Father of sorrows

On a dirt road between Ernabella and Uluru, Ivan Pukatiwara was making urgent hand signals. We didn’t know what he wanted and pulled over. Ivan’s father, Walter, was in the vehicle behind. It turned out that Ivan, who’d been left brain-damaged and wheelchair-bound because of petrol sniffing, just needed to see his dad. Walter put his head in the door and said a few words. Ivan was happy.

Now Ivan, in his late 20s, will be looking in vain. Walter, an elder of central Australia, died on November 10, aged 75. He and his wife, Topsy, always tried to keep Ivan close, even though Walter was frail and found his son a struggle. The tragedy of petrol sniffing hit this family hard: another son, Lindsay, had also sniffed himself into a wheelchair.

At the time – early 2001 – Walter and Topsy took a difficult decision to talk publicly about sniffing. They would be criticised by their own people for bringing “shame” on Mutitjulu, the Aboriginal community located in the shadow of Uluru.

“My sons grew up together; they became men together,” Walter told me. “After that, they didn’t take long to get sick. I was constantly trying to tell them, always trying to stop them [sniffing]. It was only when they became really sick, in wheelchairs, that I could help them. At this time in our lives, our boys should be looking after us, not the other way around. It makes us very sad.”

In the early 1990s, a Canberra bureaucrat came to Mutitjulu to see how Walter and Topsy cared for Ivan and Lindsay. Maggie Kavanagh, then head of the NPY Women’s Council, remembers Walter showing the man his humpy – a timber and tin shack without toilet or running water. The bureaucrat was shocked.

“He couldn’t get over the juxtaposition of seeing how Walter lived, with Uluru and Yulara resort there in the background,” Kavanagh says. Walter got a house in Mutitjulu soon after but Lindsay was becoming angry and unmanageable. He was sent to 24-hour care in Alice Springs.

A traditional owner of the Uluru Kata-Tjuta National Park, Walter and a small group of artists set up a tent at the base of Uluru in 1981 to sell wooden carvings. Walter was a charming, friendly man who liked meeting tourists. This was the start of Maruku Arts and Crafts, which now supports 1000 artists. But many will remember his advocacy for Aborigines with disabilities.

Kavanagh recalls taking Walter to Adelaide in the mid-’90s to lobby the South Australian government for disability services on the lands. Walking along Hindley Street, a bikie appeared out of nowhere and punched Walter to the ground in a spray of racial abuse. He needed 19 stitches. Kavanagh says Walter had no concept of racism: “That was the thing. He was magnanimous. He was very genuine about how he dealt with the world.”

It is not certain what will become of Ivan. Topsy needs care herself so Ivan will probably join Lindsay in Alice Springs. Two weeks ago came news which would have pleased Walter: BP will supply communities with a new lead replacement fuel from January 2005. It has none of the lead which is believed to cause the fraying of nerve-ends in the brain which condemned his sons to the loss of the use of their limbs.

Newshawk: Scott White
Pubdate: 24th November 2004
Source: The Bulletin (Australia)
Author: Paul Toohey
Email: bulletinletters@acp.com.au