Two years ago, the parish of Balgo in the Kimberley region of Western Australia celebrated its Golden Jubilee, recalling the consecration of St Theresa’s Church on 16 May 1965.
During the celebrations, community and church leaders painted artworks recalling the history of the parish and the Old Mission where many people had grown up.
One artist – Magdalene Tijiliarn Nakamara Lee, known as Magda Lee – told the story of her birth through the painting ‘My Birth Story at Old Mission’, and through the story which followed, originally told to Magda by her aunty Teresa.
My mother was due to have me and was due to fly out on the plane to the hospital.
In the evening she had these labour pains so she told her mum to go with her, away from the Mission. That’s when she started having these pains.
They were both down the creek bed when she gave birth to me. That’s when they had to get some ant hill to put on my head. They crushed it and put it on my head and some black stuff to keep the flies and mozzies away. My grandmother went up and dug a hole with some leaves at the bottom.
My mum had to feed me for a while and then had to leave me when I went to sleep in the hole with my head sticking out of the ground. And they left me there and went back to the Mission pretending that they went out to collect food and fire sticks for the night.
In the morning, my aunty Theresa Mosquito and her husband went along looking for mussels and crabs and my aunty heard a baby cry when the sun was up. My aunty heard a baby and she yelled out to old man and said, ‘there’s four dingoes watching her’. So he had to chase the dingoes with his boomerangs and then my aunty came and got me out of the ground and took me down to the river to wash me.
I was covered with ants and was crying. She had a little boy in her coolamon and she took a blanket and wrapped me up and took me to the hospital.
The nuns went down to the camp to see how my mum was so she came out of her humpy that was made out of spinifex and grass and trees. They saw her and asked her what happened to your tummy. She told them she had no baby so they took her to the hospital.
They sat her down in the little corner room called the chapel and it had a picture of Saint Mary Magdalene.
Speaking to The Record Magazine, Ms Lee explained that her grandmother had been a midwife who had helped her daughter with other babies.
“She didn’t want her daughter to get on a plane and have the baby in a hospital, so this was why she hid me in the creek bed,” Ms Lee said.
The placing of an anthill on a baby’s head, she added, was a traditional way to protect it, since a baby has soft spots, called fontanelles, on its head.
Ms Lee said she had spent her early years at the Old Mission in Balgo, but left at the age of five to live with her family.
“I went to live with my mum and dad, who were looking after donkeys and sheep on some land nearby,” she said.
From pages 14 to 15 from Issue 8: ‘Aboriginal’ of The Record Magazine