“Guritjaluk must not marry Andrew. Milingimbi too far!”

This post is a work in progress. Please send me your feedback! Much of this is speculative since the event in question is known primarily from a short handwritten comment in a museum register. Note that I am for the most part trying to understand the life experiences of Guritjaluk and her husband Birrinydjawuy. I am not exploring missionary history in its particulars. We hope to bring the message stick to the attention of living descendants in line with the priorities of the Australian Message Stick Project. Since 2020, the project has succeeded in connecting seven previously unprovenanced message sticks with their contemporary owners, out of approximately 800 that survive in collecting institutions. We hope this will be the eighth!

In about 1927, three Mawng men approached the South Goulburn Island Mission carrying a message stick. It was roughly carved with eleven straight lines along its flat surface and one deep notch in the middle extending into a line across the other side. Upon presenting the object to the mission staff, the delegation of men announced its meaning: “Guritjaluk must not marry Andrew. Milingimbi too far!”.¹

Guritjaluk was one of several young women who sought work at the mission station as a domestic helper. Raised speaking the Mawng language, she would eventually gain proficiency in Yolngu Matha and probably other Indigenous languages of the region. Even today, Goulburn Island remains one of the most multilingual environments in the world.² She was also among the first cohort to be educated at the Methodist mission established about a decade earlier, where she would acquire knowledge of Christianity, learn English and become literate. It is unsurprising that the Methodists employed her at the mission after she completed her schooling.³ Culturally and linguistically competent individuals such as Guritjaluk were rare bridges between two mutually curious worlds that were becoming increasingly intertwined across the Top End in the 1920s.

It is uncertain when Andrew first met Guritjaluk. A mainland man who spoke the Gupapuyngu variety of Yolngu Matha, he would have been a regular visitor to the Goulburn Island in the company of missionaries.⁴ His traditional names were Birrinydjawuy and Garrawitja and he was the son of an important ceremonial leader at Milingimbi. But he would later go by ‘Andrew Birrinydjawuy’, evoking a dual citizenship in mission and Yolngu worlds. With their Christianity and English literacy, Guritjaluk and Andrew Birrinydjawuy would already have had much in common. Perhaps more importantly, their traditional marriage classes were compatible.⁵

In Top End communities of the time, a decision to get married was not one that was traditionally taken by individuals of their own volition but by their extended families. And yet it appears that Guritjaluk and Birrinydjawuy ended up making the audacious choice independently. Perhaps driven by mutual affection — as well as a happy alignment of values, life experiences and marriage classes — the two announced that they wished to be married, and to make solemnise their union in a Christian church.

Certainly, such east-west marriages between Mawng and Yolngu individuals were very rare and often controversial, remaining so up until the early 21st century.⁶ The evidence from the message stick itself indicates that their announcement angered some of Guritjaluk’s male relatives. After all, she would be expected to leave the Goulburn Island to live with Birrinydjawuy at the new mission on Milingimbi island, some 180km eastward and virtually inaccessible except by boat. Presumably, a marriage alliance between families separated by an ocean distance would make it nearly impossible for reciprocal obligations to be fulfilled, including traditional ceremonies and resource sharing. How, for example, would Guritjaluk return to attend funerals of her kin on Goulburn Island?

The extent to which Guritjaluk and Birrinydjawuy were aware of these background negotiations and anxieties is unclear. What is certain is that they were married at Goulburn Island Methodist Mission Station Church by the Reverend Thomas Theodor Webb on 15 April 1927. Among the witnesses was the American anthropologist Lloyd Warner. At that time he was recording ethnographic particulars from Yolngu people in Milingimbi. Peter, the English name of Guritjaluk’s father, is listed on the marriage certificate though it is not know if he attended the ceremony, would have approved of the union, or was even alive at the time.

After the marriage, Guritjaluk made the decision to relocate with her husband to the recently established mission at Milingimbi. Sources indicate that by 1928 she was working alongside Ella Shepherdson whose husband Harold was a lay missionary in charge of the sawmill and other operations. At the mission house, Guritjaluk was responsible for washing and scrubbing as well as ironing, sewing and mending. Beyond the mission building she helped out in the medical dispensary.⁷ Little is recorded of her years at Milingimbi, but when she is mentioned in Ella Shepherdson’s diary she emerges as an individual who sought ought opportunities to learn new domestic skills while balancing traditional kinship responsibilities.⁸

Though Guritjaluk and Birrinydjawuy were to remain childless, the two appeared to enjoy a happy marriage, regularly leaving the mission to go hunting together on Birrinydjawuy’s country on Räpuma island and further afield.⁹ Birrinydjawuy is more prolific than Guritjaluk in missionary records, finding himself at the centre of key events at the mission. With Harry Makarrwala, a Wangurri man from east of Milingimbi who worked the Lloyd Warner, he was central to the diplomatic resolution of regional conflicts that erupted in the late 1920s and early 1930s. After a number of spearing attacks in this period, he relied on his natural skills as an intermediary between social worlds to prevent further violence. Both Birrinydjawuy and Makarwala were also involved in foundational language documentation, including the first translation of the Lord’s Prayer into the Gupapuyngu variety of Yolngu Matha.¹⁰

Birrinyjdawuy died in 1940 and Guritjaluk, in accordance to local norms, took another husband of the appropriate marriage class whose identity is not recorded. A missionary memoir indicates that her second marriage was also one of choice, but that Guritjaluk was anguished by the fact that her new husband had two other promised wives who were young girls at the time. He had reportedly made efforts for the girls to be married to another man of the right class who was unwilling to take them. The outcome of this difficulty is not recorded.¹¹

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Were it not for the chance discovery of a marginal comment in South Australian Museum register, the meaning of the simple message stick might never have been recovered. The straight lines and central notch are very common motifs on message sticks and their many possible meanings could only have been resolved with the oral explanation given by the three messengers. Each line could have represented an element of the message, or stages in the messengers’ journey, or even the concept of a group of people. Central notches very often stand for places.

At the time Guritjaluk and Birrinydjaway were married, message sticks were a regular means of communication at Goulburn Island, Milingimbi and across the Top End, but they were not the only system in use. When James Watson scouted sites at Goulburn Island to establish a mission house in 1916, his arrival was communicated in smoke signals. He later learned that the inhabitants of the island had fled to the mainland in response.¹²

For the missionaries, on the other hand, speedy and dependable communication could not be guaranteed. Instead they relied on luggers bringing letters, or passengers carrying word-of-mouth messages. Amy Corfield, Guritjaluk’s teacher at the Goulburn Island mission, records the unusual sight of a rocket flying overhead on Friday 15th of November, later learning that it signalled the end of the Great War. News of the Spanish Influenza epidemic arrived on a lugger in March 1919, a full two months after the pandemic had reached Australia.¹³

In 1931 that the missionaries at Milingimbi finally acquired a pedal-powered wireless radio, allowing them to receive and transmit messages in Morse code. The short communications that issued from it were surprisingly similar to the kinds of peremptory demands or news snippets associated with traditional message sticks. Some of these surviving wireless transcriptions speak of dramatic events at the mission: “It’s a boy!”, “Indonesian boat arrived with five men on board.”, “B. deteriorating rapidly”. There were also mundane or cryptic requests: “Potato cuttings wanted”, “Jess wants to speak to you at end of shed”, and the bewildering “Have you any shrunken heads?”.¹⁴

What became of the message stick after it had been delivered? Comments in the museum’s register indicate that Margaret Matthews, a missionary teacher at Goulburn Island in the 1920s, took possession of it, and perhaps it was she who recorded the meaning.¹⁵ She eventually gave it to her sister Mrs W. A. Norman along with other items, including two more message sticks of similar appearance but whose associated messages are not recorded. Norman would amass a significant number of objects from Goulburn Island and across Arnhem Land, and after her death the collection was bequeathed to the museum by her husband.

Among the objects is a basket from the Murray River in South Australia that, according to the register was “used at Goulburn I. to demonstrate Murrary R. method to the Natives”. There are also Goulburn Island baskets “Made under missionary supervision (Miss Mathews [sic]) using Murray R. samples”. Baskets from Victoria were also used as models.¹⁶ As it happens, basket-making was one of several fundraising enterprises of the Methodists who had more trouble attracting support than their colleagues in more exotic locations in the Pacific. Mondalmi, another prominent Mawng woman educated at the mission recalls that Matthews “showed us how to make baskets, like the people do at Point McLeay [in South Australia]. She used to talk to us about Point McLeay and the people that live there.”¹⁷ This small detail points to the fact that missionaries were collecting and circulating Aboriginal objects between mission locations across Australia. Cultural styles and techniques were thus shared informally between Aboriginal communities that would not have otherwise been in contact. Even message stick technology was known to spread on the back of settler movements. In the Tiwi islands, for example, the system arrived with Iwaidja workers from the mainland who began to be employed there the buffalo hunting trade from about 1916.¹⁸

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After the death of her husband, the onset of war would bring new challenges to Guritjaluk’s life. In July of 1942, she chose to evacuate with other mission staff to Worralŋura on the Woolen River to avoid Japanese bombing raids; an attack on Milingimbi would later kill one person and destroy the church and dispensary.¹⁹ Later in 1942 Guritjaluk moved with the Shepherdsons to establish a new mission at Elcho Island. A photograph from this period shows her at the back of an outdoor ‘classroom’ under a wild apple tree, standing behind eighteen smiling children who all share the same long desk. Guritjaluk had been baptised only the previous year in the first such ceremony at Milingimbi—much later than the other Mawng girls with whom she had been educated at Goulburn Island.²⁰ In practice this meant that she would now lead mid-week prayers at the mission and help to set up education programs.²¹ By this time she had acquired a new English name, Rosie, perhaps formalised in her baptismal ceremony.

Though the details are uncertain, Rosie Guritjaluk adopted a baby girl whose parents were unable to care for her: the girl’s father had been jailed for spearing one of his wives. Now an adult, Guritjaluk’s daughter currently works in Darwin. She retains a powerful memory of her foster mother who went blind in her old age but would still ‘read’ her Bible by touching the smooth pages.²² On Goulburn Island, Guritjaluk is also held in memory by living relatives who recall her marrying and moving to Milingimbi, and that she lived from 1912 to 1968.²³

Today the message stick objecting to Guritjaluk and Birrinydjawuy’s marriage remains in the care of the South Australian Museum. The grooves are deep still look almost fresh-cut, the kind of signs that might be read by feel, just as Rosie Guritjaluk interacted with the Bible. Due to organisational changes at that institution, it can no longer be accessed. Nonetheless, the Australian Message Stick Project hopes to be able to connect it to living relatives of Rosie Guritjaluk and Andrew Birrinydjawuy so that they can contribute knowledge and make decisions about its care, interpretation, future access and display.

I am indebted to Ruth Singer and Nita Garidjalalug for coordinating with Mawng speakers who remember Guritjaluk and Birrinydjawuy, Sue Reaburn for connecting me to mission archives, photographs and experts, and Lindy Allen for sharing notes from her interview with Guritjaluk’s daughter and fixing some of my worst errors. Special thanks to Bronwyn Shepherd for supplying advice, facts, crucial primary documents, and for sharing her invaluable 2020 thesis Making a mission space: Milingimbi Methodist Mission, 1923-1943. Alexandra Roginski commented on an earlier draft. Lea Gardam at the South Australian Museum generously allowed me to make digital copies of relevant sections of the register. Astrid Kelly sketched the message stick from a photograph.