mudunama kundana wandaraba jarribirri: Judy Watson

Old Mum had another family by then with Poddy Daly: Dinny, Donny, Danny and Amy. Donny was taller than me, with great, long legs, and he was my special mate. We ran races and he would be so far ahead of me, he had to stop and wait for me to catch up. Then off he would run again. Old Mum and her kids were with us as we went fishing and finding bush foods. Old Mum showed us how to find yams and dig them out of the soft soil of the riverbank as well as the berries and manna on eucalyptus leaves. One time my Mum must have wanted Sugarbag (wild honey). Old Mum said, 'Gracie, look on the ground under the trees, if you see little bits of black wax the Sugarbag will be up there.' Old Mum climbed the tree with her tomahawk, she cut into the branch and pulled out the honeycomb and put it in the billycan. My mum must have had my brother Ken by then, he was five years younger than me. While Old Mum was up the tree, her two hunting dogs found a goanna and chased it. It climbed the tree and ran up Old Mum's legs, under her dress. Ken and I would talk about it and other adventures over the years. We would laugh and laugh about that goanna with its sharp claws climbing up Old Mum's legs. We would be yelling 'Yaki! Yaki!' We came to live in West Street, Mount Isa, as we had to attend school. Our house was not far from the bank of the Leichhardt River. We made cubbyhouses in the trees, finding witchetty grubs and edible knobs on the bloodwood trees. You would bite them open and there would be a small grub that would later turn into a moth. We had our own tomahawk and made steps up the trunks of the trees. The Leon children played Cowboys and Indians with us. We crawled along the little gullies on the flats. As I was the oldest child in that group, I made sure we were careful where we went into caves and over hills into Breakaway Creek. Mount Isa was a safe place for everyone in those days. My brother Keith (Kit) and I say now that we lived and grew up in the best of times. Many years later, when we had our own children, we would drive out to some of the stations in the Northern Territory. Uncle George, who owned Waite River, asked some of the local Aboriginal women to show us how to find honey ants. We had not ever seen or heard of them before. We piled into a couple of utes and drove quite a way to some trees. The women sat down and started digging with their hands and digging sticks. They dug quite a way into the ground until they saw traces of the ants. Down they dug again, and there were the honey ants. These ants had abdomens swollen with honey. Apparently they were used to feed the other ants who would tap on their abdomen to extract the liquid. We were told to hold the legs of the ants and bite the abdomen, it was a very sweet taste. Keith (Kit) Isaacson, Mum's youngest son, said Grace was just a hard working woman. In the early days she cooked for the churches and fetes, all done in the old wood stove. Two tables would be filled with cakes and sweets, toffees, coconut ice, toffee apples by the case. Joyce Watson as a teenager, West Street, Mount Isa 1949 Joyce Watson and Grace Isaacson, Burrum Heads, late 1990s Donald and Judy Watson, Mundubbera 1960 Judy, Margy and Donald Watson, Acacia Ridge 1961 OPPOSITE Waanyi Country 85