Travelogue Day 33

26/6/06

I woke up before my alarm, as I'm wont to do. I also found out that I could easily fit all that was suggested, or nearly all, on my person either in the pockets of the b.d.u.s or my coat. I brought my coat but had no cause to use it.

Stopping at the little bakery next door to the YHA, I got breakfast (a bacon and egg roll) and lunch (a ham and salad sandwich) before heading to the walkabout. Both were quite good. I ran into another guy going on the walkabout today on the platform at Faulconbridge. I've forgotten his name, but he was a pretty cool fellow. We set out in search of our guide, since we didn't see anyone on the platform and found him in the second place we looked. He picked up the third of our group, her train from Sydney had just arrived, and we started our journey.

It started with a five minute "what's your name? Where are you from? What do you do?" warm up walk to the head of our trail.

Once we left the road, I knew I would like the trip. The trail was only lightly visible, like a game trail, and the local plant life was everywhere. Not long after we began, our guide Evan started the bush tucker tasting by instructing us to pick a certain leaf and chew it while walking;; he said that his people used to chew it like chewing gum. The leaf was sasparilla, and it tasted rather good.

As we continued, he asked us to pick another leaf, eucalyptus this time, crush it in our hands, and smell it. Of course, it smelled like the surrounding forest, and not bad.

We stopped, and Evan told us about his people and what walkabout was. He first told us that the Darug people used eucalyptus to clear the sinuses and would put a crushed and rolled leaf in their nostrils. We all crushed and rolled our leaf and put it in our noses. It was cool, the eucalyptus smelled good, and my sinuses were clear. We just looked a bit odd with green leaves dangling from our nostrils.

In the old days, you spent all of your time with your clan. There were many initiation rights for both boys and girls, eleven in total (or up to sixteen if you wanted to become a clever fella), each more difficult than the last. One for boys might be to climb to the top of a tree, collect some birds' eggs, climb down, then climb back up and replace them without breaking any (this was no mean feat considering they never wore more than a, usually, small tucker bag and hair belt or opossum skin cloak in the winter).

A walkabout was a type of initiation where you would follow a particular song line (story), observing various types of fasting, to learn about your people and find out who you are. There would be elders at various points along the way to see if you were learning what you were supposed to along the way. Other than them, you did this alone because it was very important to know who you were when no one else was there. If you were unsure, you wouldn't be useful to the clan.

The old people were nomadic, following their story on a circuit around the country (we would be walking a part of one of these stories on our trip, visiting some sights that Evan had discovered and most people wouldn't see). Times could be tough back then. An ice age came and coincided with the worst drought they could remember. It was too much for the larger creatures like the three meter tall kangaroos or wombats about the size of VW beetles, but the aborigines survived to see their hardest test.

White people arrived and set up their convict colony in Sydney. They eventually spread out, clearing the forest, planting crops, raising livestock, and killing the native animals. Most of this was done while the Aborigines were elsewhere, and when they came back to the area, they didn't find wallaby or wombats but really silly looking animals with white fluff all over them. They speared one (it was a little fatty but tasted good) and the women went to dig up their yams, but instead found these tall green stalks planted in mysterious straight rows; they saw it produced a vegetable and tasted sweet corn for the first time. Well, the farmers didn't like having their sheep and corn eaten (and the Aborigines had no concept of private ownership of most things. If you or your clan had extra, you shared it with others. If you kept it, someone else would want it, and why shouldn't he have it?), so they'd shoot the Aborigines, who would spear the farmer, and so on in a downward spiral such that in 200 years, a people who had survived on this land for 40,000 years had no full-bloods left (in the case of the Darug people).

But their descendants are keeping as much of the culture alive as they can recover and remember, so there are many efforts to preserve what is found in various places (i.e. the bush, construction projects unearthing Aboriginal material) and tell their stories through guides like Evan.

when the old people walked a song line like we were about to, they did so barefoot and, therefore, quietly and carefully. They listened to what the bush had to tell them. They used their senses as independently of one another as possible. They touched everything very carefully, feeling everything touched with the hand from their little toe to the top of their heads (this wasn't such a conceptual leap for them as us because they didn't see a distinction between themselves and the bush. All was connected through the dreamtime). We were encouraged to try to do the same.

I touched many things as we walked and was surprised to find that I began feeling ferns in my head and the soft bark of a tree whose leaves were burned to keep mosquitoes at bay in my back. Evan encouraged us to keep trying to feel things in this way, and I think I might.

We continued to a rock on the bank of a stream where the spirits of that place had been made visible by being carved into the rock. We couldn't see them at first, but Evan made them appear with magic (when he said he was going to do some magic to make the spirits visible, I expected something very cheesy, but when he poured water over the rock and the carvings appeared as water settled into the grooves, it was amazing). There was a mother wallaby, a joey, a snake, and a man with a penis longer than his legs.

These carvings would be used to teach people important information. There are multiple levels to every story, and you would only be given the information at a level it was felt you were ready for. This kept dangerous knowledge away from the foolish. So, on one level, the carvings show the mother wallaby looking off at the bush, thinking it looks very tasty, while her joey has forgotten what his mother told him and is playing with a wiggly tail that belongs to a snake that is about to strike him; in other words, it tells children to not mess with snakes, that's women's business. On another level, we realize that the snake is the Rainbow Serpent and the story becomes one about spirits and the dream time. The penis of the man is hardly practical. It's too long and would drag in the dirt, get caught on thorns, and cut with razor grass. That is if he walked, but he is <I've forgotten his name, sadly>, one of the sky people who brought the lore to the people on the land. They had the great knowledge, the people of the land just applied it.

Also, every person had their own totem/spirit based on where you were conceived and born. No matter which clan your parents belonged to, you belonged to the clan win whose home territory you were born. You were not allowed to marry anyone in your clan, anyone who had your same totem, or anyone who shared your clan's totem. This helped keep the genetics strong (and was presumably part of the lore). You also weren't allowed to kill you totem or your clan's totem. In this way, if an animal was overhunted in one area, it could always recover because it was safe in another: the world's oldest conservation system.

We continued on through the forest for a while, stopping to smell the leaves of another plant that smelled very like lemon. Evan told us it had antiseptic properties, and the old people used to rub it on their skin and smell real good (they also rubbed fish oil on their skin, "It made us look sexy, but smell real bad."). We also learned that the sap that looks like blood was used as antiseptic and analgesic, even for tooth aches.

We stopped at a sandstone cave for a break and snack. Evan showed us pictures of some of the wildlife we might see on the journey and also one of the aboriginal sites he had discovered that was being kept secret. As such, we would not be going there because he had found it, amazingly, in pristine condition, with no modern graffiti, and they wanted to preserve it that way (later, he told me that the hand stencils on the walls were made by chewing a mouthful of ochre and goana fat, then placing your hand on the wall and spraying the mixture over it. This act meant you belonged to the land). He also showed us two flowers (the type I took the photos of that looks somewhat like a pine cone when dried) that act like velcro when pressed together and, when dried, requires bush fires for its seed pods to open. These pods would be used by women to carry fire from one village to another by lighting the cone on fire then blowing it out. The center would smolder but the rest of the pod would insulate the bearer's hand. The nectar from these flowers, usually only found in the ones at high altitudes like Katoomba, was used as an energy giving food. It could be squeezed from the flower directly and licked form the fingers, or the flower was boiled to make an energy tea (I must try to do this).

After the break, we were moving again. The extremely large vines told us we were in the rainforest. We continued our journey (which I enjoyed immensely as it actually felt like we were in the wilderness rather than some safe approximation) and ran into some more bush tucker along the way. This time, it was small white berries that tasted a bit like sour apple before drying out your mouth unexpectedly.

As we were making our way to a sunny cave for lunch, a rogue rock came out from under the feet of the girl in our group, and she rolled her ankle pretty badly. We ate lunch there after wrapping her ankle to see if the rest might help it feel better. It didn't, and we had to assist her out. She did amazingly well for the amount of pain she seemed to be in (Neurofen did its bit to help). At lunch, Evan pointed out another bit of bush tucker, a grass the green part of which is used to knit baskets and other things, but whose white part (near the base of the stalk) is good for eating. It was a bit tough but tasted somewhat like celery.

We took a different route out than in. It was only arguably easier. Well maybe appreciably; I'd have to walk it again to be certain. Evan pointed the two of us able bodied sorts toward a waterfall that was rather nice to photograph. We were racing the dusk as we tried to get everyone out at the slower pace, and during one of our rests, Evan gave us a quick overview of the dreamtime.

(Assuming I'm recalling correctly) In the dreamtime, there was no time as such. The Rainbow Serpent (and the eagle who was the father of the one with the giant penis?) created it when she emerged from her canyon. As she moved about, her movements made the contours of the land. She moved in a circle, linking past to present to future, so everything is happening all at the same time and has happened before. She gave her spirit to the plants, animals, people, and land. They are all connected in spirit. When you die, you may be reincarnated. If you are, it could be as any of these things. If it's as a person, and someone recognizes your spirit, they might say, "Hello great, great grandfather. How have you been?" When someone makes a new dance, they don't say they've invented it; they say they remembered it from the future. Everything is ok because all that will happen has already happened, you just have to access the dreamtime to know it (i.e. the girl's ankle is already healed; she just has to touch the dreamtime to feel it[?]).

We made it out before dark and even got the girl to her train before it left. Evan offered to do another trip for me free of charge if our schedules work out because this one was cut short.

I don't know if it'll work out, but even if it doesn't, this trip was heaps better than I would have expected. The bush walk was great, the learning about bush tucker was great, and all of the Aboriginal knowledge was super. Evan was really cool, and the walkabout was worth the money and more even with its being cut short. The whole trip would be worth it for that.

Addendum: We even heard the lyrebird sing. It has its own call, but can also mimic any other birds' calls. We didn't see one, but they're supposed to be roughly chicken sized and good bush tucker. We also learned that if you see sawdust on the ground by a tree, you find the hole, get your axe, cut a bigger hole, take your grub stick, and pull some out for good bush tucker.