I woke up this morning and got ready for coffee with Sarah Wright, one of the members of the Bawaka Collective. I left my Airbnb a mess to pack up later. Little did I know what was in store for me.
Sarah and I met at Hyde Café and began talking about the Aboriginal understanding of Country (with a capital “C”) – a term that explodes the Western understanding of humans as separate from the land or non-human beings. Country encompasses homeland, nation, human and more-than-human belonging, dreams, time and space, and spiritual connections to ancestors. Sarah told me that Country is often misunderstood by non-aboriginal Australians as referring only to the outback or to remote bushland. But in reality, the city, and everywhere, is Country.
Sarah taught me the phrase “urban Country,” where the word “urban” describes a place of dense relationships. “Country,” in her words, is “an emergent place, always being expressed in different ways.”
She told me that although there is a general appreciation for urban animals in Australian cities, there is still a hierarchy among those deemed “acceptable” or “unacceptable.” As in, animals like cockatoos are considered beautiful and Aussie, whereas the white ibis, derogatorily called the “bin chicken,” is considered a dirty pest. Judgement and human approval dictate these relationships.
Years ago, as a recent graduate, Sarah told me that she volunteered with multiple community gardens in Sydney that provided food for people in need. These groups worked with pollinators and friendly insects as agents in food production. Sarah continued this work abroad in multiple countries, namely working with organic farmers in the Philippines. And then, back in Australia, she did anti-mining work alongside indigenous people, which was the beginning of her learnings in Aboriginal ideology and being.
Sarah said that many of the people who joined her community gardens weren’t necessarily seeking out a connection to Country. But in nurturing the garden, they fostered a deeper sense of collective stewardship. “In a place as eclectic as a community garden, you have to release your concept of full human agency,” she said. “There’s no way around it.”
Sarah believes we must teach Aboriginal understandings of Country widely in order to change Western societal norms. “We need to erase the dichotomies created by settler colonialism,” she said, referring to the false separation we create between humans and non-human beings, between past and present, and between cities and nature.
Because in reality, there is no “between.” Our being is continuous.
Sarah told me about a sculpture that Gumbaynggir Elders created in Nambucca Heads, a town over from Bellingen. The sculpture pays homage to Country – honoring the legacy of Uncle Benjie Buchanan who speared fish in the Nambucca River. She said she was driving in that direction later that afternoon and offered to take me there, as long as I could be ready to go in thirty minutes. She even offered to drop me off at the train station afterwards. With an enthusiastic yes, I sprinted back to my Airbnb to pack.
And what followed was a string of serendipitous connections.
Sarah picked me up thirty minutes later in her white SUV, and we drove down lush country roads to Nambucca. She told me she was driving four hours south to take Uncle Bud, another Gumbaynggir Elder, to get new hearing aids. So, we stopped by his home to pick him up.
When Uncle Bud opened the door, he was wearing a baseball cap, a t-shirt, a plaid vest, and Hawaiian shorts. “This is Margaret,” Sarah said. “She’s doing a project about humans and animals.” Uncle Bud smiled and showed me a children’s book on the table he had helped write about caring for whales. He said he wanted me to have it, and gave it to me. And then, he showed us an instrument he whittled from a digeridoo, and a bag of fresh oysters from the river that he planned to have for dinner with Sarah.
And the three of us drove to visit the sculpture – Uncle Bud in the front with Sarah, and me in the back with the oysters. When we got out of the car, I saw a tall metal spear extending from the ground. Pierced at the top was a wooden fish with shells for eyes, and protruding from the middle was the outline of a human profile. Three wavy metal lines flowed down beneath the face, symbolizing the river. “There are actually two faces in that profile,” Sarah said. “The outer one is Uncle Benjie, the Elder. And the smaller one is Uncle Bud as a boy. The two heads symbolize intergenerational knowledge.”
Uncle Bud explained that he used to hunt mullets with Uncle Benjie when he was young. And that the lagoon we were looking at used to be cleaner, with a free-flowing current and abundant fish – back before coastal residences clogged the waterways. He gestured to a plaque beside the sculpture. “Here, read our story.”
The land, sea, sky, and river are all connected here on Gumbaynggirr Country. / In the 1950s Uncle Benjie and many Elders could often be seen spear fishing around the V-wall, in the river and in the lagoon. / Old people could read the clouds and the birds. They could talk with the spirits; they knew the stories and they knew the seasons. / The sculpture design centers on the symbolic significance of the spear. / The spear acts as Uncle Benjie’s spine as if to say, culture kept Uncle Benjie upright and forward facing. / The sculpture shows the hairy grubs, the butterflies and the flowers of the wattle that would tell when the mullet were running. There are seasons for everything.
There is a section of the spear, right at the bend in the river, called the figure’s heart. Here viewers are invited to touch the sculpture, to become part of it. “Hold it right at the heart.” Uncle Bud told me. “Stand on this stone right here. And imagine you’re a little girl. A brave little girl going out for the hunt with Uncle Benjie. Facing the wind.”
I took his place on the rock and reached out my hand. Holding onto the heart of the spear, I tried to imagine what it was like to be young Uncle Bud. But inside, I was overwhelmed with feeling. There was so much meaning here, so much depth and ancestry, that I couldn’t grasp properly; that I didn’t know how to honor. It was emotional to stand in that place, next to Uncle Bud, the Elder who designed this sculpture from his memories. I couldn’t believe that Sarah had brought us there. I didn’t have the right words. I didn’t know how to say thank you.
As we got back in the car, Sarah told me we would stop by Muurrbay, an Aboriginal language and culture cooperative, to meet another Elder before they hit the road. From the way she talked about it, I assumed we would walk in, say hello to a person or two, and then continue on. But as I walked into a community center full of Elders, and Uncle Bud began introducing me to every person in the room, and as I spotted a big buffet table on the back porch, I knew we would be staying for a while.
As it turns out, we had arrived at a gathering to celebrate the Gumbaynggirr Elders in Nambucca. The celebration normally happens earlier in the year, but because many people were traveling, it had been moved to today. The one day I had arranged to meet Sarah for coffee; the one day she was driving to Newcastle with Uncle Bud; and the one day I had left in Bellingen. The people at the gathering welcomed me with open arms. They did not question why I was there. Uncle Bud’s introduction was enough to bring me into the community in that moment.
I spent my time at Muurrbay mostly talking and eating with two Elders named Lisa and Bomber. They were curious about my ethnicity and about why I was traveling. When I told them I was doing a project studying the relationship between humans and non-human animals, Lisa asked, “You mean like our totems?” She told me that each person in her culture is aligned with an animal as a child – their totem – that becomes part of their identity. These animals reflect each person’s unique personality. Her granddaughters were an owl and a dragonfly, respectively, because one was book smart while the other was energetic. Lisa’s totem was the white ibis, that notorious bird in the cities of New South Wales. But unlike pessimistic city dwellers, Lisa loves these birds. “If you were here longer,” she said. “You could photograph these animals and what they mean to us.”
Lisa also is an artist and does beautiful, colorful paintings. Many of which tell stories of her family members through depicting their totems. She showed me a painting she made of her mother as a cormorant, fishing beside a river with trees. She also told me that she and Bomber are members of the Dingo Tribe. Their people were meant to look after the dingoes in Nambucca, but couldn’t anymore, because the wild dogs were pushed out due to development. We also talked about their families, about turning sixty, and about where I was traveling to next. They wished me well and offered advice as I prepare for India.
My time with Lisa, Bomber, Uncle Bud, Sarah, and the other Gumbaynggirr Elders was like magic. I felt as I had when I held the heart of Uncle Benjie’s spear. A deep tenderness took over me. And as I spoke to each one of them, I was overwhelmed by a significance I could feel but couldn’t fully understand. I kept saying how grateful I was to be there and to have met them all. I told them I didn’t want to leave.
Right before we got back in the car, Sarah pulled me aside.
“I want you to know that these kinds of connections. . . they don’t happen often. You’re really lucky. It’s because of you; because of being in the right place at the right time. It’s some kind of a sign. That this was meant to be.”