Thelma James Crummy, better known as Aunty Thelma, took some time to chat on her back verandah with Sara Browne. With the Sleeping Lizard nearby, Aunty Thelma shared some of her story that stretches far and wide but always comes back to Lismore.

This is traditional country here, so it’s been home forever, generations. Our ancestor’s dreamtime story is the Sleeping Lizard over there and I won’t live in Goonellabah, it’s always been North Lismore or South Lismore, where I’m close by the lizard. That’s been something I choose.

A lot of North Lismore people did choose it too but over time people have moved on with their children. A lot of old Northies are still over there. That’s why there’s hassle with the flood business because once it’s home, it’s home, that’s all there is to it.

Living close to the lizard is a whole connection to country, connection to the people of this land, connection to people who have spent a life time living here - whether they’ve come from elsewhere or from here - they’ve made this their home and had children, grandchildren. That community, going through the rough and smooth and everything in between, and floods are always our biggest issue here. It was always a case of – somebody else needed more help than you needed. There were a lot of women who outlived their husbands, so along Terania Street and all around North Lismore, there were a lot of widows.

After one flood, I think it was 54, the government helped raise houses but prior to that, only when a big one came, they’d be all caught in their houses. All the young fells used to make boats out of a bit of tin, bend it over, patch it up, put tar in it to stop leaking and then go and rescue them. Or take food to them. The tinny army has been going on long before now. The railway line has always been the passageway from north, south, east. Many times, we walked along the rail line over to the showground which was higher ground, in this last incident it wasn’t. But that’s what you’d do, run across. You had no fear when your big brothers were with you but if I had to walk across by myself it would be very slow. I had two older brothers. We had two little sisters that passed while we were only little and then three older sisters who were a generation ahead of us.

My niece and nephew came to live with us so it was always a house full of five children. Being over at North, there were a lot of Aboriginal people and a lot went out to work with the Italians on the farms all week and then come back to have time in town. Dad would often help with transport, go for a Sunday drive and take people back out to the farms.

I just did the Italian festival last weekend and that brought back a lot of memories of how people lived. We’d have the baker drop our bread off and the milkman came, we’d put a billy can on the front steps and he’d fill it up, before bottles came. There was an American chap who came over, he made friends with my dad and worked on the council. He would sometimes leave a bottle of Schweppes cordial on the front steps. Quite often we’d wake up to a big box of fruit or vegies that the blokes who worked out on the farms had left on the front verandah. No money exchanged, the free economy.

My mum always had a bed for people, always had a meal for somebody, she wouldn’t let anybody do without. Her saying was ‘what goes around, comes around.’ Even if you think you deserve to have something but you may not receive something, perhaps your children or your children’s children will receive some kindness in return. It's very much like karma.

I just had someone ask me to come up to Goonellabah School. I get a lot of those requests. I loaned that chap my artefacts – the ones that were left – wooden ones. The woven baskets that I’d had for years, I just couldn’t keep them after the flood. There was a black mould that came with this flood, it was too dangerous, it could get in your lungs, it had a smell with it. We just had to get rid of all those things.

People I hadn’t seen for years came to help us, we were back in here in six weeks, even though it was up to waist high on the first floor and we lost everything. It didn’t take very long before people helped us and it’s been good being back in our own place. I don’t know how other poor people survived it.

In the floods many years ago, we all went to the showground and it was like party time, not a wild time. The men would make a fire away from the pavilions. If someone had a music box of any sort that would be on. Kids could ride their bikes up and down inside the pavilions. And when night came, we were all snug and dry in a little pavilion of our own.

I was born in 1952 so I’m 72 now. I started off at Richmond River School for kindergarten and then the population grew so they decided that we needed more primary schools so they built one at Lismore High School and the one at Albert Park. We were the first group of children that went to Albert Park School. I then came back to Richmond River for high school and left in year three (year nine) because that was the time when most of us left.

I was keen to go to Sydney because my niece and nephew who had lived with us all those years, they had moved down there the year before. It was so exciting. Within three days, I had a job at Coles at Crows Nest and have worked ever since really. Eventually, I came back this way and had a little girl and then we went to the territory. We got married up there, my first husband Michael. We loved it at Tennant Creek in NT. It was a wonderful place. There was no tv, a lot of social life.

We’d go the drive-in movies, take a picnic tea, kids would play, come home about 11 but because the days were so hot, you enjoyed being out in the cool. There was so much life there that we were involved in. Then it was time to bring the girls home and mum was getting older.

At that time, people went there with the purpose of earning money and then finding themselves in Adelaide or Cairns or Townsville and building a home. It was the kind of place where you had a short-term stay but made the most of it. I think that’s the type of characters we were. We’d travel 45 kilometres to have a swim on a Sunday but we’d stay all day, a whole group of us, mining blokes and their families. Set up the barbeque, lay on the lilos, quite a few of the kids learned how to swim there. It was a good social place, a lot of caring. There were a lot of Yugoslavian people working there at the time. This was about 1987.

Somehow, I came to teaching when I came back. My husband stayed up there a bit to sell our business, the girls were off to school so by about 10 in the morning I’d be thinking, what do I do now? So, I went downtown and joined a NOW course – new opportunities for women – it was the second year they’d run it. The idea was to get you skilled up for the workforce. We were quite happy having a good time learning about maths again and building fences out at the TAFE on Keen Street, fixing up cars. The organizer told me there was an interview and they wanted me to go along and I got the job. It was with the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, in clerical and going out to do liaison.

I didn’t really want to work, I wanted to stay and have fun with the women I was learning with. After I finished that, it was a grant for women in the workforce at that time, I went down there to the CAE sticky beaking and asking about courses. They suggested teaching at uni which I’d never thought of. I signed up the Wednesday and the following Monday I went to uni, it was just that fast. It was the NRCAE as it was known then. I did five years part-time. My marriage broke down then and my mother ended up in a nursing home. We got flooded out again in North Lismore in Pine Street. I really went through the mill so if it wasn’t for that course…I suppose I had something to focus on. I took my time over it. I met so many nice people there too and the lecturers – I either liked them or I told them off – one or the other.

I had always been in schools, as soon as my eldest daughter started. I thought, how dare they think they can just take your baby and you have nothing to do with them? In those days that was the case, you’d leave them at the gate, come and pick them up at 3. She came home one day from kindergarten with a black eye. It was in the days of Monkey, the show with Kungfu, somebody was playing Monkey and they connected with her eye. I thought, nope, that’s not going to happen in school. I said I’ll sit up the back of the room or sit outside but I’m not going home. So, that was the first part of that kind of work, I did volunteering and programs, craft classes with kids, helping them with reading, teaching them how to swim, just a natural progression.

The principal up at Tennant Creek had a unique skill for remembering people’s name, everyone he’d met. He could connect families in no time. He was a lovely man. He asked me when I was going to sign up for teaching. I did some courses, I was always learning. We had a bike shop when we lived up there. I could change a bike tyre in no time at all, I knew all the parts of bikes and mowers and things like that. When I was little, I was always outside under the car with dad, passing the screwdriver, chopping wood. I could split wood like nobody’s business. You had to learn how to look at the grain of the wood. The boys were quite happy to let me do it. I didn’t know I was letting them off it. I loved chopping the wood and stacking it up. I loved gardening. For pocket money, I used to mow lawns or go up to the shop on my bike for Mrs Mac and get a shilling. I’d only buy one little iceblock and put the rest aside.

I resigned from teaching. Teaching changed. It wasn’t about teaching it was always about policies and always trying to fit square pegs in round holes. There was no flexibility to be able to jump. You could be teaching a concept of something but in anything I did, I always bought in culture. If we had a school fun day, I would still do culture. Even if it was maths or English or music, I would bring in culture. But in the end, it just got too hard. Hardly any of the young people know the old concepts. I went out to teach a song with some lovely colleagues, an old song like Click Go The Shears for example. There are words like ringer and jumbuck and tuckerbag, we’d try to teach them what it's about and where it came from. It's just a case of learn it and that’s it.

Traditional types of things will last forever whereas other things are one minute wonders. I still believe that if you only teach what you like then you’re not being fair to your students. It’s the same with parents. They might say, I don’t like religion so my kids are not going to church. But then you’re not giving them the opportunity to make their own choices. If you teach all round, they can make their own choices when they’re older.

Aunty Thelma James and Aunty Marie Delbridge holding a photo of their ancestors from the Widjabul-Wyabul peoples at Banyam Baigham, North Lismore,

Nov 2019

Spirituality is a part of my life, very much. That comes through the Dreamtime stories. The Dreamtime stories are wonderful because they’re a way for us to know about our lore and most of the concepts are about being good, caring for others, being respectful, taking pride in what you do. If you go out to get fruit off a tree, don’t destroy the tree, just take the fruit. You should always leave a bit on the tree for the birds. It teaches you about the whole concept of sustainable life and that is why Aboriginal people’s culture survived such a long time.

I don’t like law or justice because it's one rule for the rich and one for the poor. Whereas aboriginal lore - you’ve done the crime, you pay for it. It’s not changing. It was like this for thousands of years and it's going to be like this for the next thousands of years.

Change will happen, things have changed now. When it comes to the White Australia Policy and assimilation and all that, our culture was so fragmented – not all totally lost but fragmented. There was so much brainwashing that it was a bad thing.

If you went to hospital, they would try to wash the brown or black skin off you…with disinfectant or with the good old soap which mum used to use to scrub the old wooden table…things like that. It was just so horrific. Later on, when I was about 16 or 17, everyone went to the beach to become suntanned. The bikini was out, we all had a pair, we all wanted to be brown. It's funny you can look back in history and you can see those timelines and think where do we want to be in another 15 or 20 years?

I think if we were to turn the tv news off every night, or for even one week and go out camping. Mick and I just went out to Moree, you come back regenerated. Thoughts weren’t going mad in your head…just ‘oh this is lovely this sun’ or ‘this spa is beautiful’. It gives your brain a rest and I think that’s what we all need more of. In our day, Dad would go to work. When he and Mum got together, there was an agreement that she didn’t have to go to work after all she did with the older girls, the first part of the family. He worked from Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday were family days. Saturdays we had sport and Sunday we went on family picnics or the beach or went for a ride to find the fruit trees. 

On school days we’d get home, change our clothes, have something to eat, go out and play but when dad came home, we’d be back in to help and then sat down and ate together. In that time, we were asked about our day. So, if you had any problems at school or if anything was bugging you, a problem shared was a lighter load. Some poor children now have depression and all the other things that are happening. We shared what we had and laughed about what we might do to that kid tomorrow and forgot about it by tomorrow because we’d already dealt with it.

You could never do anything in Lismore without Dad knowing. If you rode your bike across the bridge, he’d say ‘you rode your bike across the bridge’, yes dad. Or if we rode through the servo to cut the corner. Yes, dad. His name was Charlie Crummy. A wonderful man. He was a bachelor for a long time before Mum came along and therefore, he and Gran lived together. There were a lot of nieces and nephews, he’d become the patriarch. His sister lived up the road and she had a big family of grandchildren, they lived up the road on Currie Street and they were down on Boorie Street. That was what it was like in those days. If the kids mucked up, she’d say ‘go down and tell Uncle Charlie you need a hiding.’ So, he’d come home and there’d be a kid sitting on the front step, ‘Gran said I need a hiding.’ Dad knew how to keep a straight face. When I was teaching, I found it hard to keep a straight face, I learned after a while.