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.