THE RAPE OF MARY KATHLEEN

THE RAPE OF MARY KATHLEEN
by Rainbow Joe

Mary Kathleen was a young an attractive Indigenous Australian woman with guarded dark eyes and short curly black hair. Usually she decked herself out in a skin-tight denim shirt exhibiting the contours of her handful of firm breasts. The bottoms of her jeans were tucked neatly into worn out brown leather boots.

Mt Isa sweated so much that moisture to hung in the air when Mary Kathleen was raped

It all began at the Irish Club after one too many drinks and when she gave a big good-looking miner a lift home. Well she thought she deserved some male company, especially as she had been mustering cattle out in the bush for so long. Since she was the only Jillaroo, the other Jackaroos would have stampeded had she culled out a Jackaroo for herself.
         
Halfway home the Miner asked her to pull over so he could have a piss. Mary Kathleen stepped out with him to marvel at the yellow glow of molten copper presiding over the absolute blackness of the Mt Isa night. “Have a gander at the Copper Smelter mate—it’s fucking awesome! She called out while his stream of urine turned the red dust into a puddle. He was silent. She decided to have a piss too. While she squatted with her jeans around her ankles he said, “You are fucking awesome too.” His bright brutal eyes had her in his sight. Not bothering to zip his filthy pants up, he reached down and planted his sun scorched mammoth sized around her. He was as strong as an ox. And as if she was simply a bag of mine waste, he threw her down. She hit the red earth hard. Though Mary Kathleen was a tough, she wasn’t ready for the cruelty forced upon her.

When it was over, she feigned enjoyment. She intended to take him for the last ride of his life. In a pretence that she had to stop to wipe dead mozzies off her windscreen, she pulled over. She leap from his truck and grabbed her shotgun from the back. It only took a minute to load it “What the fuck...” he screamed before she let him have both barrels.


With the bloody mess sitting beside her, she continued on her way. Desperately needing a drink, she stopped on the Barkly Hwy to drink half a bottle of Bundy. Eventually the alcohol sent her to dreamland

It was after ten when she woke with a fright. Overcome by loathing and fear, she left the caustic smell of sulphur spewing out of the sulphur stack behind. The taller lead stack with its secret haze was the last thing she glimpsed through her rear mirrors.

Driving towards the burning sun thought of an old saying that it was so hot that you can fry an egg on the bonnet. But conjuring up old sayings would never be enough to take her mind off the rigor mortis stench lingering inside.

About fifty kilometers eastward, leading towards Concurry, she turned left off the Barkly Hwy and onto a cattle station, where she sought shade under a tree. When she stared ahead pass dry spinifex and eucalyptus trees, a green-yellowish site in the distance caught her eye. Deciding it would be an ideal final resting place; she rebooted the engine and headed towards that site.

The birds stopped singing and a dingo sprang out in front of her. She and the dingo had something in common. She had a dead man next to her whereas the dingo had caught a bird, killed it and carried it in its mouth.

When she reached the green-yellowish colored earth, she recognized tinge of uranium. Too traumatized to consider its riches, she dragged the man’s body out and dropped it on the ground for dingo food. Next, she retried a flat piece of wood from the back of her truck. Using what remained of the dead man’s blood and excrement she wrote, ‘Here lies the man who raped Mary Kathleen.’

She nailed it to a tree and finished the bottle of Bundy. After reloading her shotgun, she dropped the guns stock on the ground. When she had finished bending over to stick both barrels in her mouth, she curled her thumb around the trigger. Without a second thought, she pushed the trigger back and blew her brains out.

When she had been found news spread quickly throughout Mt Isa. Men fought to be the first to break through the final resting place of Mary Kathleen. And as though Mary Kathleen herself was being raped again, the ground where she lay remained hard and unforgiving.
High up in the scrub covered hills, with their backs to the sun, Indigenous Australians wept. They couldn’t defy the white man’s greed. They couldn’t stop them defiling their sacred ground. All they could do was to look on in disgust. Even snakes and spiders were so ashamed that left their haunts to find shelter elsewhere.

In time, a town named Mary Kathleen emerged nearby with the workers and their family living the Australian dream. Eventually public outrage closed Mary Kathleen.

All that is left now is a massive hole in the ground. And not far away rows of concrete slabs can be found. These serve as a reminder that a town once stood high on top of them.

Eventually the Indigenous Australians returned, and the snakes and spiders came back to watch over what remains of Indigenous Australians sacred land.

The End