pick him up.
Old Minyarri ducked down below the Toyota’s dashboard , hoping to avoid detection by the unorthdox cleric.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Don’t you want to pick him up?”
“Nah,” the old man frowned. “Him proper silly bugger in him head. Keep going!”
Later the old fellow muttered: “That silly old fella make me feel properly shamed.”
In 1985 the “Centralian Advocate” journalist, Alan Wauchope, wrote of a Buddhist priest, the Venerable Tulki Rinpoche, who visited Ayers Rock and declared that the founder of his faith lived INSIDE the monolith.
The late journalist revealed that Padma Sambhara, who founded the Tibetan branch of Buddhism, was the spiritual inhabitant of Uluru.
Rinpoche told everyone he was the 13th incarnation of the head lama of the Zuru monastery in Tibet.
At a seminar conducted at the Hamilton Downs Youth Camp, north of Alice Springs, in early 1985, Rinpoche lectured on philosophical matters to devout listeners.
Wauchope wrote: “Apparently, after the seminar, Rinpoche visited Uluru to pay his respects to Sambhara. Rinpoche said that according to legend, the Buddhist founder of the Zuru organisation left Tibet thousands of years ago for a distant land where he intended to teach Buddhist law. Theland was located in the middle of the sea and its inhabitants were black. Sambhara, regarded as immortal, is said to live there still, in a red or coffee-coloured rock which corresponds in location and description to Ayers Rock.
Padma’s rock was associated with rainbows. Uluru’s alleged owners, the Anangu, also believed that a “great water serpent, Wanampi, who lives UNDER Uluru, is able to rise up into the air in rainbow form.
Wauchope reported: “Rinpoche pointed out that some principles of yoga are concerned with the taming of the inner serpent and that Padma was a master serpent of power …”
A naïve spinifex fairy of the most dangerous variety set out early in her career to accost all the young Aboriginal men in the community as her special friend.
The 23-year-old said: “I think it’s a shame that the young Aboriginal girls run off with white men, if they can, but the young black men rarely get a chance to get a white girl friend.”
Following this rationale, she freely fraternised with teenaged boys during working hours at the clinic and also invited them into her house to socialise of an evening.
However, her plan went awry when one evening she ran dishevelled and screaming through the unlit streets towards her white neighbours, begging to be admitted as she wanted to phone the police.
Apparently, during her socialising with the teenagers, a group of young men, partially inebriated by her illegal grog, tried to rape her in her own kitchen.
When the police arrested the culprits, explosions of anger erupted from the parents; they claimed the nurse has blatantly encouraged the boys, and she had created the circumstances for the sexual assault to occur.
Fathers armed with spears and boomerangs stalked the paths and by-ways and Aboriginal mothers, sisters and girl friends joined them with fighting sticks, calling on the nurse to come outside, to show herself and take her punishment.
To avoid injury, the young white girl was secretly whisked away in the wee small hours and the community clinic was closed for more than a month while a male replacement was enlisted to carry on the good work.
A white male nurse based at a Pitjantjatjara community out in the desert acquired the status of a spinifex fairy when he openly befriended a large group of teenage petrol-sniffing addicts, insisting he was their special friend.
Mostly, petrol sniffers do not eat much and can quickly become physically debilitated. The nurse kept in his house a large bag of oranges. He openly encouraged the sniffers to knock on his door at any time during the night should they require something to eat.
When this occurred, which it did with nightly regularity, an orange was placed on each eager hand before the door was quickly shut.
This behaviour appeared to be wonderfully humanistic until the male nurse confidentially explained to friends that every time he was summoned after hours, he could rightfully claim one hour’s overtime – thus his encouragement of the nocturnal interruptions and his large stock of oranges.
“I think I’m being very fair,” he rationalised when challenged. “The sniffers are hungry. I give them something to eat. At the same time I can claim lots of overtime, and the money will go towards the house I’m buying in Alice Springs.”
B.J.C.
