Sydney losing touch with Dreamtime history
Sydney losing touch with Dreamtime history
By Michael Perry
SYDNEY (Reuter): Haunting aboriginal voices echo the names of
Sydney's lost aboriginal clans in a sight-and-sound sculpture in
the financial center of this city, but most workers hurry by
oblivious to Sydney's black history.
Beneath this city's chrome and glass and sprawling suburbia,
lies an ancient culture dating back at least 20,000 years.
Erosion and 200 years of white settlement, however, mean this
black heritage is in danger of disappearing like some of the
city's aboriginal clans.
Aborigines have walked the Earth for 40,000 years.
Their Dreamtime culture tells of Earth's creation -- of giant
mythical creatures ploughing a barren planet, creating rivers and
harbors and providing shelter and food for the Earth's people,
the Aborigines.
It is an ancient culture passed on by word of mouth, rock
engravings and drawings. Scattered around Sydney are the remains
of the history of the city's original inhabitants -- 6,000 Darug
Aborigines -- and their vibrant, spiritual culture.
Many suburbs bear aboriginal names. Bondi means sound of
tumbling waters, Coogee translates to rotten seaweed and
Woolloomoloo means young kangaroo.
When the first whites arrived, Sydney was a huge aboriginal
art gallery with an estimated 10,000 rock engraving and etching
sites. Only 2,000 such sites have been unearthed so far.
"There are thousands of rock engravings and more are being
found each year," Jim Kohen, author of The Darug and Their
Neighbors, told Reuters as he inspected a site of kangaroo,
echidna and male engravings.
"They are extensive, some up to a couple of 100 square metres
in area. There may be 50, 60 or more figures engraved in some of
the sites and they represent a wide range of spiritual beliefs of
the aboriginal people," Kohen said.
"It is not uncommon for aboriginal engravings and shell
middens (dumps) to be found in people's backyards," he said.
Some residents who have found aboriginal sites in gardens or
under garages refuse to publicize them because of a fear that
Aborigines may stake a claim for the site and their homes.
Ignorance has also seen many sites vandalized, sometimes
inadvertently by well-meaning whites.
The local government which ran Bondi Beach in the 1960s
regrooved a large whale and shark engraving in the middle of a
golf course on a cliff overlooking the beach.
"To go over those lines in an attempt to deepen the lines --
does that make it a bastardization version of our art?," asked
Jenny Munro, chair of Sydney's Metropolitan Aboriginal Land
Council, as she inspected the site.
"Here we have a golf course on a site which should really have
a museum structure over the top of it to protect it," Munro said,
pointing to the crumbling rock, pock-marked by golf balls.
"This a very important site for aboriginal people that has
been desecrated by white Australians," Munro said.
The traditional white history of Sydney tells a story of
colonization of a hostile land and its savages. Only recently
have school text books changed colonization to invasion.
Under aboriginal law, only traditional landowners can pass on
the engravings' Dreamtime stories. In 1788 when the British first
sailed into Sydney Harbor, 1,500 Eora clan Aborigines lived on
the shores where the Sydney Opera House now stands.
Today, there are no known descendants of the Eora in Sydney.
The new Sydney Museum, in the financial center of the city, is an
attempt to resurrect Sydney's black history.
Haunting aboriginal voices call out the names of the city's
lost clans from the museum's courtyard sculpture called Edge of
the Trees. Timber and stone pillars, encased with aboriginal
hair, shells, ochre and ash, also bear the names of the first
white settlers.
But for most Australians the only time they see an Aborigine
in Sydney is when the television reports on the black, inner-city
ghetto of Everleigh Street.
Most of the 30,000 Aborigines living in Sydney today come from
other parts of Australia. They struggle to preserve not only
their own tribal cultures but those of Sydney's lost clans.
But aboriginal culture is adapting to its modern, urban
environment. Aboriginal musicians and dancers are mixing the
traditional with the contemporary.
Sydney's Bangarra aboriginal dance company draws on outback
tribal stories of the Dreamtime and urban experiences to create
its performances.
"I suppose because we live in two worlds, so to speak, we are
able to cross over into the contemporary and the mainstream and
bring this wonderful, traditional essence through," said Stephen
Page, Bangarra artistic director.
"It is like building a bridge... with the rural land keepers
and us down here, to survive the two worlds," Page said.