Caring For Country

I have just returned  from Arnhemland in the Northern Territory.  Still a bit dazed. I think I left a little part of myself up there, way out in that distant  Stone Country.

Was it only a week ago that I saw this painting of a black walleroo in an ancient rock art gallery on the Mok clan estate out  past Kabulwarnamyo?

The painting itself is not old. It was the final image painted on rock by the great Aboriginal artist Bardayal ‘Lofty’ Nadjamerrek, upon whose land my companions and I were privileged visitors. Lofty was born in 1926 and died in 2010. 

While we were in Arnhemland we referred to him only by the ‘sorry’ names of ‘The Old Man’ or ‘Wamud’ His people do not speak the names of the recently deceased. 

The Old Man was by all accounts an extraordinary person - a respected elder and senior  ceremonial  man who grew up  in his traditional culture in the Western Arnhemland escarpment country. He did not  encounter white people until he was in his teens.  Later  on in his long and colourful life,  he became  a highly successful artist in the white world, 

But perhaps even more significantly, he encouraged his countrymen to return to the lands they had left decades earlier. Round the middle of last century the imposition of new whitefella laws, and the  seductions of  flour, sugar and tobacco led people to walk off their clan estates and head for the towns and settlements and what looked like an easier life. 

One consequence of this for the land, abandoned by it’s caretakers was that devastating bushfires burnt out of control across the Stone Country,  killing countless plants and animals and releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases. In the old days the people of the land worked with fire in finely tuned and sensitive ways, lighting small  cool fires early in the dry season, to regenerate the country, and ensuring that fires never caused mass destruction.

From what we were told by the Warddeken Rangers - modern day custodians and land managers of their  tribal lands -  fire has always been  central to their culture, their ceremony, their land management practises. 

In the 1980s and 90’s  Lofty  encouraged and supported people to move back to their homelands ( or outstations). He worked along side them to get infrastructures set up. The very last place he helped to establish was his own homeland at Kabulwarmamyo.

...So much to reflect upon. It’s going to take me weeks, at least, to sift through all the experiences and images and information. There’ll be more Northern Territory/ Stone Country/ Maningrida blogs to come.  

Meanwhile I find myself back in this ‘real life’  of mine - At least in body if not mind. I’m making sandwiches for F’s school lunch and watering the vegetable garden and wandering aimlessly in the supermarket unable to focus. Just  waiting till I drop down into really being here again.