Why here and now:
Trawtha Makuminya was chosen because of its many uniqueness and how special of a place it is. It is the only area of Aboriginal land that is inland and away from the coasts with which we are familiar. Not only is it inland, but it is also uniquely alpine – with plants, features and systems not found elsewhere around the island. It was bought for the community rather than handed back and was chosen due to its very high conservation and cultural values.
Trawtha Makuminya is Big River country. It was home of big river nation of our ancestors whose culture and care we can still see in country today. There are ochre sites, stone tool quarries and scatters as well as hearths all across the area. Even the name ‘Trawtha Makuminya’ speaks to it story and uniqueness – it means tracks through big river country. The word Trawtha was revived from the big river language – it means country. In Palawa kani the word Milaythina was revived for country and comes from our ancestors speaking of our home country in the northeast. Trawtha is milaythina for big river country and is not found elsewhere in Palawa kani. This word was revived only for this place, to honour it, its people and its story. It’s one of the only instances of two words being revived for the same thing – the other being the words Palawa and Pakana.
When we say the name ‘Trawtha Makuminya’ we are breathing life into the language and country of the big river peoples who land we have inherited the responsibility to care for.
Trawtha is special in many ways – one is that there are three rivers that pass through the 5000 hectare property- the one next to the main hut is the largest and runs in the middle of the other two. I have visited and swam in two of the rivers so far – with my family last summer we spent a day walking between the two, stopping to swim as we went. In the same way Trawtha is a meeting place of rivers it is also known to be a meeting place of many nations of our old people who would come from all over the island to be there.
I chose Trawtha for this residency because every time I visit this area of land I experience and learn something new. Over the two years prior I participated in the Firesticks Cultural Fire Practitioner program, which saw us gathering at Trawtha in September in order to burn the grasslands. It was on these trips I learnt to eat the turaltiri, learnt the sweet smell and taste of the baeckea and of the medicinal properties of the oil rich hakea. It was also here that I was It was also on these trip period in September was chosen – this had been a period in which community had gathered at Trawtha the few years prior in order to burn the grassland area. It was at Trawtha that I first tasted timita/possum – cooked into a stew over a hot fire on a cold day, and here I first learnt about how to skin a payathanima/wallaby, hunted by community and skinned next to the river in summer – the skins still on display at our house in Nipaluna.
I chose September because this was the time I had come last year, and the year before It was at this time last year at that I first visited the Wayalina/ cider gum there, the story of which captivated me enough to base the entire work around them.
Wayalina are an alpine gum whose sap our ancestors used to ferment into cider. It is said that they would cut a bowl/cup into the tree itself and a tap a hole into the veins of the tree from which the sap would flow out, down the trunk and into tree bowl. After filling the hole and covering the bowl the sap would be left to ferment with natural wild yeasts, producing a sweet eucalyptus cider. This cider is one of the oldest alcoholic beverages in the world and was made only on big river country and used for communal ceremony and celebration.
Due to the almost complete dispossession of our ancestors from our country and the loss of the big river people and much of their culture this cider has not been made or tasted by our people for almost two centuries. Today many of the wayalina are found only on private land, granted farms and like. Having Trawtha Makuminya returned is the first time our people have been able access to these trees and rebuild relationship with that cultural knowledge, practice and resource.
The idea was to head to Trawtha in a period of ‘spring’. Ie when the snow was melting, the rivers flowing with snow melt and flowers blossoming. To visit the Wayalina again and see if the sap would be flowing like the rivers.
The Residency on Country
Tanganutura and I travelled up on the Monday, although we didn’t go all the way to Trawtha we did see the incredible change of the landscape as we drove up into to alpine country. On the drive to Trawtha on Tuesday morning we saw so many changing country types – beautiful scene after beautiful scene. We followed the river for what felt like a kilometre before we found ourselves at the hut beside it.
We instantly noticed that it was not looking like we had seen it any time before. There was mud, miniature tarns next to the road and the river had risen and made an island out of what had been a bank last time we were here.
It was nice to be here with the junior ranger program – we were with young community who eager to connect and learn with country as well as those who had been here for the ceremony the over the days before we arrived.
The first thing we all did was walk to the ceremony site, we spoke of what had been done and why and the importance of returning our ancestors to rest on country. We had ochre on our faces as we spoke about our families and what we liked most about being on country and what he hoped to experience while we were here. Then we went to try and visit the Wayalina.
I had been told by some of the community there that the roads had turned to rivers. I didn’t really know what that meant until we started to move away from the hut – at lower ground the roads were literally rivers, running parallel to the real river that we knew to belong there. I saw no puddles only tarns where water had pooled on flat ground and in ditches. This continued higher on our way to the Wayalina until we found an area so wet we couldn’t cross and decided to head back towards the hut.
We stopped at the grassland, and I was able to speak on the story of the area and how we had cared for it and why we have to stop the other plants overtaking the grazing area between the rivers. Here we called out to the ancestors and our country shouting in language at the top of our lungs. The group was passionate about taking action to care for country while we were there, they tried to burn some hakea and cut some down to grind into a balm, while others endeavoured to cross the big river on foot.
That afternoon Armie and Takani arrived, and we began to settle in at the hut for the evening.
Wednesday morning, we woke up to see a completely different landscape than the one we fell asleep to. There was snow covering the ground and continuing to fall. We spent a few hours watching the snow falling all around us thinking we would be snowed in. I noticed that only the river and the ceremony site remained free of the snow covering. I was struck by clearing at the ceremony site – it was so still, there was no snow around the fire even though it was out and there was a ring of dark red ochre-coloured earth around on which the snow couldn’t settle. There were two abalone shells that we used to mix and paint ourselves with ochre, they were now filled with dark red water with a layer of ice over the top – something I’ve never seen before.
The snow was coming down so much that we decided to stay inside the hut by the fire and talk concept rather than undertake any walks or harvests. I introduced Takani and Armie to the concept of trace which has been really resonating with me lately and spoke about how to include human presence in the film without overtly showing people in every shot. We also discussed some forms that had been really standing out to me as well as what we would do with community should the junior rangers be able to access the area later in the day.
The arrival of rangers from Primingkana and Nipaluna signified that the road had become more accessible, as did the sun staying out for more than 15 minutes at a time. As the snow began to melt, we decided to venture out up the road-river behind the hut heading north. This was my favourite time of the residency as I was able to walk around and notice many really beautiful things on country. I saw patterns the water made as well as some blossoming fruit and flowers and lovely patterns of rocks and cool shapes, many of which I collected or took photos of.
Not long after that the junior rangers arrived and began taking in the snow. After a while I asked them to sit down with me by the water, we spoke of how at one of the last camps uncle Jimmy encouraged silent listening and meditating on country in order to better hear the stories and lessons country shares with us. So, we engaged in a few minutes of listening beside the river. I then showed the junior rangers the things that I had collected and asked them to notice the seasons and find things that speak to them while they’re here. We also gave them some clay with which they could take impressions and moulds of anything that they wanted to remember without removing.
While they were gone, based on something I had seen another of my mentors Ben make, I draped some clay over some rocks beside the water and really loved the result. I thought the result was one of the most beautiful bowls ever – it was the shape of the river rock and had the imprint of another stone used to bash and flatten the clay.
After about 30 minutes they returned and some had bought back pigments and plants they found, impressions of leaves and branches or just stories of what they saw and did. Armie then led through a workshop of making pinch and coiled pots which many engaged well with. I had some bisque fired pieces that they painted with all the pigments they found as well as ash and charcoal from the campfire that they could take and put in the wood heater tonight to keep tomorrow. This they all engaged as well – especially those that had found the ochre and pigment themselves.
Armie then left with junior rangers for Bronte Park while Takani, Tanganutura and I settled in for another night.
The next morning the snow was completely gone. It looked completely different than the two days before. I could see clearly again all the features of the landscape that I was familiar with. So, after packing up our stuff and cleaning the hut we set of exploring. I decided to take square imprints of many of the textures by the river – these were of the trees, rocks and other interesting things nearby. I liked this so much that I decided to take more pieces to continue this process, along with the river-bowl making as we went further afield. We stopped at two bridges along the river and went again to the grassland before the rains started to come back. We danced in the open field and had fun with the camera and the drone before returning to our cars to begin the long drive home.
What Harvesting and Making Happened:
- I was given two ochres: one white and one red that were collected by the junior rangers and which I intend to incorporate into the glazing.
- I took several different plants including some baeckea. Hakea and turaltiri
- I took bowl/moulds of 4 river rocks as well as 12 texture imprints
- I took charcoal and ash from the campfire
- I also gathered some clay type soil and some smaller gravelly rocks to experiment with glaze-making.
- We did a lot of filming and took quite a few photos.
Things That Made an Impression:
- The ochre ice in the abalone shell
- That we could not access the wayalina I think this is resonating with me thematically a lot
- That the turaltiri were in season
- The snow and vast amounts of water held in the landscape
- The extreme power of the river flow while we were there
- The way the young people were so passionate about ways they could care for country.
- Red Turaltiri berries and yellow hakea flowers
Important themes and messages: The threat to Wayalina
The Wayalina remain the primary cultural resources that I am concerned with. Rebuilding this relationship is very important to me and many of our community. Their rarity is a key element – being so hard to access and so often remaining on private properties make them a harder one to build relationship with. There are also very many threats to their health and therefore the revitalisation of the practice associate with them.
Wayalina need cold and alpine weather and lots of water. They have lots of sugar in their sap to stop them being susceptible to freezing and they need lots of water around them to be healthy. The ones I have seen are in a marshland clearing with button grass and water flowing through. This means that they are really under threat with warming climates and droughts as the environment is changing. This is something important for us to know and to highlight.
Being so incredibly rare means that they are also susceptible to disease and blights that come from a lack of diversity in plant populations – there has been an effort by community to bring wayalina from other places to grow on other areas of Aboriginal land and to try and introduce seedlings from other populations to the Wayalina.
The threats to the wayalina mean that community choose to not to revitalise the harvest of their sap – because if done wrong the stakes are so high that any loss of them may not be sustainable. I like that we have all taken this approach to care for them to ensure their survival as the way to be in relationship with them over revitalising the practice of tapping the trees. That will come later, once their health is guaranteed.
I have tasted Wayalina twice, once from the tree at Trawtha that had some residue on the trunk and once from a bucket of harvested sap, unfermented and still sweet, astringent but delicious.
Important themes: Fresh Water
Water was a clear presence while were there. In the rivers, roads, puddles and tarns. In the snow, snow melt and rain. The sound of the river was always present and the one thing we did not have to worry about if we got stuck there was access to clean fresh water. So many heritage sites are based around the rivers at Trawtha as well, which shows a carry through of their presence and importance as well.
This is a really important one – in that water is the basis of all life and is always one of the most defining parts of any area of country and of building relationship to country.
It’s important to get across the importance of looking after fresh water sources as well – like keeping the clean and able to sustain life. Waterways are important culturally as well and getting across the need for water rights is also important to me
Important themes: Our role on Country
I think this came across in the planning of this trip as well as in everything we did and thought about while we were there. This is the framework that all community we saw there were bringing to our presence on country.
This came up when discussing about the ceremony that had just taken place as well as the clear passion for removing the hakea, caring for the river and even the junior rangers being so excited when helping a prupilathina that had been stuck in the burrow.
This comes through when we talk about protecting waterways and threatened species and is a key values underpinning land returns and this whole project. It was also something that Uncle Jimmy mentioned is important to share with the wider public.
It is important in this work or in its presentation to get across the importance to our people of caring for country. How this idea of being part of and family to our country is a key part of our culture and existence.
I really want to find a way to express our role as caretakers and mediators of country and its seasons and cycles as well as encourage others to reflect on why this should be important to everyone – ie it’s important for them to care for country too but it also important to them to do what’s in their power to ensure our community have access and governance of country so that we can undertake our cultural responsibility freely.
Key Conceptual Framework and Questions That Inform the Process and the Form:
- Trace
- I got an understanding of this concept of trace as an artistic framework with an issue of Artlink_Indigenous in which Aboriginal artist and writers explored the artistic concept as it relates of ancestral and cultural traces for our practices as Aboriginal people. I thought this was a very useful articulation in what do and have done in my own practice and the framework under which I work.
- Trace “Explores practices which begin with what has been left behind…echoes, residues, impressions and marks that give presence to the past…Rather than focus on the historical and archival such practices embody forms of continuity and the cyclical…against a continued discourse of Aboriginal art that centres marks made by the individual, we turn towards forms of repetition, iteration and mediation and retracing the ancestral.
- An ancestral trace is loved with as a kind of Prescence and reengaged with through sites, ceremony and knowledge transmissions. It not simply a repetitive re-enlivening of the past but is enfolded into every inhabitation of a world of traces that was and is shaped and reshaped by ancestral movements.
- Traces generate mobile meanings in the present and proclaims as much as is recalled – they keep us searching.
- This work is one rife with trace and the process of following and laying down traces – this applies to the conceptual underpinning and the form itself, I think.
- Container
- I think key to my understanding of the final artwork and its form is the idea of a container. I tend to move away from functional forms in making ceramics, like vases, bowls etc have been less interesting to me. However, for this work I am leaning back into the functional forms. I keep coming back to containers and questions of what they contain – I have the form of the carved wayalina fermenting bowl in mind, as well as the abalone shells with snow melt. I also think of the large flat water-filled containers used to reflect the stars when seeing the trees reflected in the temporary tarns at Trawtha. I really want to centre this work on those river-rock bowls shaped on and by country when we were at Trawtha. I think if the form can hold something it can hold anything – wayalina, water, snow melt etc – it’s just the question of what/if anything tangible or if it should remain empty and hold only stories and potential.
- Absence and presence
- Once decided on the shape of the container I think the next question is what it will hold if anything. I think I want something that can hold the things mentioned but that might be empty currently. I think if focusing on the water, the wayalina and caring for country and displaying a series of containers shaped by country – it would be most powerful if most or many remain empty. I think the presence of water is important to the work as it was the dominant seasonal feature we experienced on country. I also think having some containers remain empty speaks to the story of the wayalina – not being able to fill them until we know that they are safe and healthy speaks to the primacy of our role with country as carers of it. Working this in to the final form reflects what we have now, the relationship we’re building and an optimism for the future – in that they are waiting to be filled.
The Meeting with Uncle Jimmy:
I spoke to Uncle Jimmy in the week before leaving for the residency. I spoke about the project and my interest in seasonal indicators and revitalizing our knowledge of the seasons and connected cultural practices. He seemed excited and interested in the project and really liked the choice of location – especially with his passion for native forests. When speaking about some of the important themes he again spoke of his work on describing a ‘relational ecosystem’ – the example he gave was like the solar system things aren’t just moving around up there, they are all moving in relationship to each other. He is this is the foundational understanding of our culture and country and our role as Aboriginal people. We are living in relationship to all other systems of our country and our responsibility to country and to each other flows from that.
I found this to be such a clear articulation and one that I will carry with me throughout this project and beyond.
When I spoke about how I am really liking the concept of ‘trace’ and ancestral traces in governing my practice he mentioned to me the idea of ‘Palimpset’ which is “a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing. Ie something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.” It turns out this concept has been used in art as applicable to forms, peoples taste and influences as well as landscapes. (Palimset landscapes “show layers of human and physical history, and the metaphorical use of “palimpsest” to describe something with multiple hidden layers of meaning, like the complex legacy of a historical event.”)
I found this very useful, interesting and relevant to this work and my practice and am sure it is articulating something important or is something I will endeavour to express in some way.
Uncle Jimmy said many things that resonated with me along these lines – he said, “we are the creators of a story that is continuously being told” and that we are part of the family of country. We are the teachers for others/non-Aboriginal people and must get others to understand their place in country so that it can be cared for.
The Form:
The form will centre on containers – that can hold wayalina and are shaped by the river which we stayed beside. Water will be important to the work, the presence or reflection of it will be important to get the full idea of the season and place across.
It is not important to me what colours etc are reflected. What is important is that the work is made in relationship with country – this is the key theme of the larger work, of the residency and of the process of creation. Shaping the containers from the river itself a key part of the process as is glazing them with harvested materials that we found there – it does not matter to me what the glazes look like, only what they are.
The arrangement of the containers is important. I want the arrangement to reflect the journey – either of the river or of the journey to the wayalina, like a path/map to them for when it’s time to go there and harvest.
The ‘song’ part is interesting. I think it would be cool if this one to require participation or activation to hear the sound or the full sound. I think that carries these ideas / the concept well. I think something that people have to use – like a singing bowl, or a gong or pouring or dropping into to get the sound would be cool. I will need to do some experimenting before deciding.
