Why here and now:
It was decided to launch the Rayakana Milaythina residency at Putalina /Oyster cove. This place is really important to me and there’s lots of things that make this place special. Putalina is the an area of land that has a significant story in each era of our community’s history.
It was an important cultural place prior to invasion and has stone tool quarry and a shell living site and lots of special cultural natural resources. There’s a freshwater rivulet that flows into the saltwater and there’s lots of bush foods and weaving grasses there as well.
It was also a mission and a really sad site during the war/colonisation era. In 1846, 46 of our ancestors who had survived the war, dispossession and imprisonment on Wybalenna/Flinders Island were sent to Putalina to live. It was an abandoned convict station that been deemed unfit to house convicts and it was thought to be a cost saving iniative following the expensive and disastrous Wybalenna settlement / prison camp. Putalina is one of the largest sites of death and forced Christian burial, with many of our people buried there. It was also a site of grave robbing with the entire cemetery being dug up by William Crowther (the second) and kept in the Royal Society / Tasmanian Museum until our community fought for their return in the 1980s.
My own ancestor Tanganutara lived, died and was buried there. Her daughter Fanny, my ancestral grandmother also lived there. It was at Putalina that she met her husband. Fanny was married and was given a land grant in recognition of her Aboriginality – choosing Nichols Rivulet, less than 15km away, so she could be within walking distance to her mother and her community living at the station/settlement at Putalina. My family lived in Nichols Rivulet for 5 generations.
Putalina was also the first area of land our community reoccupied in the 1980s, in the start of the land rights by reclamation era. Our community camped out there for months, blocking the roads and performed ceremony for our ancestors that they had returned there. It was one of the first parcels of land that was returned in 1995.
The Putalina festival was established in the 1980s as a celebration of the assertion of sovereignty. It always occurs in summer on the anniversary of the land occupation that led to its return. It’s a time when community from all over the state come to Putalina to celebrate and listen to great music.
I chose the Putalina festival as the time and place to introduce this project to community. At the time when the festival takes place is the time when the native cherries are ripe and I wanted to invite community to intentionally connect to and harvest the bush foods as seasonal indicators and cultural foods that are ready to eat while we are there.
The Residency on Country
This residency took place over the day of the festival. It involved a bush food walk and native cherry harvest. I had the MC announce that we would be doing a bush food walk to harvest the cherries and more than 50 people came over to attend. While there were some community members who were keen to join in, I would say the majority were non-Aboriginal people who I did not realise were attending the festival as well. This was my fault for not articulating clearly who the audience for this experience was. We walked for around an hour and harvested the bush food in season – I also shared some history of the site. It was good to have my mum, niece and daughter on the walk.
What Harvesting and Making Happened:
After the walk Takani, Armie and I set up a table under a marquee in the main festival area. We ran a clay workshop with lots of kids and families coming up to make things. Many made pieces that would be incorporated into the final work, writing their names on the pieces.
I also harvested plant material from Putalina that could be incorporated into the final work.