Speaking the language of the land
As reported by Katie Spain - The Advertiser
If you’ve ever been to the opening of an official Adelaide event chances are you have heard Aunty Josie Agius laugh. The Wallaroo-born nana is often called upon to kick off proceedings with the Kaurna Welcome; an important Aboriginal ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremony.
“The first time I ever did an event I was standing up there and had to
read it off the paper because I’d forget the words,” she says. “I was really nervous.”
These days, Aunty Josie is comfortable adlibbing on stage. “I know my language so I put a few other little things in with it.”
On stage, her personality dwarfs her petite frame, leaving a lasting impression on crowds of hundreds, sometimes thousands.
“A few weeks ago, I was at the cricket at Adelaide Oval,” she says. “I had to go right out in the middle of the pitch. The captain turned around and said, just quietly, hello and gave a little wave. He was really nice.”
Aunty Josie is also a regular attendee at Government House.
“The Governor and his wife are really nice… when you walk into Government House you see all the photos of their grannies. That’s really nice.”
Family, particularly “grannies” (aka grand-children, of which she has three) and five “great-grannies”, are very important to Josie.
Her eyes glisten as she explains that she lost her own father when she was just three and when she was 16 she lost her mother, a “very hard worker”.
Her eldest brother passed away at 12 after stepping on a nail while playing in a woolshed.
“He was a very good swimmer and loved the water,” she says.
“We moved around quite a bit,” she recalls of a youth spent in Point Pearce, Leigh Creek, Mile End in Adelaide and Alice Springs. “Thebarton School was our first school in Adelaide. It was a bit of a shock. The teachers were alright, but it was just getting used to other people. It was a bit sad because coming into your first school you hope people will be good to you, but maybe we were all a big frightened of each other – we worked at it I guess.”
Josie left school during Year 7, aged 14, and took on three jobs, including one on a farm in Pine Point. “It was really good because the people were really nice. I had to learn how to milk!”
Josie later worked a live-in role at The Franklin Hotel before moving into aged care (“That was fun I can tell you… you didn’t know what the oldies were going to do next – they’d come out with nothing on sometimes”) and eventually education, running nationwide projects encouraging Indigenous children to learn their native tongue.
“I’m really a Narunga, coming from Point Pearce,” she says. “My four grandparents were Kaurna on my grandma’s side, Narunga on my papa’s side, Ngadjuri, which is up in the Barossa Valley, on my dad’s side and Ngarrindjeri is on my other grandma’s side… mixed blood, but it’s so good.”
These days Josie, a Taperoo resident of 50 years and widow of 30, shows no sign of slowing down. Four days a week she catches a bus to Port Adelaide where she works as community networker and elder at Kurruru Youth Performing Arts.
“Port Adelaide is so good. There are so many other cultures here,” she says. “I never knew all these years ago that I was going to do this stuff and that I’d get to be at these events and get to know these people. For us it was such a big thing for anybody to come and talk to us, especially the ‘big mob’.”
As for her age, a lady never tells. “I’m old enough,” she says with a grin.