Old Man Hermann

Dementia was once considered to be a form of madness. Think of the kings who went “mad” or references to people with “shaking disease.” One can only wonder what 'treatments' were prescribed for the poor bastards.

My friend Tony Garbellini, a man in whose photographic memory the name of each Blue Mountain plant and animal was stored, now can't remember how to eat. He was only in his fifties when the mist of unknowing enveloped him.

As tragic as it is, the names of the plants and animals that Tony has forgotten are recorded elsewhere. There are botanical books and photographic studies to secure each variation and species.

The loss of memory for Aboriginal Elder, Herman Malbunka, is a tragedy of both personal and cultural proportions. Herman, at 71, might be the oldest aboriginal man in the Hermannsburg community now that the ancient Nugget has passed away at 100 years of age. He was born in a humpy and lived in one again when he married Mavis fifty years ago. In the 1960's, he and Mavis again built humpys on their homelands of Ipolera to show the government how committed they were to moving to the traditional country.

All the old people of that era tell me that the forties and fifties were a relatively happy time. The last really bad drought had passed and the community now had fresh water piped in from Koporilja Springs. Vegetables were grown in the gardens and some income was generated by the tanning industry. Men like Herman worked as stockmen.

Industrious German Lutheran missionaries had created a fortress in Hermannsburg against the systemic murder, rape and dispossession of aboriginal people. The triple epidemics of alcohol, welfare and diabetes had not yet stolen the nomadic soul.

I have known old Herman for about five years now and watched his mind become more confused as each year passes. His English was never good but it now acts like barbed wire on the Western Front as he lunges towards finality. Increasingly his thoughts are blurted out like a man struggling for breathe.

I was leading a group of writers a few years back and was asking him about the old days. Suddenly he turned to everyone, profound shock branded on his face  ... it's all gone ... it's all gone!

Through the dementia the old man saw the truth. Herman had witnessed the last remnants of traditional society. He had watched his grandfather, Ezekial Malbunka, lead the men in ceremony. He also knew Ezekial had run almost 200 miles to Alice Springs when the old pastor, Carl  Strehlow, was taken gravely ill. In his more coherent days, Herman explained how Ezekial had sung the sun to stay high in the sky and ran in a kind of elevated state for 2 days.

The world that inhabited this old man's mind will never revolve again. Even if he could pass on the stories, the Aboriginal children now talk on Facebook and flock to see visiting American rap dancers like Bobby Soxers to Frank Sinatra. Meetings with white lawyers have long replaced ceremony that provided spiritual sustenance.

Herman is right. Not only have the stories disappeared but the context in which they gave meaning to traditional people has vanished. Paradoxically, deep culture and mystical belief serves the purpose of organizing and explaining life in the real world. It cannot exist where the fundamentals have shifted so radically to welfare and royalties.

I sat with Herman for hours the other day. I managed to get a little information about his droving days ... too right ... I was proper stockman ... was all I could get. I know he was a big man , a powerful elder and a leader in the Land Rights movement.

I was happy just to sit with this old man from another world. No need to try and talk ... too much talk ... Herman said recently ... well ain't that the truth. His eyes just stare now, at what I don't know. Maybe at the red sandstone bluff in front of us that stands at the head of the Tjilpa Valley. The Tjilpa was a native cat or quoll and is Hermann's Dreaming.

There is a men's place at the end of the valley that he told me about some years ago. I choose to believe, without any evidence, that the old man's mind goes there, perhaps to a story that might now exist only in the fractured gorges of his dementia, mental fragments of Ezekial and the other men stamping the ground and singing through the night.

Hermann smiles occasionally and he mostly seems happy. Especially if I bring a fresh packet of cigarettes. Mavis hides them and only issues one or two at a time. She looks after him as a devoted wife ... I love him ... she told me the other day.

But it's all very sad - I look at Herman. His empty eyes echo the lost world  - it's all gone ... it's all gone.