Let’s sit down on raŋi, the sand, at Bawaka, and continue with Wurrumila, the hunter. Marri’marri will sit with us in the shade. Kate, Sarah and Sandie are there taking notes.
Rrawun is talking about the songspiral. He says that if someone else was telling this, they would share it in their own way. If the old man, Batjaŋ, was here he would talk from morning to evening every day, enough for five books. But we are leading this, and we have asked Rrawun, our son, to share. It’s important for us to talk about this, to put it into words, and give other people an understanding of the meaning.
Wurrumila paddles out. He stops, slows down; there’s something there, a big sea animal. It might be dugong or whale. Wurrumila has seen something that will feed the family. He doesn’t hurry. He moves very carefully, slowly now. He’s trying to adjust the boat, reverse, reverse, come back, come back, go forward, forward.
He sneaks towards it with his djambatj, but oh, he has missed! The dugong gets away. He watches the dust inside the water as it swims beyond reach.
Wurrumila has followed his knowledge. He has gone the right way, sung the seas and the animals. He has thrown his harpoon, but it plunges into the sea. He misses. He must go back. We must go back.
He heads back to his camp. When he arrives at the shore he pulls the boat out of the water, gets the djambatj, and walks back.
He’s walking from the boat with his paddle, calling ‘weh, weh’ again. He goes back with the paddle over his shoulder.
After he puts his djambatj down, he sits under a djomula, a casuarina, and sees that the waters are all calm. He relaxes. He’s thinking about the day and what happened and why he didn’t get that catch. He has not yet lit his fire. Then he sings all the things he saw on his journey to the hunting place: the matjala, the floating driftwood; the galuku, coconut; the minyga, garfish; yarrwarri, queenfish; and barrak barrak, the tern, a small bird with triangle wings that hangs about the sea. And he sings others, everything he sees, everything in Country. Every time a Yirritja hunter goes out hunting these are the things he sees. They’re in the songspirals. This is singing Country, singing the sea. And as we sing the beings of Country, we are never alone. We are all together. The whole universe is with us through the songspirals, through our kinship. We can’t just sing a hunt. We can’t just sing a whale. We can’t just sing a fire. We must sing it all and all the connections. We sing Country.
As he sits in the shade, Wurrumila thinks about the day, how he didn’t get the dugong or the whale, and he sings Country. Rrawun thinks about the day, we sing Country. The dancers and the listeners, those that do milkarri, the one who has passed away, all that came before and will come, we all follow this journey, thinking about the dugong, singing it up, singing all that is there, dwelling with Country.
Rrawun explains that in the manikay when we come back from hunting we sing about what we have seen. He says, ‘We don’t say, “Wurrumila saw this and this.” We sing the bird, we sing the driftwood. The way is to sing it but not to describe it. The leader of the clan will say, “Matjala gu” according to the song and we will sing the Country.’
As part of the journey, we might keen and sing other clans’ parts too, because Country is connected to many people. Songspirals connect through space and time. If Wurrumila is coming back and he sings the coconut, that is a different clan, Birrkili, so we will sing that in a different language, a different tune, then we will go back to Gumatj. And that coconut might have floated in from far away. As we sing it, we sing those other places, where it has travelled, and in this way the songs, the coconut, link us with other clans and other places, near and far.
There is order in all the songspirals, it ensures that we do things for a purpose, we burn land for a purpose. Process, order and structure must be followed. It is important that songs are sung in the right place, in the right way. If you are inland, then you sing about the inland. If you are on the coast, you sing the coast.
If it’s not in order it’s dhawadatj, mixed up. The process is not right. In songspirals and ceremonies, when things become dhawadatj everyone says ‘errgh’ and claps to erase the mistake and start again. We have to make it right, we have to go back to ceremony, and then we give back something, something that is very, very sacred.
After Wurrumila has sung the Country, then the dirrmala wind comes from the north. After all that journey, the hunting and the long day, the wind makes him relax. The dirrmala wind is bringing in the ŋara’, the cloud from the smoke of the Goŋ-gurtha, and the hunter is looking at the ŋara’ and thinking maybe that lot are the lucky people who got turtle or dugong. Maybe it’s a signal from another place, or a sign of people leaving that island or land and moving to another estate. And the hunter is conscious of thinking different ways. He knows what the mob is doing.
When we sing Goŋ-gurtha from the perspective of the hunter, we sing about the land, the wind touches there.
We learn this from the women when we are little. When the women cry milkarri we learn, we learn how they’re describing the people and the area. When they see the smoke forming into a cloud, and it’s all black, in the distance, it’s ŋara’. Like our young ones, the keepers of the flame, who learn from listening to Marri’marri, to Laklak and to us.
Wurrumila watches the smoke from the fire of Goŋ-gurtha, over there, as the cloud blows towards him. He watches the smoke of the hunter far away, the Goŋ-gurtha who has lit that fire. We keen milkarri for that fire, we feel it in our heart.
The fire is burning from Wuymuwuŋu, from Rranyirranyiwuyŋu, from Gulthanawuyŋu and from Nyewunbuwuyŋu. From these Yirritja people the fire burns. We see the smoke clouds rising up high from Goŋ-gurtha. From there the smoke’s mist rises up and becomes the cloud Wulpundu, a big cloud stretching forward into the sky.
When we sing this songspiral at a funeral, the singing goes for several days. On the first day of the funeral, we do Wurrumila but the hunter misses the whale. The Djungaya of the clan, the caretaker, will say, ‘Oh, we missed it.’
For this singing of Wurrumila at Bawaka, Rrawun is the Gutharra. He is the grandchild in the märi-gutharra relationship with the song. Djali, our brother, is the Djungaya and has the responsibility to make the call on the timing of the ceremony. Rrawun was sharing the manikay and he was also learning the process. He is a keeper of tomorrow’s fire too. He will keep the songspirals alive.
This is all according to the songspirals. The way the songspiral progresses is led by the Djungaya. The caretaker and the songspiral story tell us what is happening. For us, the hunter missed today. The hunter went back to the shore and watched the smoke from another Goŋ-gurtha, from another fire. He will try again tomorrow. One day, our journey will be complete.
There is a fire on every island. We don’t know who made the fire but we can see the smoke on the horizon and we can smell the smoke. When the smoke rises it forms a cloud in the shape of a person standing, holding their arms up above their head, elbows bent, like a cloud. That is the shape we dance.
We sit at Bawaka and look out to the sea, we see a cloud forming.
As Marri’marri keens the milkarri, she cries, ‘Yes, those islands Djilayŋaŋu and Batumbil, I can see the jawline of the coastline, through my crying. I can see those islands very clearly as the smoke rises. Yes, from Goŋ-gurtha.’
When Goŋ-gurtha is lighting the fire, it goes up and forms a cloud, then it rains, liya-balkurrk. Yirritja makes the clouds and Dhuwa sings the rain. Yirritja and Dhuwa, mother and child. Goŋ-gurtha, looking after the land, burning the land, as a messenger, saying, ‘Hello, we’re here.’ And thanking the land. Burning the land so new shoots grow up for animals to eat. Marking the land, cleaning, claiming.
Wurrumila, a great sea warrior and hunter. When the clouds go up we go, ‘Waaaaaah, a hunter is there.’