NOEL FATNOWNA and HIS BOOK: the Making of Fragments of a Lost Heritage"

137 NOEL FATNOWNA AND HIS BOOK: the making of Fragments of a Lost Heritage" Clive Moore University of Queensland FRAGMENTS OF A LOST HERITAGE was launched at the Pacific History Associa tion Conference in Brisbane in 1989 . None present will forget Noel Fatnowna's eloquent oration. He held his academic audience spellbound, playing them theatrically in the Australian version of classic Melanesian Bigman style, totally in control. Fragments is the most reliable and readable account of the several written by descendants of Queensland Kanakas,l and adds considerably to the already extensive literature on the Queensland labour trade (see Moore 1992: 79-86; Munro 1995a). Yet Noel was no academic and his book is not a normal product of academic scholarship.2 It is a spoken text, dictated not written, and it is full of larrikin irreverence and good humour, tempered I always with great pride in his Solomon Islands heritage, and a determination to succeed in Australian society. My copy of Fragments bears two inscriptions which encapsulate my relationship with the book. :The firsl is by Noel: To my friend and brother Clive for your help through the years to tell the story of our people in this book. I owe it all to you and Roger Keesing Your One Talk [Wantok] Noel F. • Noel Fatnowna, Fragments of a Lost Heritage, edited by Roger Keesing. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1989. 138 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95 The second is by Roger Keesing, the editor of the book: Thanks for all your help in this project - It has been a collective effort! Roger 1/7/89 I knew Noel from 1974 until his untimely death in 1991. During those many years of close friendshi p, communication was constant but usually verbal, either face-to-face or by telephone. I treasure the few letters I recei ved from him. None were ever more than 100 words. How then did this man write a 175 page book which is undoubtedly the best account of the Queensland labour trade written by a descendant of the labourers involved? But, first, a word about Noel himself, who was born and bred in the North Queensland sugar town of Mackay. He grew up at Eulberti farm on the Bucasia-Eimeo road in a rural area close to the beach. His father worked for various farmers and his mother did menial chores at the local primary school that their children attended. There were fourteen children but five died in early childhood. Noel was the fifth born and the survivors' childhood days are described in Fragments: a happy time spent in a half-traditional and half-European lifestyle, centred on the family's large bladey-grass houses on the farm, school and church, with plenty of expeditions to the beaches and creeks (Fatnowna 1989: 3-20). Perhaps most important of all was the contact with old Kanaka men and women, the original immigrants. Noel's father, Harry, was a lay-preacher in the Anglican church and later a prime mover in the introduction of Seventh Day Adventism to the Islanders in the 1920s, so the family was always at the centre ofthe Islander community. Today, the Fatnownas are undoubted!y the major South Sea Island family in the Mackay district by sheer numbers and prominence in the local community. Aged twenty-one, Noel joined the local Ambulance as a Bearer, preceded by his brother Norman. For many years they were the only black Ambulance Bearers in Queensland. Noel spent forty-one years in the Queensland Ambulance Service at Noel Fatnowna and His Book 139 Mackay, becoming a Senior Bearer. The Ambulance Service was largely funded through donations: Noel, heavily involved in public relations and the main collector of donations, was known on every farm and by every business. In addition, his work for the church within the South Sea Islander and Aboriginal community, and later as an historian, made him as well known as anyone in the district. At a State level he had long involvement as an adviser to the Queensland government on indigenous health, and he served as Commissioner for Pacific Islanders from 1977 until 1983 (Menzies 1992a, 1992b). In 1982 he was awarded the British Empire Medal. His death in Brisbane on 27 February 1991, after an unsuccessful heart by-pass operation, deprived his family and Australia's South Sea Islander community of a dedicated leader. The book itself is part autobiography but even more it is the history of a Kanaka family spanning three generations. As such it recounts the experiences of Noel's paternal grandfather, K wailiu, from the Rakwane descent group in the Fataleka language area on the east coast of Malai ta, Solomon Islands. Family memory in Queensland and in Malaita says that Kwailiu travelled to Queensland twice: on the first occasion he was kidnapped but on the second he enlisted willingly, though beguiled by a Greek labour trade captain named Tornarus, who remembered him from his earlier trip to Queensland. Little is known of the first period of indenture, except that he served the customary three years, during which he would have received the statutory payment of £6 a year plus food, barracks accommodation and a limited supply of clothes. He returned home to Rakwane and married OrawanifromanotherpartofFataleka. Kwailiure-enlisted while visiting his wife's family in the west as he knew that his own Rakwane peopl.ewould prevent him from returning to Queensland if they could. K wailiu and Ora wani boarded T ornarus's ship with his brother Karai and several other men. Their only son Harry was born at Mackay in 1897. Karai eventually returned to Malaita but Kwailiu never did. Sometime in the 1890s the Rakwane elders sent Fikui, from the senior male line, to Queenland to search out Kwailiu and persuade him to go home. Fikui enlisted on a ship travelling to Bundaberg, presumably working there for three years, then found Kwailiu at Mackay and stayed with him for several years. 140 Journal of Pacific Studies, Vol.18, 1994/95 When the mass deportation of Kanakas from Queensland began in 1906 (Corris 1972), Fikui went horne. Kwailiu promised to return eventually but felt that he had to stay longer to lead his people during the difficul t deportation years. Oral history records that Kwailiu and family did try to return but were involved in a shipwreck. The Rakwane thought that the entire family had drowned and although they waited until all deported Malaitans had returned in 1908, eventually they gave up hope. Seven decades later, Kwailiu's descendants sought out the other half of the family in Malaita, which Noel describes in the chapter entitled "Search for my People". When his parents-in-law and his own pare~ts passed away, he says: a great empty feeling came over us. We were now alone, except for our children. It was a terrible feeling. Our parents were dead. It was they who had kept the old ways alive, and taught us what we knew about our people, our customs, our homes, our roots. What would become of our children, of us? Would we someday be just a lotof white blackfellas in Australia? (1989: 57). What complicated Noel's eventual search for his family in Malaita, as will be shown, was that Kwailiu had his name changed to Fatnowna. More correctly the name Fatnowna should be "Fatanowna" or "Fata no hoona", meaning "to lead in talk" or "to ask to corne" in the Fataleka language. Fikui gave him the name when he left Australia. ROCER KEESING, the editor of Noel's book, was a noted anthropologist of Malaita (from where Noel's forebears carne) who also died unexpectedly, in 1993.3 In his Introduction, Roger described his first meeting with Noel: Noel greeted me warmly. Five minutes later he had a box of papers and photographs on the floor in front of us, and was talking excitedly about a decadeofresearch on the history of his family and people in Mackay District. He was trying to wri te a book, he told me. But how, he asked me, could he, a man with a limited education and no experience in writing a book, put it Noel Fatnowna and His Book 141 onto paper? How could he produce a book from the materials he had dug out from Islanders and white families, from the experiences of his people as told by the elders-remnants of Kanaka days-in his childhood, from the experiences of his own family, caught between two worlds? (Fatnowna 1989: ix). Roger Keesing went on to explain the manner in which Fragments was prepared for publication. The present paper is intended as an expansion of that explanation. The book itself is a tribute to Noel's deterrniI1ation to write the history of his people for posterity, and to Roger Keesing for using his great academic skills to ensure that Noel's dream carne true, but there are aspects of it that require further explanation. As readers are inclined to take the printed word for granted, believing the veracity of the words, they seldom question how a book was assembled. This is particularly so with any edited manuscript, but of particular interest in the Pacific where, especiall y in earlier decades, much of what appears under the names of Pacific Islanders was 'ghosted' and even substantially altered by expatriate writers - in much the same way that the fine hand of a journalist is behind many an autobiography of prominent sporting personalities. There are also wider issues concerning the relationship between ethnographers and historians and their informants.

Load more