Land is hallowed for Aborigines in ways non-Aborigines are not even able to guess at. The landscape as we see it is, to Aboriginal eyes, shaped by the tracks of ancestor beings who have passed through it and over it (and still do).

These marks or tracks or traces of the ancestors can be seen in the shape of the hills and valleys, in the rocks and rivers and caves, in the trees and other plants in it and in the animals that live on it. Such "tracks" become patterns in art or songs and dances in music and permeate Aboriginal thinking and life at every level.

The land is seen as giving constantly of its riches and resources and stories to its Aboriginal people. Like a mother it cares for them. Aborigines throughout Australia often say, "The Land , my Mother". Non-Aborigines in Australia are only beginning to understand how "the environment" can care for us. Living in a place is a two-way relationship.

Aboriginal people have this reciprocal obligation to "care" for land as it cares for them. This does not only refer to environmental protection issues, although these are becoming part of that obligation. It refers also to honouring ritual and religious obligations to the landscape and, interestingly, to harvesting and husbanding it by hunting and foraging and using it, by "keeping it clean" through seasonal burn-offs and hunts. We might compare this to annual "pruning" in orchard work. It also refers to teaching the next generation about the land and has come to include teaching non-Aborigines also. Today this includes making submissions to land claim hearings.

The above is true for Aborigines throughout Australia. Each region has its own local stories and very often these will "join" to those of the adjacent area and people. Thus around Darwin the dominant ancestral being is a large sea creature sometimes described as "like a whale", who travelled into the area from the south-west. It stopped at various named places along the way and performed certain acts to teach human beings how to behave. When it reached the islands in Port Patterson it travelled along them then crossed to the mainland on the Cox Peninsula. From here it went over the harbour and along the coast to Old Man Rock off Casuarina Beach near Darwin, before moving east and away from the Darwin area.

This track continues further around the Arnhem Land coast and links to others which once would have completely circumscribed Australia. Such ancestor tracks criss-cross the Australian continent like a webbed surface with many layers and not all visible especially to outsiders.

The journeys of the ancestral beings shape the landscape and order the activities of human beings still. They give meaning to everyday life. This bundle of stories and world-view is called the "Dreaming".

M.M. Brandl
marmar@vicnet.net.au
Mallacoota - Victoria - Australia