Meeting the family

I arrived in Broome a couple of days ago.   This trip has been a long time in the planning (and de-planning and re-planning).  It took about six months from the time I was first offered the job until I actually got here.  The family was waiting for me at Broome airport and the kids gave me a big hug and asked me what they should call me.

There was a family wedding on the beach in Broome the night I got there.  It was a very small event and I’m sure some of the family thought I was some nosy tourist taking photos.  They were very nice about it and very friendly.  They all wanted to give me a rundown on who was who, which was very complicated because they use the aboriginal relationship naming system.   I was trying to work out how a five year old could be someone’s mother.  For women, your sisters’ children become your children and they call you mother.  For men, it’s your brothers’ children who call you father.  Therefore some (but not all) of your cousins become your brother or sister.  If you have much older siblings, you can actually be born a mother.

The reception was at the Broome Fishing Club and since the groom was Indian, there was a huge spread of  Indian food provided by the groom’s mother.  Dessert was pavlova and trifle and chocolate cake.  It was very low key affair, but had all the traditional wedding touches like the throwing of the bouquet, the cutting of the cake and the first dance.

There is a huge extended family, but there is a rift between one side of the family that is pro-development and the other side which is pro-conservation.  So a lot of the family didn’t turn up in protest (they must be the protesting side of the family).

The family is full of crazy characters and prominent aboriginal activists.  I was told the story of a relative who won the Order of Australia and promptly dropped dead from cancer a year later.  She had never heard of the Order of Australia and didn’t know what the big whoop was.  Others are on the boards of various aboriginal councils.

Everyone at the reception was dripping in the most exquisite pearls.   Most of the male members of the family had worked in the pearling industry and one of the daughters runs a big pearl shops in town.