1950
1
The best Australians are, of course, our own aboriginals. These have lived for thousands of years off the resources of a continent which lacked animals that could be domesticated and cereals that could be cultivated. They enjoyed a life of plenty in the good seasons; but they also had to survive the worst droughts without any food relief from abroad. They came to a continent in many parts poorly endowed by Nature as regards food and water; and they adapted their whole mode of life to it in order to fit themselves to the country of their birth. Though they lived off the land, they did not ruthlessly devastate it as some of the white pioneers were to do in later times; and though their meat consisted entirely of the game won in hunting, the dictates of totemism and the absolute ban on killing animals at any of the numerous sacred sites in their tribal territories gave these animals a chance to maintain their numbers and to remain safe from all danger of extinction.
There is one thing about the aboriginals that I want to emphasize particularly in this address – their intense devotion to their country:
According to native beliefs, the earth was the eternal mother from whose fertile womb the totemic ancestors and the first animals and plants had sprung. Each ancestor was associated with one animal or one plant, whose life essence was the same as his own. The later human beings, who were believed to have become reincarnated from these immortal ancestors, were therefore linked intimately with the animals and the natural features of their birthplaces or, more correctly, of their conception sites. To a man of the kangaroos totem, the kangaroos were his own ‘elder brothers’; and the rocks and trees of the kangaroo totemic site were sacred objects that shared with him some of the mysterious life essence that had once emanated from the original kangaroo totemic ancestor. A common bond of life united a man with the animals of his totem, with the supernatural personage that he honoured in his ritual, and with the land in which he had been born. An Australian native consequently had an affection for, and a feeling of oneness with, Nature that few of the present-day generation of white Australians can even comprehend, let alone feel in their own hearts. It is this personal legendary link with the animals, trees, and rocks of his environment that had the power once to turn even an arid and sun-scorched tract of desert into a spiritual home for our natives; and the emotions stirred up by the sight of the animals, trees, and rocks of their home gave to the aboriginals in past times spiritual strength during cruel droughts and disastrous epidemics. As long as the mountains stood, the springs flowed, the animals survived, and the ancestral rocks escaped damage, the tribe had no fear for the future. Nature and men shared the same life; and Nature could not die.
2
There has been no kindlier folk anywhere than the Australian natives, and that fact makes all the more disgusting our exploitation and our destruction of them. Their splendid myths and songs, which we have ignored and spurned, could have helped us in our own difficulty of adjusting ourselves to a land so unlike Europe in appearance. We could have learned from them how to feel truly at home in our new environment. For the natives have always felt at ease and at home in Australia. Where many of us, who pride ourselves upon our education and our artistic insight, see only “a dead deserted land”, “a land where all the primal fires are dead”, and “a loveless land” that must be conquered so that it cannot harm us, our natives have found spiritual peace. It has been their home, peopled in their minds with their own powerful totemic ancestors . . .
The verses [of the Aranda Rain Songs] below refer to the mythical rain ancestor of Kaporilja. He is imagined as sitting on the cracked rock-plates whence the spring waters are still flowing out at the present day. Above him the sky is always dark with clouds. His hair is wound around tightly with hairstring lest the rain that is continually pouring forth from it should turn into violent cloudbursts. Sometimes he pulls out a lock from the encircling headband, and then a flash of lightning illuminates the rain-dark landscape. Here are some of the verses:
Among the rippling waters he sits without a move,
It is Kantjia himself who is sitting without a move.
Moveless like a boulder he is sitting;
His hair bedewed with rain he is sitting.
On the fissured rock-plates he is sitting;
On rock-plates welling with water he is sitting.
Bedrizzled with rain he sits without a move;
Among the rippling waters he sits without a move.
Bedrizzled with rain, a reddish glow overspreads him;
Among the rippling waters a reddish glow overspreads him.
The sky is clouded with water-moss;
The sky sends down scattered showers.
Over the rock-plates the flow is echoing,
Over the rock-plates green with moss.
“Moss-covered one,
Spread forth your waters!”
“Come, moss-covered one,
Pour forth your waters!”
“Come, foam-crests,
Come, spread over the waters!”
“Come, drifting twigs,
“Come, spread over the waters!”
Over the sun-darkened river sands calls the voice of the thunder, the voice of the thunder;
From billowing storm-clouds calls the voice of the thunder, the voice of the thunder.
The first storm-showers.
The first storm-showers are falling here and there, are falling here and there.
The first storm-showers.
The first storm-showers are pouring down in torrents, are pouring down in torrents.
A flash of lightning
Shivers trees in pieces.
A flash of lightning
Shocks and terrifies.
Overflowing its banks into side-channels,
The flood rolls down its waves.
An Australian Viewpoint, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1950