BUCKLEY’S BAND WERE fishing along the coast when he noticed several tribal elders talking to two men he’d never seen before. They had marks painted on their arms, and a set of coloured feathers around their heads with longer emu feathers tied to their waists. These men were waygeries, messengers with virtual diplomatic immunity throughout Aboriginal lands.
These honoured ambassadors brought vital knowledge from great distances. Some wore red clay marks on their forearms to denote how many days they had walked to bring message sticks to their destinations. On these small sticks, notches showed which tribes were required for a meeting and how many men were needed from each tribe. A waygerie could be despatched or received by all tribes, and they were the only strangers from outside country who didn’t need permission to pay a visit. Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin later told James Dawson that one waygerie she knew of was able to travel unmolested between the Grampian Ranges and the ocean, and between the Wannon River in the far west of present-day Victoria to the Leigh River just outside Geelong. His name was Weeratt Kuyuut, and he was reputed to be a great warrior as well as a renowned messenger and truthteller who was received everywhere with respect and hospitality.
In this case, the two men were painted in accordance with their message: their faces were red and white, the colours daubed across their cheeks and nose. This meant the Barrabool Hills clan were being summoned to a great meeting, a corroboree, a marriage or a fight; if they had been painted in white all over, the information would have related to an important death. Buckley was told that there was to be another honour fight over a woman, and the messenger was to be despatched to relay the news that the clan would accept the challenge. Four days later, the messenger returned to report that the place of confrontation had been determined.
Soon Buckley’s band was again on the march, with all the men save himself coloured for war. As he walked with them to the appointed place, he noted that the men vastly changed their demeanour: they were no longer relaxed and fun-loving but had become tense and alert. He later realised that as they were travelling in strange country, they expected to be ambushed at any time. They would always sleep among the bushes and long grasses away from their main camp, often without any clothing and equipped with weapons; this was necessary to prevent surprise by enemies who would be attracted to the smoke of a campfire.
Whenever the clan made a camp, they would leave it spotless the next morning and incinerate all rubbish. Buckley learnt that if an enemy took possession of anything they had used – even the bones of animals they had eaten, broken weapons, feathers or pieces of skins – it could be used as a charm to produce an illness in the person who had handled it the most. Even someone’s excreta could be used against them, and so it was concealed with the use of a gunigalg (an excrement stick).
It is believed that at a site near Mount Eccles in the south-west of Victoria, there were two very deep, well-like holes into which an enemy’s excreta were dropped. A tiny speck of an enemy’s faeces deposited in these holes would cause him to pine and die. For all these reasons, any clan on the move would never leave any trace of their comings and goings which might encourage sorcery.
Buckley discovered that his tribe looked out for the accoutrements of others, as these could be used as a form of insurance or to vent anger against an individual of another tribe.
In a few days, he and his clan came to a great open place where hundreds of people were assembled from five Kulin tribes. Each tribe lit fires and set up camp on the side of the meeting area that corresponded to their country. The men were all heavily painted in warlike hues when the fight commenced as planned. This time, several women were killed in the melee.
On its conclusion, a new matter needed to be discussed: Buckley himself. According to him, his presence – and obvious difference – had proved a major distraction. The Boonwurrung from the east of Port Phillip and the Woiwurrung from the north were there, people who had never seen the huge white ngamadjidj.
His clan escorted him into what had just been the battle zone, where a ring of warriors was formed around him of about a hundred and fifty yards in diameter. The different tribes were all seated in rows on the ground behind the circle. Then the elders of each tribe, the ngurungaeta, walked along and tapped everyone on the head with a piece of bark, asking them to identify themselves, their tribes and allegiances. Each elder advanced by turns into the ring, speaking loudly enough for all to hear.
Confused as ever, Buckley began to feel that he was somehow a part of a new quarrel. Was his presence unwelcome? Was he suspected of being an evil spirit or sorcerer used by the Wadawurrung for their own advantage? Perhaps the other tribes disputed his status as kin returned.
In the inner circle closest to him were a number of heavily armed men, coloured in war paint, who had recently killed and maimed people. It seemed they were the tribunal. Buckley thought he might be sacrificed, but after the elders spoke, the spectators remained silent, staring at the huge white man for what seemed like ages. He was apoplectic with fear, but he knew to stay defiant – to show them nothing.
The tension broke so quickly that Buckley didn’t know whether to smile or faint. Perhaps it had been agreed that this giant white person was Murrangurk after all. Soon the warriors were laughing, shaking their spears about and jumping in all directions. The opposing tribes gave three cheers and dispersed.
But Buckley’s nerves had been shattered. There had been nobody to explain or excuse him. Not even his own people had spoken – apparently they had been beholden to whatever law or protocol was being observed. Shaken, he realised that even a year in, he knew so very little about these people.
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THE MORGAN—BUCKLEY ACCOUNT never speaks of the spirituality of the Kulin, which seems like a great oversight but is understandable given the general readership. Indeed, few Europeans showed any interest in the belief systems of Indigenous people until the rise of anthropology in the middle to latter part of the nineteenth century.
It’s also possible that the Wadawurrung told Buckley not to talk of spiritual matters to outsiders, and that his doing so would have contravened their law. The late Wadawurrung elder David Tournier explained in the documentary film The Extraordinary Tale of William Buckley (2010) that Buckley wouldn’t have been allowed to discuss sacred matters: ‘He would have learnt to respect the law and the law was you didn’t dare talk about certain songs, dances and stories. They would have been taboo.’ Even if Buckley never adopted the Dreaming belief system, he would have been versed in how it related to the land. He simply would never have been accepted without this spiritual inclusion. The beliefs would have been everywhere, part of all personal and collective decisions and actions.
The Dreaming, sometimes called deep time, infused everything from the day an Indigenous person was born to their dying breath, and it continued when they moved into the spirit world. It was a period at the beginning of time, when beings – some of which were human, some animal and others supernatural – brought all species to life and from there ushered in all the things the people would know. These beings had fixed the world as it is; they were heroes of different shapes and forms who determined the spirit centres for everything human and animal. If a hero spirit was connected to the kangaroo, he may even have been able to take on its form. He would have performed ceremonies to foster the lives of kangaroos and maybe even left a stone to mark the site that would represent a great repository of kangaroo life or spirits. Other legends might explain how a hill got its particular shape, how a creek was formed, how the wattlebird found its wattle, or how a crow achieved its colour.
Among the Kulin people, the most prominent legend was about Bunjil, the eaglehawk. There are hundreds of stories related to his works and creations. One legend tells of how he cupped the sun and warmed the Earth. The Earth opened, and humans came out to dance. Other stories of Bunjil relate to his creation of everything in the Dreaming. He had fought and subdued the great snake Mindie, harbinger of chaos and disorder. But Mindie had never gone away: he lived in the north, and when disease or disaster came to the Kulin, it was always his doing. It was after Bunjil had overcome Mindie that he proceeded to make the land, animals, trees and grasses. He taught all of them what to do and how to behave. He gave men and women the law. He gave men weapons and showed them how to use them.
According to Wadawurrung beliefs, all animals and geographical features visible today resulted from the actions of ancestral beings. Physical features in the landscape such as Lal Lal Falls near Ballarat were created by Bunjil, who was said to have formed these places as physical reminders of his exploits and the laws that originated because of his actions.
Colonial observers of Indigenous culture such as Edward Stone Parker, the assistant protector in the Aboriginal Protectorate established in the Port Phillip District of New South Wales (now Victoria) between 1838 and 1849, wrote:
Bunjil is said to have been once a ‘black fellow’, and a remarkable locality is indicated as his residence when on earth. This is the deep and basaltic glen or hollow, forming the fall of ‘Lal lal’ on the Marrabool [Moorabool], near Mr Airey’s Station. He is now represented as dwelling in the sky, and it is curious that they call the planet Jupiter ‘Pundyil’, and say it is the light of his fire. This Pundyil is said to have found a single kangaroo, emu, and other animals on earth: that he caught them, cut them up, and by some mysterious power, made each piece into a new kangaroo, &c., and that hence the country was filled with these animals.
Bunjil was also the creator of moieties, a concept that doesn’t translate into any Western religion. Moieties are divisions, and the word literally means ‘halves’: Bunjil was one part or half, while Waa (the crow) was another. Some clans were Bunjil, others were Waa. These divisions weren’t designed to separate people but rather to unite them.
In 1909, Ellen Richards, a Wadawurrung/Djargurd Wurrung woman, explained to the anthropologist R.H. Mathews that the land around Ballarat from Smythesdale to Geelong was Bunjil territory, and that the Waa people inhabited the area around Mount Emu and Skipton. Richards had several interviews with Mathews respecting the language and customs of her people. They knew exactly when, where and how to find food and water, the meaning and significance of different places, and which ceremonies needed to be performed where, when and by whom. They knew how to behave in certain areas, and where access was restricted or forbidden. Richards told Mathews about various ceremonies and the people involved in them, including those related to the initiation rites of a girl becoming a woman.
Other oral histories were shared with white colonists by Wadawurrung and neighbouring Kulin tribes about events between roughly one thousand and three thousand years ago, such as when Port Phillip was dry land. One colonist recorded the account given to him: ‘Blacks say “their uncle” (unspecific for all progenitors) recalled when Hobson’s Bay was a kangaroo ground. They say “plenty catch kangaroo and plenty catch possum there” and Murray [an Aboriginal man] assured me that the passage up the Bay, through which the ships come, is the River Yarra, and that the river once went out at the Heads, but that the sea broke in, and that Hobson’s Bay, which was once a hunting ground, became what it is.’
Another account attests to how the Wadawurrung could, in one ancient period, ‘cross, dry-foot’, from one ‘side of the bay [in the east] to Geelong [in the west]’ until a time when ‘the earth sank, and the sea rushed in through the heads, till the void places became broad and deep, as they are today’. This story about the inundation of Port Phillip Bay shows the depth and age of Dreaming stories.
Central to both spiritual and social life were the moieties. They were about bringing two halves together – for example, a Bunjil couldn’t marry a Bunjil, they had to marry a Waa or another moiety. Other non-Kulin people had other moieties. The Gunditjmara people of south-west Victoria had Krokitch the white cockatoo or Kaputch the black cockatoo. Throughout the Kulin nation and beyond it was a way of ensuring a person married outside their kin, which doubled as a natural way to foster genetic diversity; a Bunjil woman would always go and live with her Waa husband’s people. It also determined the roles played in ceremonies such as corroborees, and most importantly it created intricate kinships and relationships between sometimes fairly distant tribes.
The Dreaming stories linked people to each other but also tightly to their natural surroundings. They were guarantees of security and stability. If the people performed the appropriate ceremonies, observed the rules of kinship and marriage, and showed respect for sacred sites, then the seasons would continue, the food would be plentiful, animals would be abundant and the rains would always come.