Ancient Symbol, Ancient Land
Back in the 6th Century BC before the walls of Troy the encamped Greeks saw an eagle soaring over the city bearing a snake in it’s talons. The sight was seen to presage the fall of that city. In most other of the world’s mythologies too, such a sight has a powerful resonance. I never ever thought to see such an archetypal symbol myself, right out of the pages of Homer, as I did on a recent trip to Arnhem Land. A White Bellied Eagle flying along the billabong with a large brown snake in it grasp.
It’s an image that’s been with me ever since. The snake was the symbol of Troy and is often seen as the a sign of healing, creativity, re-birth, and the unconscious, not to mention sex. For the Greeks, the eagle was a soaring ascendant Zeus, the Sun and the masculine. Hardly surprising then they saw it as an an omen of Ileum’s fall. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? They’d been camped out there nine years or so trying to get someone else’s woman back. Not surprising if the troops were getting a tad antsy.
In this case though, the serpent was a bit too big for the eagle, who couldn’t fly very far with it. Last I saw, it’s mate had swooped down from it’s aerie and both were co-operatively about their business dismembering the luckless reptile. Not quite the knock-out decision the Greeks awarded themselves is it? Could it just be a vision of our collective future, where the masculine and feminine aspects can no longer hack it as polarities, combining in a renaissance of logos and spirit for a better world to come? Nice one, Herr Doktor!
How about this for a symbol then? The very next day out on the billabong we came across an enormous saltie with a large black pig in it’s maw, and who fixed us with a baleful eye as our craft nosed closer. Now what overarching future did that presage I wonder? Or was it simply an everyday story of country folk, red in tooth and claw?
Birds, Birds & More Birds
One of the bird books on Australia describes the White Bellied Sea Eagle as “rarely common”, whatever that’s supposed to convey. I guess in Strine it means it isn’t seen very often. If so, that certainly wasn’t true where we were. Not a day passed without our seeing several pairs and close up. In fact I’ve never seen so many different birds and in such numbers in my life. A famous Australian ornithologist, who was with us and who had earlier catalogued more than 400 different kind of birds that had been seen in this place, had us help him make a list of all we saw on that day. Between us we spotted 217 different species, in half a day, including one that had never been seen there before. Since few outsiders ever get to go to these places and no one ever hunts there with a gun, none of the wildlife was in the last phased by our presence and we could go very close.
When you think that Arnhem Land occupies something like 250,000 sq. miles and is about the size of England and bigger than either Portugal or Benelux; that it is an unspoiled landscape as it was 90 million years ago, teeming with wildlife, including some that would happily eat you; plus dramatic escarpments, billabongs and broad rivers leading to amazing white sand beaches; and that hardly anyone lives there - it does make you wonder a bit why it was Bali that was once famously described as “the Morning of the World”.
Rock Art Crazy
If that wasn’t enough, Arnhem Land has the greatest proliferation of ancient painting and rock art, much of it dating back 40,000 years, that exists anywhere in the world. The really early stuff, the pre-estuarine, is amazingly elegant, dynamic and mobile. Quite similar in a way to Lascaux and Tassili in its sense of fluid movement and stylised figures.
Our guide and campmeister Jim, who used to be Head Ranger for Victoria State and seconded to the Kruger National Park for a time and who should know about these things, kept muttering the area “was the best piece of real estate in Australia”. A little ruefully it seemed to me and it turned out that he and Max, the only white fella who could stay out there, went back-a-ways. As younger men they’d ranged the Top End together, cleared the buffalo from the land, and sought out the rock art. Nowhere was there more art than in these stunningly beautiful Amarak lands. Even today, entire new galleries of major art are being found. Max became fast friends with Charlie, the Aboriginal keeper of the Amarak area and together they fiercely protect the land against encroachment of any sort. Unlike neighbouring Kakadu National Park, everything is left exactly as it is found. Now that he lives a lot of the time in the chilly South, my guess is that Jim still retains a hankering for the Top End and is a teensy bit jealous of Max. Still, if he got his wish, one season of The Wet might set him right.
The Missing Generation
Charlie, the keeper of this land, is an interesting man. Tall and taciturn, he didn’t speak a lot and would just walk away if people asked him too many questions. I’ve noticed that a lot people seem to think that asking questions is polite and shows interest, or is even an intelligent form of conversation. I wonder why that is? Doesn’t it occur to them that for many it is intrusive and the questions inane? Especially when they’ve got the next question cocked and ready to go before their unfortunate interlocutor has barely opened their mouth. So I rather enjoyed Charlie and his quiet presence, which was powerful nevertheless. Wherever we walked Charlie came along, occasionally exchanging a few words with Max and Jim.
As a young boy Charlie, even though he was full-blooded Aborigine, had been forcibly taken away from his father and sent to boarding school far away. He didn’t get back to the land until he was a young man, by which time his father had died. Quite apart from the personal tragedy of such a story, just as sad and more long lasting was the fact that his father had not had enough time to pass on
all the stories of the land. These were now lost forever. While not “the last of his tribe” exactly and he still at least retained his language, as keeper of the land he was the only one to whom his father could pass on the stories. Something irreplaceable has gone forever. So Charlie and Max “keep” the land, but when Charlie goes what then? Charlie’s family prefer to live in Darwin and it is by no means sure that they will feel the call of their ancestral land, other than as a nice slab of real estate and run tourists all over it like Kakadu.
And April Too..........
While I’d long been aware that various Australian governments and organisations had practised degrees of social engineering for many years when it came to the Aboriginal people, and which now seem odious to most of us, I simply had no idea how widespread the practice was, nor a real comprehension of what it meant in human and cultural terms.
Over a period of two weeks this was to change as we visited the Elders in three tribal communities. First April, an Elder of the White Eagle people in the Wagait Lands, then in Arnhem Land with Charlie on the Amarak Lands before moving on to Galiwinku, a Yolngu tribal community on Elcho Island off the Eastern tip of Arnhem Land, famed for the power of it’s dance and music.
Like Charlie, April is a strong presence and an Elder of her people. Unlike Charlie her English is excellent, better than most Australians in fact, and she has powerful communication skills. The story of her childhood was similar to Charlie’s. She had had a white father and as a half-caste child was forcibly removed from her mother at the age of two back in 1947, a parting which she remembers to this day. She was sent to a boarding school thousands of miles away. She wasn’t mistreated but the first thing the teachers did was to eliminate the language. She recalls having to wash out her mouth with soap whenever she spoke her own tongue. She longed to run away and be back with her people. Fortunately, through connections her mother was able to stay in touch with her and know where she had been sent. It took twelve years before she was reunited with her family, and she was one of the lucky ones. But by that time she could no longer speak her mother tongue. Today she can speak her language pretty well in a day-to-day way, but she cannot communicate with the old folk, nor can she fully talk with them about the old ways and the stories of the land. In fact, she says, the brainwashing in school was so good that to this day she has to make a conscious effort to overcome a mental block before she can speak her own language.
One thing I’ve noticed, at least among the Aboriginal Elders and people I’ve met, is a generosity of spirit toward white Australia. There is very little, if any, bitterness about their experiences. In April’s case, though she mourns for what’s been lost, she revels in the intellectual freedom that the English language has given her. There is no question in her mind of the need for her people to live in their own culture but she has lived and interacted successfully in the prevailing white Australian culture and knows her way around it in a way that she and others like her can, but the older generation find hard. People like April are a bridge for the future and Australia is lucky to have them.
Deckchair Cinema
The few days we spent in Darwin on the way in re-inforced an earlier impression of the place as so chilled-out as to be virtually comatose. Most everyone we came across was very pleasant as they went about their business, if not notably efficient. “That’s the NT for you”, said our guide Jim. “Not like Sydney is it?”, he went on. I think he meant Sydneyites were an impatient lot, but then he’s from Melbourne and might think that. One thing’s for sure though, driving around Darwin and beyond is a real pleasure, especially after Bali. Sad though to see the Aboriginal casualties in the public places as both worlds passes them by. I suppose that may be the closest experience many urban Australians have of their Aboriginal countrymen. If so, it is a pity.
Down on the bay, near the old wharf, there’s an outdoor movie theatre called The Deckchair Cinema, where a local film society shows interesting international and Australian movies. We went to see “The Rabbit Proof Fence”, a truly excellent Australian film, beautifully shot with a wonderful score by Peter Gabriel. If you get the chance go see it. It tells the true story of three half-caste sisters who were taken from their mother and the women of their tribe in the Northern deserts of Western Australia back in the 1930’s and sent to school 1,500 miles to the South. Without spoiling the story it tells how two of them managed to walk all the way back to their family, not once but twice. The film is particularly touching and effective because it does not vilify or demonise the white men and women of the time, who initiated and carried out these cruel policies. They didn’t need to, the cultural and racial arrogance implicit in the actions of perfectly good people, who thought they were doing the right thing, bears tragic testimony to policies that were still in existence in the 1970’s.
The Real Message from Down Under......
Quite apart from my love of being in such an ancient landscape, every time I go back to be with Aboriginal people in their own lands, whether it’s the Central Desert or the Top End, I am increasingly aware of something more. I knew Aboriginal culture and connection to the land was very strong and in no danger. But I used to feel their esoteric tradition might be lost. Believing as they do in 40 years of painful initiation before you become a man of high degree (no trendy shaman course of psychotropics for them!). After all, subincision is not calculated to appeal to most young men nowadays, Aboriginal or otherwise, let alone the Shaman wannabe's among us.
Now I begin to sense the edges of something very much more alive and powerful going on in those vast areas atop the escarpments and in the desert ranges. Men's Business, that no one get's to see. The Aboriginal women are very strong and much in evidence, holding the tribal communities together in the face of our Western cultural tidal wave. My sense is that the men, who look after the worlds of spirit, pre-birth and death, are holding something in trust for us all, not just - but particularly for Australia, until a critical mass of people are ready to relate to the planet in a more sacred way. That's a sense I have about native people world over, but nowhere so strongly and vigorously as it is in Australia.
I sense too, there is a message here somewhere for my own gender, as our roles are shared increasingly with women - but we can never know theirs.
