Time to Say “Thanks” as Well

NOW THAT the federal parliament has formally said “Sorry” to indigenous Australians, I believe we should also be saying “Thanks” as a mark of true respect.

All my forebears came to Australia in the early days of settlement. Those who settled outback received enormous help from the Aboriginal people—for which they were deeply appreciative—about things such as sources of drinking water, weather predictions, the location of good grazing land, fishing areas in rivers, methods of conducting efficient preventive burning … They were also warned what to be wary about such as poisonous berries, dangerous snakes and insects. The list goes on and on. Some of my friends, who are also descended from early settlers, say their forebears noted in their diaries the many ways in which they received helpful insights about the environment from indigenous people.

My paternal grandfather Sir George Houstoun Reid, a Founding Father of this country and in the view of his biographer, Professor W.H. McMinn, the true Father of Federation, always expressed his profound admiration for indigenous culture. His younger son, my father Clive, also said that he felt that gratitude, as well as regret, should be expressed to indigenous Australians. He was certain that many actions taken by early settlers in Australia and which have since been regretted, were often actions taken with good intention. He was emphatic about this and I think this is why I worked so hard to write Shadows of Our Dreaming (published by Angus & Robertson in 1983).

My maternal grandmother, Mary Ross Munro (nee Cameron), who lived with the family on their outback property, Boombah, near St George, in western Queensland, took an Aboriginal girl, Nelly, to Paris many years ago, to help with the family’s domestic requirements. Nelly learnt to speak French fluently in two months. When they returned to Boombah, Nelly said to my grandmother, “Forgive me, but I don’t really like your civilisation, I am going walkabout.” She was not seen again.

My mother, the youngest of the family, always said that Nelly had been her best friend when they were both young children, so she missed her very much. Nelly had taught her how to make dampers by moistening certain seeds and then pounding them with stones into flour, which was mixed with water and shaped into flat loaves and baked on hot sand beneath the campfire; also how to carve drawings on bark and rocks and how to dot her limbs with clay when she joined Nelly and her Aboriginal friends dancing around the campfire.

Mary’s husband, my maternal grandfather, William Ross Munro, had an Aboriginal friend, Chum, when he was a child living on the family property, Tariaro, near the Namoi River in north-western New South Wales before the family moved to Keera, a property near Bingara. The local indigenous people helped build the Tariaro homestead.

TARIARO
Ant-bed floors, bark walls,
Our bush homestead stands alone
In soft-shadowed peace.

William Ross would often go hunting or fishing with Chum; they were great mates. Chum taught him to make boomerangs including those which, when thrown, would return. He always said it was Chum who gave him his deep understanding of the bush, which helped him to later acquire and manage his many rural properties in north-western New South Wales and Queensland. He became manager of Keera at the age of seventeen. His younger brother, Hugh Munro, who continued to live at Keera, also had great respect for the indigenous people, as did his wife Grace (nee Grace Gordon) who set up the Country Women’s Association and heard many stories from the women who lived out back and how they admired the Aboriginal people—especially the women.

In Shadows of Our Dreaming I attempted to give a personal insight into the immensely creative spirit of the Aboriginal people and how they lived in harmony with nature for many thousands of years. Surely we must ask ourselves today, “Do we live in harmony with nature?” The late A.D. Hope wrote in his introduction to my book: “In a very real sense this book is not only a work of art, rooted in the land and in the attitude of two races to this country, it is also a spiritual history of the deeply perceptive kind that only a poet can present.” This book was my way of saying “Thanks.”

THE ABORIGINAL PEOPLE’S love of nature was celebrated in their song-cycles. There are, for example, several hundred songs in the Eastern Arnhem Land song-cycles. Many song-cycles were translated into English by the late Professor Ronald Berndt.

Our seagull dives into the water, sending out spray
with its beak as it skims the surface …
Carefully we paddle, dragging our paddles along,
as we hear that bird,
The female gull cries out as it sees the dark rainclouds
rising …

Nature was also celebrated over thousands of years in hundreds of rock and tree carvings, bark and cave paintings across Australia.

The Wiradjuri tribe lived in western New South Wales; these people believed that Baiamai was the Great God and creator of all things. The Aranda word djuringa means “all that is sacred” and encompasses all sacred symbolic objects—outcrops of stone, hills, trees, caves … During his initiation ceremony a man would be made aware of the eternal Dreamtime from Dreamtime heroes.

The late Rhys Jones, of the Department of Pre- History at the Australian National University, wrote in “Surviving the Great Dust Ages” (August 6, 1979): “Instead of putting their surplus energy into getting more food from the landscape, they expended it on religious or artistic development in a huge release of intellectual effort … These people were aristocrats of the mind.” We should certainly also be saying “Thanks” for the superb contemporary works of art by indigenous artists which are today appreciated worldwide.

Were the indigenous people and this great islandcontinent in better condition before Europeans settled here? We brought diseases, alcohol, drugs and many other things which we should also make clear we deeply regret.

GUNNAMARRA
… Beer cans and bottles
Lie on sand middens with shells,
Scrapers, flints and ghosts.

It seems ironic that the Kooelung Aborigines chanted “Kui” while clicking sticks and shells in celebration, at what is now Camp Cove near Watson’s Bay, when Captain Arthur Phillip landed there in 1788 with the First Fleet. They were filled with joy because they believed that these pale-skinned people were the spirits of their dead ancestors who were returning to enrich them spiritually.

KUI
“Welcome, spirits of
Our dead ancestor,” echoes
And echoes … Listen!

(Kui is also spelt cooee. It is an Aboriginal word for welcome, come or hullo.)

“Tariaro”, “Gunnamarra” and “Kui” are haiku by Anne Fairbairn from her compilation Shadows of Our Dreaming: A Celebration of Early Australia.