downunder update

The Red, Black and Gold of the Indigenous Australian Flag sprang from passionate times.

It was a symbol of race and identity in the Land Rights struggles of the 1970s, when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people fought their exclusion from proper education, health care, housing and employment.

For those who know the history of this country and recognise its terrible legacy of injustice for indigenous people, the raising of the flag is unifying and inclusive. It’s a commitment to our future together. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you heard about Mungo Man? No, I didn’t think so. Palaeontologists get hot under the collar when something upsets their Out-of-Africa theory. But the discovery in the desert of ancient bones can still fit in with the theory of African Genesis.

At Lake Mungo in New South Wales, the shifting sands exposed the skeletal remains of a man, laid to rest in the oldest ceremonial burial in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Tjapukai is a dream. It showcases the culture of the rainforest people from the Dreamtime through to present reality, it’s the most awarded attraction in Australia, an international benchmark in Indigenous Tourism where you sense the real spirit of a 50,000 year old society and it’s set in lush tropical forest that must be the original Garden of Eden. Read the rest of this entry »

A leading Aboriginal activist in the civil liberties movement of the 1960s, poet, educator, humanitarian, writer and artist, Oodgeroo Noonuccal is recognised as the first successful writer of Aboriginal descent. Her personal, cultural and political writings are legendary in Australian literature, In 1970, Oodgeroo (under the name Kathleen Walker) was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (Civil) for services to the community. She returned the honour, with these words, in 1987.

“‘Since 1970 I have lived in the hope that the parliaments of England and Australia would confer and attempt to rectify the terrible damage done to the Australian Aborigines. The forbidding us our tribal language, the murders, the poisoning, the scalping, the denial of land custodianship, especially our spiritual sacred sites, the destruction of our sacred places especially our Bora Grounds

Next year, 1988, to me marks 200 years of rape and carnage, all these terrible things that the Aboriginal tribes of Australia have suffered without any recognition even of admitted guilt from the parliaments of England.

From the Aboriginal point of view, what is there to celebrate? I have therefore decided that as a protest against what the Bicentenary ‘Celebrations’ stand for, I can no longer, with a clear conscience, accept the English honour of the MBE and will be returning it to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England “.

During the later years of her life, Oodgeroo lived on Stradbroke Island, Queensland where she taught all children traditional Aboriginal customs and values. She died there in 1993.

Municipal Gum

Gumtree in the city street,
Hard bitumen around your feet,
Rather you should be
In the cool world of leafy forest halls
And wild bird calls
Here you seems to me
Like that poor cart-horse
Castrated, broken, a thing wronged,
Strapped and buckled, its hell prolonged,
Whose hung head and listless mien express
Its hopelessness.
Municipal gum, it is dolorous
To see you thus
Set in your black grass of bitumen–
O fellow citizen,
What have they done to us?

Mihirung paringmal is an Aboriginal word from the Tjapwuring people of Western Victoria and it means ‘giant bird’.

Giant Demon Duck of Doom

Commonly known as Stirton’s Thunder Bird, this huge flightless bird lived in subtropical open woodlands in the late Miocene. (8 - 6 million years ago). This was the largest of a group of flightless birds found only in Australia.

Their closest relatives may have been waterfowl. This is why Stirton’s Thunder Bird has been nicknamed the ‘Giant Demon Duck of Doom’.

Read the rest of this entry »