Stories

Margaret the Donkey (1984)

Now there was a humbug!! A number one humbug!!  Somehow or other she came to Strelley from Yandyarra.  I think she belonged to one of the Taylor mob.  I can't remember who brought her across but I do remember how she wandered down from Top Camp and made the school her second home.

She was into everything.  The most curious animal I have ever known.  Even more curious than the goats we had at Warralong and Mijijimaya.  She loved picking up things in her big sloppy mouth and walking off with them, just keeping ahead of whoever was chasing her.  What a tease!

She could also open doors by putting her slobbering mouth around the door knob, clenching it in her big yellow teeth and turning her head almost 180 degrees to open it up.

One morning she decided to visit the radio room where Inga talked to the Marrnju teachers at Callawa and Lalla Rookh.  Gwen often worked there as well with Monty preparing his Nyangumarta lessons for the Outcamp schools. Slowly the doorknob turned, it was gently pushed open and in moved the old grey shadow, Margaret herself.  The carpet muffled the clip clop of her hooves as she quietly moved across the room while the others, unaware of her presence, went on with their work.

Delicately she lifted up a file of Nyangumarta worksheets from a nearby table and then beat a hasty retreat through the door to gallop back across the flat towards Top Camp. The donkey express delivering the mail to Nyaparumili camp.

Out the door rushed Gwen 'Oy Oy Oy, Margaret bring back that file."  But too late, as Nyangumarta worksheets spread across the spinifex all the way from the workshop to Top Camp while that old white fella carpenter fell about laughing.

The only donkey I knew who could read Nyangumarta.

(J. Bucknall  August 1999)