Lulu's Insights on the Spirits of the Dead

In May 1986 Paddy Roe (Lulu) was interviewed by Ray Aitchison on behalf of the National Library of Australia. In the second half of the audiotaped interview, Aitchison enquires about Lulu’s wife who passed away some four years earlier and then asks where Lulu will go when he dies. That leads into the matter of the spirits of those who have passed, known as balangnun.

In response, Lulu talks about some of their characteristics before telling a story of how balangnun used their ‘magic strings’ to lift a man into the sky before returning him alive due to the intervention of Lulu and others including one who ‘cut’ the invisible strings.

Below is the author’s edited transcript of the audio, from the 38:09 mark to the 46:40 mark. The 90-minute audio was accessed 5 February 2021 at https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/126350.

Note: Whenever Lulu says ‘true person’ he is referring to a flesh-and-blood human being.

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Ray:     Was she [your wife] a good woman?

Lulu:   Good woman, very good woman. Never drink too. Bushwoman. But now I never worry about no more woman, this time, that’s right. One woman I lost. In our Law, one woman is belongs to one man. One man is belongs to one woman – in our Law, those days. That’s the way we go. And I never worry for no more woman today.

Ray:     Paddy, when you die, where do you think you’ll go?

Lulu:   I gotta go to Iwarra, up the sky.

Ray:     Heaven.

Lulu:   Well, I think English call it heaven but we call it Iwarra.

Ray:     And what will it be like?

Lulu:   Well, I dunno. I dunno what he’ll be like but ah, I’ll be just – that’s my home. In our Law that’s my home. I can’t come down to my people too. I gotta stay in that place, whether he’s a [chuckle], well, whether he’s a good place or a bad place or – but anyway, in our time, [those] balangnun we used to help them, you know, ‘round us.

Ray:     These were the spirits? 

Lulu:   Spirits, ‘round us. I seen ‘em. In my time I’ve seen ‘em this time. Oh, lotta people seen ‘em, young people today. Not very long, they disappear. I dunno.

Ray:     What do they look like?

Lulu:   Well, yair, only come like a wind. We never see them, just…

Ray:     Feel ‘em?

Lulu:   We can, we can feel it. We can hear ‘em. They make noise, they make noise, ma-ma-ma-ma, you know. But they walk in their magic string. They always around us. Magic string.

Ray:     They always around us, even now?

Lulu:   Even now. Well, er, well they must be ‘round now too but more those days, ah, before. I think too many, too many people now today ‘round this town, you know. They can’t be with us. But in the Stations and all that country they are somebody that look after us too. Anythin’ come, danger, you know – sometimes, er, might be somebody walkin’ towards us, you know. Ah, somethin’ might make noise, you know, huh, somebody comin’. But we hear the noise, you know. They help us.

Ray:     They help you? 

Lulu:   They never take us or eat us or anythin’ like that. They can, they can take us away if they want to. But they fly, they take us away, they lift us off the ground and up in the sky. You know, flyin’ around in the magic string [with a] true person. I know it’s very hard to understand this one [chuckles], very hard to understand. Oh, true person, they can lift you, me, now.

Ray:     They can, while we’re alive.

Lulu:   While we’re alive. But [the balangnun] he’s a dead man. He can lift you, me, on the magic string.

Ray:     And fly around the trees.

Lulu:   Oh, he can take you to any [place].

Ray:     Have you seen anybody lifted off the ground.

Lulu:   Yair, yair, not very long [ago] too. I was workin’ here in the butcher’s, here in Broome. Ah, one fella run away. He thought he’s runnin’, you know, but he’s climbin’ up and he disappear. All the womans sing out, ‘This man is gone.’ And we come up. ‘Where he gone?’

‘Here, we couldn’t catch him up’.

‘Oh, we tell ‘em, we know, we know.’

 So we broke the bower shed down. You know, we had a [wooden] bower shed. Put ‘em in the heat and fired him up, that fire. So five man, we waitin’ and we sing out, we talk.

Ray:     What did you say, in your language?

Lulu:   Ah, walliyellinyalya walliyellinyanbana malooabadaguru,* we say in language.

* Note: This transliteration is what author hears when listening to the audio. Others may hear differently.

Ray:     What’s that mean?

Lulu:   We say, ‘Bring him back. Don’t you fellas take him away. Bring him back, bring him back.’

And they hear us, you know. Ah, we tell ‘em too, you know, just like that. And we make the fire, that one blind their eyes. And when they come down, they just drop that man in the middle of the fire. True person when we grab him, chuck him out. But we couldn’t hold him, five man. Five man we tried to hold that man now, he chuck us off in the ground. So he’s off again.

We chase him again. We sing out for all the womans to help us ‘cos he’s got those powers, dead man’s powers. Too strong, somethin’ pullin’ him, you know. Five man couldn’t hold him. So we made a fire again. We got him back again and we got him.

This man now, the witchdoctor [maban], my brother. He got everythin’ off him, break all the strings what he had, the magic strings. Everythin’ is magic.

So, ‘aatchoom,’ he says, ‘why you gotta hold me?’

Ray:     Came out of the sand?

Lulu:   Yair. ‘You bin run away from us,’ we say. Somebody bin take you from us. ‘No, not me.’ [laughs]

Ray:     Did you see him when he fell into the fire, you saw him come down from the sky?

Lulu:   They drop him off, just one man. We couldn’t see the dead people.

Ray:     Yair. But how far did he fall?

Lulu:   Ah, might be not that far. You see that fork stick there, just there.

Ray:     Six feet, ten feet.

Lulu:   Ten feet, six feet.

Ray:     And where was he before he dropped?

Lulu:   Oh, he was long way up.

Ray:     You could see him?

Lulu:   No, couldn’t see. We can hear him.

Ray:     You can hear him?

Lulu:   We can hear the whatname, the dead people. ‘Ooooh,’ they say. ‘Ooooh,’ they say.

Ray:     And then suddenly he appeared and fell into the fire.

Lulu:   Yair, they drop him off. They come down low and low, low, low, right down till they drop that man off, because they can’t drop him from long way [otherwise] he dead. They know.

Ray:     Yair. They didn’t want to kill him. What was the fire again? What did you break up? You broke up a…

Lulu:   Bower shed. We had a shed, you know, brush shed.

Ray:     Shelter.

Lulu:   Yair.