The recent passing of well-known Dubbo Aborigine James Brian ‘Bucky’ Burns saw 300 people gather at the Talbragar Reserve this week to pay their respects to the man they all agreed fought to the end for the betterment of his people.
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According to documents in the possession of Bucky’s eldest daughter Diane, the Burns families’ official links with the Talbragar Reserve date back to the early 1900s when Bucky’s grandfather Arthur Clifford Burns married Sarah Taylor.
According to Ms Burns her great grandmother Sarah was a full-blood Aborigine assigned to George Henry Taylor, one of Dubbo’s most prominent founding citizens.
Sarah had to obtain permission from Mr Taylor to marry Arthur Burns; she also required a surname, which she did not have.
Mr Taylor must have had a fondness for the young couple because not only did he grant Sarah permission to marry Arthur, he also gave her his surname of Taylor.
But George Henry Taylor’s generosity did not end there; he organised a lease for the couple for a portion of land consisting of 7.588 hectares between the confluence of the Talbragar and Macquarie rivers, commonly known as the Talbragar Reserve.
No record exists of the actual date of the marriage of Arthur Burns to Sarah Taylor but the lease agreement dated May 11 1923 states the Burns family was granted possession of the Talbragar Reserve.
After Sarah was given the name Taylor, her family adopted the name as well - her Aboriginal name was ‘Dinguul’.
Sarah’s family were the last full- blood Aborigines from the original inhabitants of the Talbragar tribe.
Her mother’s brother Jacky Taylor, whose Aboriginal name was ‘Turrong’, was the last Talbragar tribesman to undergo traditional initiation rites.
Bucky was born on January 31 1939 in Dubbo’s Macleay Street.
His mother Pearl Burns was brought into town for the birth; they returned to the reserve soon after.
Bucky remained at Talbragar Reserve long after most of the other families had resettled in town.
He became the last man standing but like the others eventually moved to town in the late 1960s.
At his funeral under the peppercorn trees his mother had planted on the reserve, many of Bucky’s old friends spoke of the times they spent together.
Russell Ryan recalled the first and only time he drank alcohol was at the behest of his old mate.
“I was walking past the Dubbo Hotel when Bucky sang out to me,” Mr Ryan recalled.
“Bucky said ‘here you go Ryanie, get this into you’, as he handed me a middie of some green-looking stuff.
“So I drank it, and then he got another glass, only this one was blue.
“I didn’t know what creme de menthe was but I soon found out what it does to you. Anyway, that was the only drink I’ve ever had and Bucky was to blame.”
His long-time friend Max Wiseman spoke of the many good times they had shared at the reserve.
Mr Wiseman recalled times when the reserve was used as a travelling stock route and the opportunities it presented for a regular supply of fresh mutton.
He recalled Bucky’s skill with a knife whenever it was required to knock off a few killers.
“We had our own holding yards, a steep cliff-walled area down near the river where the doombucks (Aboriginal for sheep) couldn’t get out,” Mr Wiseman revealed.
Mr Wiseman emphasised Bucky’s toughness as a fighter and his reputation for standing up for his rights.
And it was to that end that he sometimes came into conflict with the law.
According to his daughter Diane, Bucky had good reason to distrust white authority.
He told her of the time in 1942 when the police and Army personnel came out to the reserve and took away several of the young men for Army duty.
Bucky told Diane how his father James, then aged 24, tried to hide from the Army men but they eventually found him and took him away.
“James could not understand why he had to go,” Diane said.
“He had no rights as a person, he couldn’t vote, he wasn’t even allowed to go into town, so why did the Army want him to help fight its war.”
James ran away from the Army three times, after which he was dishonourably discharged and sent home.
It was this type of injustice that fostered Bucky’s dislike and distrust of white authority.
Bucky was laid to rest in sacred ground at Jinchilla Gardens, the Talbragar tribe’s traditional burial ground since time immemorial.
A poem that was found among Bucky’s possessions and read at his interment flies in the face of Federation celebrations the nation has been revelling in this week.
Aboriginal Australia
To the Others
You once smiled a friendly smile
Said we were kin to one another
Thus with guile for a short while
Became to me a brother
Then you swamped my way of
gladness
Took my children from my side
Snapped shut the law book, oh my sadness
At Yirrakalas’ plea denied
So, I remember Lake George hills
The thin stick bones of people
Sudden death, and greed that kills
That gave you church and steeple
I cry again for Warrarra men
Gone from kith and kind
And I wondered when I would find my pen
To probe your freckled mind
I mourned again for the Murray tribe
Gone too without a trace
I thought of the soldiers’ diatribe
The smile on the governors’ face
You murdered me with rope, with gun
The massacre of my enclave
You buried me deep on McLarty’s run
Flung into a common grave
You propped me up with Christ, red tape
Tobacco, grog and fears
Then disease and lordly rape
Through the brutish years
Now you primly say you’re
justified
And sing of a nation’s glory
But I think of a people crucified
The real Australian story.