7.3.11 – Thoughts (Perth, Western Australia)

7.3.11 – Thoughts (Perth, Western Australia)

Hiking on Arran

Raining this morning, and much cooler.  During one of the showers, our eyes were caught by my screensaver, which happened to be displaying a set of slides of us hiking on the lovely Scottish island of Arran, last May.  We gazed at the images of the heather-clad rocky mountains, the blue twinkling sea, the grassy banks of wildflowers, the amber burns, the rocky inlets, the blue haze of islands beyond.  It was home, and we belong there.  Scots have been on that land for nearly two millennia.  Bill said ‘Makes you think about the Aboriginies, doesn’t it.  How would we feel if someone suddenly turned up and told us it wasn’t our land anymore and we had to get off?’

I have been growing more and more interested in Aboriginal history and culture.  I’ve gleaned what little information I have from Australians we have met, from museums, leaflets, the internet, and pictures.  I’ve not yet been able to speak to anyone of Aboriginal descent, but have read a book written by Aboriginal academics.  What has grasped my imagination is that this is easily the oldest culture in the world.  Estimates range from between 40,000 and 60,000 years.   They probably came to Australia around the time of the last Ice Age, paddling through shallow seas long since replaced by impassable oceans.

It’s a complex culture, based upon oral traditions, which, as research here and elsewhere has shown, are usually at least as accurate ways of recording history as written methods.  Their culture is based on The Dreaming – stories about how the landscapes were created and about the ancestors, creatures and events that formed them, and from these are drawn complex systems for regulating their societies. 

It is likely that, through these means, these tribes can remember events that happened at the dawn of time.  For example, the beautiful blue crater at Mount Gambier and its sister craters, which owe their origin to volcanic activity about 30,000 years ago, are described in Aboriginal Dreaming stories as a cooking pots or fires.  Why would lakes be described in this way unless their fiery origins are locked deep in the racial memory?  These peoples may well have shared this land with the last dinosaurs, and certainly with many huge animals now long extinct - some of their tales appear to reflect this also.  

Furthermore, they understood and could survive in this often harsh and unforgiving climate.  Over the millennia, they had developed ways of living in harmony with their land.  They were hunter/gatherers, who moved on with the seasons and the variations in weather, but were also able to grow extensive acreages of wheat.  They developed a range of tribes, each attached to certain areas of Australia, within which they roamed and to which they were – and are - deeply attached, through their understanding of the Dreaming.

What a gift these people were to human society, in terms of helping us understand our roots.  And yet, as has often been the case, the colonists did not appreciate what they had.  Here were an ancient people who could have shared their knowledge and skills which the early settlers would have benefitted from, which could sometimes even have saved their lives.  Word went back to Britain that this land was ‘Terra Nullius’ – an empty land, ripe for settlement.  Not all attitudes were hostile – Captain Cook said ‘They are human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent author, equally under his care with the most polished European; perhaps being less offensive, more entitled to his favour.’  But none the less, the country was settled, land was parcelled out and sold – a concept that was totally foreign to the tribes, who did not believe land could be ‘owned’.  So they lost most of their beloved tribal lands, and with it their sense of identity and self-respect.  Harsh treatment, up to and including multiple murders, attempts to ‘assimilate’ them into white culture, which included taking their children away from them – the Stolen Generation – and discrimination all took their toll.  Being British, I have to accept that I am partly responsible for all this. 

And now?  I am very struck with the way Australia is becoming very richly diverse, ethnically and culturally.  When Bill was here in the 1950’s, it was still the era of the ‘White Australia’ policy (only white immigrants were accepted, which operated from the 1850’s until finally ending in 1973).  His dad did what he could – as an ex-serviceman, he had joined the RSL (Returned Service Men’s League), but resigned when they would not accept blacks into their membership.  

Mural in Hawker - this is the hope for the future

But I’ve seen very few Aboriginal faces around since we’ve been here.  I see the efforts the government is making.  I hear about the problems the Aboriginals face, in terms of poverty, alcohol abuse and crime – the same as the Inuits in Canada, the Native Americans, and even the Scots and Irish in all too recent  history.  I’ve heard direct prejudice too.  This is what happens when an ancient culture and identity struggle against another, newer but much more powerful definition of values and society.  As one Australian explained it to me, ‘It’s a total cultural clash’.  As another said ‘They have been terribly wronged’.  What the way forward may be is difficult to guess.  What is all too clear is that it is so much easier to create these problems than it is to cure them.

Near a set of rock paintings in the Flinders Ranges, one of the official tourist information boards carried the following words –