What I was trying to do with The Night Parrots

Pastor Carl Strehlow's children: back l-r Karl, Friedrich, Rudolf, Martha nursing baby Theodor, Herman on her right. State Library SA [B42432]

This year I hope to publish my novel about the journey of Lutheran missionary Carl Strehlow and his 14-year-old son Theo from Hermannsburg Mission to Horseshoe Bend in 1922. Here is a working piece I wrote to try and help me focus my thoughts.









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​This story draws on the life of Carl Strehlow (Martin Gerlach), who lived with the Aranda/Arrernte people, tried (with mixed success) to protect them from the worst of the white world (good), used them as station labour (bad), tried to convert them (bad), taught them (good and bad), but slowly learnt the importance of their customs, studying Aranda traditions, later living with regrets (or at least ambivalence) about his role at Hermannsburg Mission. Strehlow was the first (and most broad-minded) Western Aranda anthropologist. His extensive research and writings about Aranda language are now mostly forgotten. For example, his Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral-Australien (1907) was ignored because of a mix of anti-mission sentiment, the effects of Nazism on Australian anthropology and ‘Australian hostility towards the German Lutherans of Central Australia …’ (Kenny, 2013) But Strehlow was a fierce defender of the Aranda people – so admired they named him ‘Ingkata’, or ‘Father’. The Night Parrots is also about the pastor’s relationship with his son, Theo (Benno) and his three-part (Australian/German/Aranda) life. Father and son found a way to exist (sometimes uncomfortably, sometimes paternalistically) within (or at least between) different cultures. Theo spent his life trying to help and further understand the Aranda. He grew up Aboriginal, his friends and ‘mothers’ were Aboriginal, he spoke Aranda, learnt their stories, became part of their culture. 
 
Language
My protagonist, fifty-year-old Martin Gerlach, is a German Lutheran missionary. Transplanted to the Northern Territory, he comes to see commonality – humans, their needs, their weaknesses, dreams and ambitions. He senses the importance of language and starts (as did Carl Strehlow) a trilingual dictionary (German/English/Aranda). In the words of Kate Grenville: ‘His friendship with Tagaran was not a list of objects, or the words for things eaten or not eaten, thrown or not thrown. It was the slow constructing of a map of a relationship.’ An uneasy, unsure progression of thoughts becomes word, and language. Martin begins an Aranda translation of the New Testament – a way of sharing his culture. But realises, in return, the limits of this mindset. He starts studying and translating Aranda songs, stories, charms and ceremonies. This is the starting point for the novel. The degree to which two worlds might (or might not) come together. The friction. The resistance.
 
Landscape
Over tens of thousands of years indigenous views of landscape (the Western Desert, the Finke) have manifest in story, song, dance and art. White culture offered new explanations (from Charles Darwin to Beethoven, Rousseau to Goethe), attempting a graft that never really took. The Enlightenment bled into Lutheranism, and a missionary mindset that included cattle empires, station kitchens, pottery workshops, Aboriginal stockman and domestics propping up an ill-fitting cultural paradigm. I was hoping to show how, over time, harsh Australian landscapes resisted this European mindset. The journey along the Finke strips away Martin Gerlach’s beliefs, values, clothes, body. At which point he understands his efforts have been wasted. As Patrick White’s Voss discovered when facing the same challenges: ‘To make yourself, it is also necessary to destroy yourself.’    
 
Complexity
I wanted to tell a complex, often uncomfortable, story that might resonate today. Silas, for example, an Aranda man brought up in the mission system, still guided by his ancestors. He understands the ‘old stories’ (as described by Strehlow) but is a Lutheran convert, obsessed with preaching the Bible. He cares about his own people, but also about his mission family. He is torn. But so are the white characters. Martin – only now, at the end of his life, unsure if he’s done more damage than good. Benno, brought up with the stories (and opposing values) of each culture, eventually becoming an ethnographer and continuing his father’s work (but also doubts).
 
Time
The book moves between 1922 (Martin’s journey along the Finke), the world of the mission (starting in 1894), Benno’s life as an adult, the story of his lost son and grandson, his siblings in Leipzig, and the world of the Aranda. I’ve tried to make time bleed, non-causal, little circles of life, death and rebirth reflecting black and white views, but also, the limitations of white history.
 
The capacity for misunderstanding (and forgiveness)
Theo Strehlow was trusted by the Aranda elders. He was given (for safe keeping) a selection of sacred objects, and when these were sold after his death in 1978, controversy raged. In an attempt to raise money for a research foundation he sold images of sacred ceremonies to German magazine Stern (never thinking they’d be seen in Australia). When they were republished in The Australian Women’s Weekly, Strehlow was devastated. I’m portraying an early twentieth century mindset. I’m not saying it was all good or bad, but I’m asking my readers to think about the issues, without preconceived notions. Also, the book is a white telling. The key players are German/Lutheran (the Strehlow/Gerlach children left in Germany were a perfect chance to cross wires) or cattle farmers and their families. The Aboriginal characters live between worlds. The non-intrusive, contextual portrayal owes a lot to the historical record, of people living on the margins. This story couldn’t be told without reference to them. I don’t claim to know their thoughts and feelings, but I can sense the way in which they were jammed between black and white. As Patrick White said of Voss (Carl/Martin, Theo/Benno): ‘His legend will be written down, eventually, by those who are troubled by it.’
 
Kenny, A (2013) The Aranda’s Pepa

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