Recreating the Country blog |
Guest blogger for July is Gib Wettenhall. Gib Wettenhall has for 25 years written, edited and published books and articles, which acknowledge that the 65,000 year-old Indigenous heritage we have inherited makes Australian landscapes as much cultural as natural. He is the author of The People of Budj Bim, written in collaboration with the Gunditjmara people of south-west Victoria, which in 2011 was Overall Winner of the Victorian Community History Awards. Also, author of The People of Gariwerd, the Grampians’ Aboriginal history, recently reprinted a 3rd time in association with Brambuk. He is currently writing and producing the 3rd in a series of booklets with the Yirralka Rangers, titled Keeping Country, on the bi-cultural approach adopted by this Indigenous land management group in north-east Arnhem Land. As the principal of em PRESS Publishing, his books include Stephen Murphy’s Recreating the Country and Tanya Loo’s nature journal set in the Wombat Forest, Daylesford Nature Diary, which reintroduces a six season Indigenous calendar for the foothill forests. In 2006, he wove the Indigenous heritage of the Gariwerd/Grampians ranges into a series of essays published in a high quality landscape format book with photographs by Alison Pouliot, Gariwerd: Reflecting on the Grampians. He researched and wrote the interpretive signage for the Brambuk National Park and Cultural Centre and is writing the content for interpretive signage for the Budj Bim landscape, expected to gain World Heritage listing in 2019. As publications manager of the Great Dividing Trail Association (GDTA), he produced their four map brochures and interpretive signage, which won a tourism award in 2003. In 2012, he wrote and produced an award winning guidebook, the Goldfields Track Walk or Ride Guide, about the 210km long Goldfields Track between Mt Buninyong and Bendigo. It was cited as “a model for future guides” and includes an essay on the Aboriginal cultural heritage of the goldfields region. A 2nd edition was published in 2017. As an editor, he writes and manages content for several websites. Between 2000 and 2014, he acted as the editor for the national quarterly magazine Australian Forest Grower. As a journalist, Gib was news editor of The Melbourne Times, environment writer for both Australian Society and 21C magazines, and has written articles for Parks Discovery magazine. Gib can be contacted on gib@vic.chariot.net.au Indigenous standing stones ...taken over by a bunch of Celts What do non-Indigenous Australians know about the mythological power of Aboriginal standing stone arrangements? Not much it would seem. So little that a group of Celts in NSW could in the late-1990s brazenly lay claim to, and be granted by the National Trust, Australian standing stone heritage status for their faux copy of recently erected Stonehenge-style ‘menhirs.’ No reference was made to their Indigenous antecedents. Yet artificially-wedged vertical shards of rock were once placed everywhere by the First Australians. They formed circles for ceremony, acted as signifiers for sacred places, stood attention in sculptural lines forming the shape of an ancestral being created in the Dreaming. Many were obliterated by settlement and the most powerful remaining are hidden or inaccessible. Last dry season, I was bushwalking with a group in remote gorge country on the Kimberley coast when we came across four sets of thin, sharp-edged standing stone shards, clearly artificially-placed. We had walked in the Kimberley before, as well as the Arnhem Land plateau, and none of us, including our experienced guide, had ever seen these wedged, vertical sandstone slabs, so startlingly at-odds with their surrounds. We had encountered rock art aplenty, but knew nothing about this class of Indigenous artefacts. Particularly impressive were two large enigmatic Aboriginal standing stone circles hidden back from the gorge edge on either side of a towering waterfall with commanding views. Two upright shards guarded the first large circle of stones, some 100 metres distant inland. On a high flat plateau, the standing stones ringed a stony knoll, perfect for viewing whatever ceremonies or dances were performed around its perimeter. It was clear to even the most hardened sceptic among us that the ring of jagged shards once held power and authority. We remembered that an Aboriginal-grafted ring tree had marked the entry to the deep, narrow gorge climaxed by the spectacular waterfall and its dark green pool. Did the standing stone circles have a totemic or ceremonial purpose? We could only speculate. Indigenous standing stone history is sadly overlooked. On returning to Melbourne, I went to the State Library and spied in the catalogue a book titled The History of Australian Standing Stones. Aha, I thought… but was soon disappointed on opening its pages. Ironically, The History of Australian Standing Stones focuses solely on a newly-minted Celtic stone circle of 38, five metre high menhirs established at Glenn Innes in New England in 1991. Incredibly, a mere seven years later, the NSW National Trust declared this faux imported Celtic copy as a National Monument, citing it as a significant place of Australian heritage. All that The History of Australian Standing Stones has to say about Glen Innes’ Indigenous Ngoorabul heritage is contained in one cursory sentence claiming that they were migratory, only visiting seasonally. It is as though they left no mark. As a final unintended insult, the Glenn Innes Celts asked the local Aboriginal land council if they could appropriate a bunyip as the mascot for their stone circle. The land council said no, so the Celts settled on the idea of a dinosaur as their mascot. What a joke, if it wasn’t so sad. An online search of archaeological field surveys in the Glen Innes region of New England did actually manage to turn up some Aboriginal standing stone arrangements found in the region in the 1970s. But there was no attempt at contextual analysis; they are simply listed without comment. The State Library also held one 2012 journal article from Australian Archaeology Vol. 75 on a survey of 32 standing stone sites in Jawoyn country, north-east of Katherine in the NT. This, however, could cast little light on their purpose other than they were “signifiers,” possibly of major rock art sites. Jawoyn elders were reported as commenting that they once had a “ceremonial purpose.” Standing stones were found throughout Australia In a recent Australian Archaeology 2018 journal article on standing stones in Far North Queensland, archaeologist Ian McNiven and other authors conclude: “Despite their ubiquity, stone arrangements are an understudied site type with their distribution and morphological variability remaining poorly documented and their functional variability poorly understood.” After I enquired, Professor McNiven sent me a few academic articles on standing stones. As you’d expect, they were reported as once being found throughout Australia either forming sacred sites representing creation stories from the Dreaming or as markers for sacred places. Little was known about their specific purpose, other than they “have high significance values to Indigenous Australians and are usually associated with… socio-religious beliefs and ceremonial/ritual activities.” (Australian Archaeology 2018 Vol. 84, No.2) Indigenous owners hold the key to the meaning of the standing stones In 2017, cultural anthropologist, Jim Birckhead, undertook desktop research for mining companies with archaeologist, Phil Czerwinski, on past studies into the significance and meaning of Indigenous standing stone arrangements in the Pilbara and the Kimberley. Upright standing stones are associated, in particular, with initiation sites, Dr Birckhead observed. Individual slabs sometimes represent creator beings from the Dreaming who have metamorphosed into stone. Sometimes they were “venerated by men who regard the rocks as patrilineal ancestors.” First-hand involvement with Indigenous elders is vital, says Dr Birckhead, as the stones “defy interpretation by inspection.” While the elders may be circumspect about sites of mythological significance, and sometimes have no knowledge of stone arrangements often millenia old, interpretation without their involvement becomes an exercise in guesswork, as well as appropriation. Consequently, Birckhead’s and Czerwinski’s report recommended undertaking field surveys with Traditional Owners in the Pilbara to cast light on the mythological stories related to each specific standing stone arrangement. The mining companies, unfortunately, did not proceed to fund beyond the desktop research stage. How can Australians appreciate the richness of Indigenous culture if we ignore its existence. This paucity of recognition of a significant aspect of Indigenous culture is indeed unfortunate. Without Indigenous interpretation, each site’s totemic affiliations and creation stories will remain opaque and enigmatic. Silence about the rich mythology and power that these sites of a 65,000 year old culture hold is another in the long list where we have averted our gaze from the rich and deep cultural heritage of our own continent in favour of the ‘homeland’ our European ancestors left behind. It is just one among many silences that allow the ongoing misappropriations and misunderstandings to continue. For many, the apparent absence of evidence signifies that the Aboriginal people were at contact nothing more than ‘savages’, as compared to the supposedly sophisticated civilising settlers – such as the proud Celts of Glenn Innes with their ‘unique’ standing stone heritage Trees and human health - how a walk in the woods makes us mentally and physically healthier. to be posted in August
5 Comments
Guest blogger and poet for September is Gib Wettenhall. Gib is a an award winning author, journalist, editor, publisher and advocate for preserving indigenous cultural heritage. His view is that; "the 60,000 year-old Indigenous heritage we have inherited makes Australian landscapes as much cultural as natural". He is the author of The People of Budj Bim written in collaboration with the Gunditjmara people of south-west Victoria, which in 2010 was Overall Winner of the Victorian Community History Awards. Also, the author of The People of Gariwerd, the Grampians’ Aboriginal history, which has gone through three print runs. He is currently writing and producing the 3rd in a series of booklets for the Yirralka Rangers, titled Keeping Country, on the bi-cultural approach adopted by this Indigenous land management group in north-east Arnhem Land. As a publisher, he has edited many books, including Stephen Murphy’s Recreating the Country and Tanya Loo’s nature journal set in the Wombat Forest, Daylesford Nature Diary, which reintroduces a six season Indigenous calendar for the foothill forests. In 2006, he wove the Indigenous heritage of the Grampians Ranges into the essays published in a high quality landscape format book with photographs by Alison Pouliot, Gariwerd: Reflecting on the Grampians. Gib can be contacted on gib@vic.chariot.net.au Utopia 2050 We switch panels to store, as we unfurl solar sails And lay the songline down. We sing with joy when we reach the reef and the fish shoal is found. We spear the fish, sail the songline back To the beach where a hot fire glows We sing to the fish of how our lives are twined as we pass damper to and fro. The cats are gone, cane toads no more The valley’s soil is soft The shepherds herd their mobs of roos through glades of thigh high grass And everywhere the wetlands spread and wild birds wheel aloft. We sing on the zeppelin as it orients for home Following power plant ruins below It’s ten years now since the last coal was dug… It’s back to the future we go. Gib Wettenhall 2014 Reimagining and reinventing Australian culture Australia’s landscapes are as much cultural as natural. People were everywhere, affecting everything, across the length and breadth of the continent over an unimaginable timescale, recently confirmed at an archaeological dig on our northern frontline at some 60,000 years ago. That’s the conclusion of historian Billy Griffiths in his acclaimed new book on the history of Australian archaeology, Deep Time Dreaming. This primal Indigenous spiritual power is still evident in the country’s remote places. I have recently rock hopped for two weeks along the Roe River and scaled the blood-red gorges of the Prince Regent National Park on the western edge of the Kimberley. At every one of the waterfalls punctuating our progress, rock art shelters crowded with ancestral beings and creation stories overlooked the dark, deep green of secret/sacred pools. On gorge tops, artificially-placed standing stones act as markers, sometimes leading to ceremonial grounds, where, if you are willing to pay attention, the ancient power of the land and its people remains palpable. I respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of this country past and present. I acknowledge their comprehensive understanding of Australia’s living landscapes. Their culture nurtured this land for over 3,000 generations and used fire as a dynamic management tool. It’s time to listen and learn from the wisdom of Indigenous Elders. It’s time to adopt Traditional Owner burning methods to nurture and to heal the wild landscapes of rural and urban Australia? ‘Fire Stick Farming’ Anthropologist Rhys Jones changed the way the world thought about Indigenous Australians when he published ‘Fire Stick Farming’ in 1969. He began his article about Aboriginal use of fire with a question. “We imagine that the country seen by the first colonists, before they ring-barked their first tree, was ‘natural.’ But was it? Jones went on to describe a managed Australian landscape that had been changed by burning to produce a land full of wild vegetables and rich hunting grounds. He proposed that fire had many uses to the First Australians and importantly it was used to alter the vegetation. For example to push back forests and replace them with grasslands and grassy forests which were richer in animal and plant foods. Early explorers observed the effects of indigenous burning In 1848 explorer Major Thomas Mitchell observed ‘fire stick farming’ in New South Wales and suggested it was used to create a comfortable open living environment; “The native applies fire to the grass at certain seasons, in order that a young green crop may subsequently spring up and so attract and enable him to kill or take the kangaroo with nets. In summer, the burning of the long grass also discloses vermin, birds’ nests, etc., on which the females and the children, who chiefly burn the grass, feed. But for this simple process, the Australian woods might have been as thick a jungle, like those of New Zealand or America, instead of open forests”. Explorer Charles Sturt famously described lands around the Murray River in 1830, “In many places the trees are so sparingly (and almost judiciously) distributed as to resemble the park lands attached to a gentleman’s residence in England”. The country that the first explorers described was managed with many small mosaic burns (mostly less than 50ha) that minimised the risk of uncontrolled natural fires. This type of burning conducted every 3 – 4 years produces diverse grasslands and grassy woodlands of varying ages which provides ideal habitat for a diversity of wildlife. Indigenous Australian’s use of fire was sophisticated Bill Gammage in his book ‘The Biggest Estate on Earth’, puts into context what many of the early settlers thought was a natural phenomenon; “In 1788 people shepherded fire around their country, caging, invigorating, locating and smoothing the immense complexity of Australia’s plant and animals into such harmony that few newcomers saw any hint of a momentous achievement”. Gammage contends that Indigenous Australians developed complex patterns of burning that favoured desirable plants and animals. For example, a landscape with belts of well spaced gums next to a wide strip of open grassland and permanent water was perfect for hunting kangaroos. Each native animal has its preferred habitat and a detailed traditional knowledge enabled the first Australians to replicate these habitats with the sophisticated use of fire. By doing this they always had a good supply of root vegetables and plenty of the animals they needed for food, tools and clothing. They also knew in which landscapes to find them. Since 1788 fire has become a constant threat Burning changed after the traditional burning practice progressively stopped in Southern Australia as the white settlers moved in. The fires became unplanned, much hotter and dangerous. This brought about a dramatic change in the type and density of vegetation as the ‘gentleman’s parks’ became dense tangled thickets. On Black Thursday February 6th 1851 a devastating fire burnt nearly a quarter of Victoria. A farmer from the Barrabool Hills near Geelong described the aftermath; ‘It was so awful in its aspect, so sudden in its accomplishment, so lamentable in its consequences, that it can only be equaled in those pages of history where invading armies are described as laying countries waste with fire and sword’ Eventually fuel reduction burns became a necessary and accepted part of rural life. Roadsides were burnt as fire breaks and National Parks and Reserves were regularly burned to reduce the fire risk. But did it? Anecdotal evidence suggests that current burning practices are adding to the overall fuel loads. This is because they are often too hot, too infrequent and the timing is based on a pre-set timetable for fuel reduction. Timetables don’t take into account the unique needs of wildlife, the character of the vegetation, the variable seasons or even the local weather conditions that can change radically without notice. Hot burns result in high rates of germination of fast growing pioneer species like acacias and an increased density of highly flammable fuel within five years. It is still a commonly held belief of people that manage control burns that ‘a hot burn is a clean burn’ and that the fire should be as hot as possible. This type of burn in a grassy woodland can result in an increase in thick understorey and shrub growth that competes with grasslands species. It also kills significant mature trees with hollows. Both of these outcomes are undesirable for the park/reserve and its wildlife, as well as for rural communities. Indigenous traditional knowledge is alive and well Indigenous elders are now in demand to conduct Traditional Owner burns because of the recognised benefits to the natural environment. For indigenous Australians burning is a spiritual practice that connects them to Country. Burning is also a social occasion even though it is a finely tuned procedure. You can read an account of a recent Traditional Owner burn at Bakers Lane Reserve, Teesdale at this link ancient-australian-culture-cool-burning.html Traditional Owner (T.O.) burns are very different to modern control burns.
A fifty year old prophecy I’ll leave the last word on Traditional Owner burning to Anthropologist Rhys Jones who prophetically wrote nearly 50 years ago in ‘Fire Stick Farming’; “Probably for tens of’ thousands of years fires were systematically lit by Aborigines and were an integral part of their economy.… we must do what the Aborigines did and burn at regular intervals under controlled conditions. The days of “fire-stick farming” may not yet be over”. My thanks to Dale Smithyman, an enthusiastic supporter and student of Traditional Owner burning practice, for his guidance with this blog A regressive step by the National Landcare Program. Sadly the visionary funding through the National Landcare Program, to employ Indigenous Natural Resource Management Facilitators at the Catchment Management Authorities, will not be offered in the National Landcare Program Phase 2. This decision is extremely disappointing and could be seen as a subtle form of racism that is just as damaging to the re-emergence of a strong indigenous culture as the overt forms of racism that we all despise. It’s time that we question the deep seated and unconscious bias behind a decision like this. It may have been justified with words like ‘restructuring’ and 'cutting costs', but it is a form of racism that is particularly destructive because of it's frequency and because it often goes unnoticed under our radar. If you need a brief escape from reality, 'Seeds the monthly Chronicle' is now into chapter 5. Chapter 6 will be posted very soon. Click here to explore> This blog describes a Traditional Owner cool burn in detail Ancient Australian culture - the traditional skill of cool burning |
Stephen Murphy is an author, an ecologist and a nurseryman. He has been a designer of natural landscapes for over 30 years. He loves the bush, supports Landcare and is a volunteer helping to conserve local reserves. |