by Sally Morgan
The lost tree
Dingo walked restlessly outside Wombat’s burrow; he was anxious for Wombat to wake up because he had found something very special. Dingo thought everything he found was very special, but he wasn’t allowed to wake Wombat, not when Wombat was dreaming about how to change the world. Wombat could hear Dingo walking up and down outside, so he eventually gave in and asked Dingo what he wanted.
‘I’ve found something very special and I need you to help me put it in my cave. It’s a round tree’, he said showing Wombat his latest find.
‘Don’t be silly’, said Wombat, ‘It doesn’t look like a tree to me’. But he helped Dingo try to put it in his cave anyway, only it wouldn’t fit.
‘Let’s stand it up and try that way’, suggested Wombat.
When they stood the round tree up, it started rolling down the hill. Wombat and Dingo chased after it, but it rolled faster and faster until it flew off a high cliff, fell into a deep ravine and disappeared out of sight. Dingo was very upset and in his heart he blamed Wombat for standing it up in the first place. He went back to his cave and drew a picture of his round tree on a rock, so if he ever found it again he would remember what it looked like.
That night, Dingo went to see his friend, the moon, and told him of his special find. ‘It wasn’t like anything I’ve found before’, said Dingo.
‘What did it look like?’ asked Moon.
‘I drew it on my rock over there’, said Dingo.
Moon shone his light on the rock and saw Dingo’s drawing.
‘Oh that’s no longer a tree,’ explained Moon, ‘though it was once. That’s a wheel.’
Dingo got so excited his lost object had a name that he couldn’t wait to tell Wombat and he raced off while Moon was still talking. When he found Wombat, he proudly told him he had found a ‘wheel’.
‘Now, we’ll have to go and get it’, said Dingo.
‘No, Dingo’, said Wombat, ‘it has fallen back into Time, we can’t go there, that’s someone else’s story.’
The wheel of time
The British valued the wheel, but they did not value its connection to the tree. The invention of the wheel is tied inexorably to the progress of Western civilisation, but at the heart of the wheel, was the death of the tree. And allied to the ‘wheel’, for Aboriginal peoples worldwide, was another dead tree, the sailing ship. The wheel and the sailing ship were instrumental in disconnecting people from country and the natural world. Similarly, the spiritually rich nature of Aboriginal cultures, where knowledge and relationships between people, country and all living things are highly prized, went unappreciated by the story nomads, because they could not see beyond the missing wheel to the living tree. What they valued was the resources and material wealth the land could provide, with no understanding of, or care for, the deeper story. Western progress required the plunder of the world.
Ordering the landscape, disordering country
The first thing the story nomads do when they arrive somewhere is to begin to order the ‘landscape’ to establish their ‘view’ of country, what they want to see in their field of vision, and what they want to exclude. What they really do is disorder country, removing it from its own story. They write the storybook they want to read. Land becomes real estate, an economic commodity, and a source of tradable wealth, duly assigned a particular value based on productivity or use. Land is packaged and parcelled: towns, parks, gardens, farms, stations, missions, reserves, mines, factories and prisons. There are desirable and undesirable places. Fences are erected, people are locked out and country is locked up.
Felling trees begins the destruction of memory and the usurpation of place. In 1829, the story nomads arrived in force in Western Australia and the founding of the new British colony was marked with the death of a tree. Mrs Dance, with axe in hand, made the first cut to fell a sheoak, to the accompaniment of rifle volleys, speeches and cheers. The ceremony is said to be accurately rendered in George Pitt Morrison’s The Foundation of Perth, painted in the Centenary year, 1929, with copies distributed to Western Australian school children. Emblematic of the occasion, the imagery remains quintessentially Western Australian. Trees were an impediment to progress and development, so they had to be cleared. As the ancient giants were hacked to death, the birds, animals, insects were all cleared, along with Aboriginal people. The British imported into Australia their own plants, their own animals, their own birds, and their own people and made up their own story.
As Aboriginal song man Archie Roach laments in The Native Born:
So bow your head old Eucalypt and Wattle Tree
Australia’s bush is losing its identity
While the cities and the parks that they have planned
Look out of place because the spirit’s in the land. [28]
The old ones
In Australia, there is ongoing conflict over the continued logging of old-growth forests. Prior to colonisation, all Australia’s forests were old-growth, but in a little over two hundred years, ninety per cent of old-growth forests has been cleared. Just like shooting birds and animals for ‘sport’, there were popular contests to see who could fell the largest tree. This usually meant the oldest tree, the tree with the most knowledge. Old-growth forests are always in danger in Australia. Thankfully, the trees have made deep friendships with many non-Aboriginal people who continue to fight for them. By supporting trees to keep their stories going, their friends live in the right stories too. This is a wonderful thing to do.
‘Old-growth’ and ‘re-growth’ are very deceptive terms when applied to trees. They are meant to persuade us that it’s a natural transition from one story to the other, to see not change but continuity, progress inherent in re-growth. Tourism mostly uses the more evocative term ‘ancient forests’, but this is a less desirable nomenclature in the forest logging debate. Ancient forests are made up of trees of many different ages, sizes and shapes, as well as fallen logs, and other plants that grow with them. This biodiversity supports a large variety of animals and birds. Trees themselves are in large extended families and communities with lots of support, love and care: grandparents, parents, aunties, uncles and children. In contrast, re-growth forests are biologically simple. They are made up of trees that are nearly all the same age, where it’s a bit like growing up in institutions, with lots of children, some foster parents, no grandparents, no family to grow you up. It’s hard to imagine a world where everyone’s the same age. It’s a restricted view of life systems to believe that young trees will simply be able to grow without the support and guardianship of older trees. We can’t really know if trees will be able to reach such great ages and sizes again; we can know that the minimum waiting time will be hundreds of years. This seems a needless and heedless risk to take, to break the story now. The destruction of the earth’s green mantle has enormous consequences for country and for what we pass on to future generations.
The tree of life
The tree is the symbol of life itself and trees actively support our life on earth, through all its cycles and in all its dimensions, physically, emotionally and spiritually. We all know what trees give us, but we act as if it isn’t true. We know the right stories for trees, but tell the wrong ones. Everyone talks proudly of their family trees, but not everyone talks about the trees in their families. Trees are our relations. In the Dreaming, everything is related, as Yanuwa Elder Mussolini Harvey explains:
The Dreamings are our ancestors, no matter if they are fish, birds, men, women, animals, wind or rain. It was these Dreamings that made our Law. All things in our country have Law, they have ceremony and song, and they have people who are related to them. [29]
Trees have always cared for humans and offered shelter in life and in its passing. For millennia, even for the story nomads, the tree was the child’s wooden cradle, to hold the baby close to the mother, rocking as she worked. In death, the coffin was the loving rest, protection from bare earth. For Aboriginal women, trees are the midwives when children are b
irthed on the banks of dry riverbeds where the tall gums grow, and where each child has a birth tree. To protect mother and child, there is cleansing and healing smoke from gum leaves, with ashes rubbed into the child’s head. To cradle the child, the coolamon is taken carefully from the tree and the mother carries the child nestled in its soft curves. At the end of our journey here, in our passing, we are held once more in the loving embrace of trees, held aloft, wrapped in paperbark, hollow logs, a resting place. (Image 1.2)
Image 1.2: Birth tree, Palyku Country Courtesy Gladys Milroy
Trees are the very breath of life. An average tree produces enough oxygen in a year to keep a family of four breathing. As well as absorbing harmful carbon dioxide, trees provide shelter, shade, warmth and cooling. Trees and plants freely give us essential foods and medicines. It is now well recognised that Aboriginal people have a diverse and sophisticated pharmacopoeia in Australia. The eucalypt provides a powerful antiseptic, used worldwide for coughs, colds and sore throats; the disinfectant and antiseptic properties of melaleuca makes it particularly good for healing skin infections; acacia is used to make medicine for colds and flu and its bark for covering sores, wounds and burns. The smoke that results from laying leaves and twigs over a fire was used widely to keep people healthy as well as healing sickness. Aboriginal people have always known how trees look after our health and promote our wellbeing. They cure sickness and despair. Western studies now also show that patients heal more quickly when they have a view of trees; workers are more productive. Trees make us feel good; like the backbone of the universe, they lift us up and hold us there.
Trees protect water and soil quality, and replenish our water supplies. The world is facing a water crisis and several world leaders warn that this century, wars will be about water. Yet the rainforests that are needed to seed the rain clouds are fast disappearing. Australia is the oldest and driest continent on earth. Seventy five per cent of its vegetation is eucalypts, whose roots store water, a valuable reserve known to Aboriginal people. For Aboriginal people our most powerful spirit, the Rainbow Serpent is associated with water. While Australia continues to kill our trees, it fails to protect our most valuable resources: soil and water. Such thinking pervades all levels of Australian society. In suburbs along Perth’s Swan River foreshore, trees are occasionally found poisoned or ring-barked, the suspected culprits nearby residents or developers keen to enlarge their river view and enhance the value of property. They cannot see the beauty of trees right in front of them. They don’t realise that trees anchor the earth; they provide the eternal maternal bloodline that nourishes us all.
The smell of home
Aboriginal people can tell you that country recognises people by their smell, just as we recognise our country by its smell. Most of the world’s eucalypt species are endemic to Australia; eucalypts, or gum trees, are the essence of the country. Gum trees are part of Australian folklore and national identity. Every Australian knows what gum trees look like and what they smell like. It is a unique and evocative scent. Soldiers returning by ship from the two world wars are said to have been able to smell eucalypts from many miles off shore, long before land was visible. Trees have always been the first to welcome us home. The cleansing, healing scent of eucalypts refreshed the weary traveller and restored the battered soul. What does our country smell like now? Can we still smell eucalypts far from shore? The genocide of the trees in Australia leaves a bloodied landscape, that’s why the land is so salty and there’s a metallic smell beneath the surface of Australia now. It makes people restless, anxious; it’s hard to sleep. Trees have always been our spiritual reservoirs, but many trees are invisible now. In the invisible forest, the ghosts of gums wander aimlessly, for there is no resting place. The tree spirits still cling to country, protecting the spirit of the land, for the land is never empty. But the deep healing wells are hidden. When all the trees and all the forests are invisible, will our children cry in despair, ‘Where are the gums gone, the smell of our nation is killing us’?
The bone tree
Wombat was dreaming peacefully when a blob of dirt hit his face, waking him up.
‘What’s going on?’ he spluttered, getting another face full of sand. ‘Oh, it’s you, Dingo. What are you doing digging near my burrow?’
Wombat saw that Dingo had a big bone in his mouth. ‘Don’t bury that bone here,’ said Wombat, ‘Why have you got it, anyway? There’s no meat on it.’
‘It’s lost,’ said Dingo. ‘I’m looking after it.’ Dingo was always looking after lost things.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Wombat, ‘Bones don’t get lost, now go away!’
Dingo was so upset that Wombat was not interested in his lost bone that he wandered off and sat on his own. But that night, Wombat dreamed that Dingo’s lost bone was knocking on his burrow, calling ‘Help me, help me!’
The next morning, Wombat went looking for Dingo and found him fast asleep, hugging the large bone. ‘Dingo, wake up!’ Wombat said, ‘Where did you find that bone?’ Dingo jumped up, pleased that Wombat was finally interested in his lost bone and ran ahead to show him the tree where he found it. Wombat looked up, and saw that the tree was covered in bones, except for one branch, where there was an empty space.
‘What sort of tree is this?’ asked Wombat.
‘I call it dog’s heaven,’ said Dingo.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Wombat, ‘We have to put the bone back where it belongs.’
Then the tree started singing, ‘Put the bone back, put the bone back!’
It was very high but they pushed a rock under the tree to stand on, and Dingo stretched up and just managed to put the bone back in its place. Suddenly, beautiful green leaves started to grow and when they covered the tree, golden blossoms appeared. A small willy-willy swept across the tree and carried the golden blooms high into the blue sky.
That night, when Dingo was sitting talking to his friend the moon, he was amazed to see the sky completely covered with shiny new stars. ‘The sky is so beautiful tonight, Moon,’ said Dingo.
‘Yes,’ replied Moon. ‘You did a great thing today, Dingo, you saved the spirits of the children not yet born, they are the stars you see.’
Now Dingo always guards the bone tree.
The living tree
We are the guardians of children and of all life on earth. But what is happening to the Tree of Life in this country? We have stopped valuing the living tree, seeing who the tree is, body and spirit. In Australia now there are two knowledge trees. One springs from the story nomads and represents Western ways of knowing, while the other arises from Aboriginal ways of knowing that come from the living tree. Aboriginal people have been taken from our sacred tree, and some of our stories have been broken. Aboriginal people collectively have the oldest living knowledge system in the world. Our ‘tree’ is made up of many living trees. Aboriginal Australia has more than two hundred languages and some six hundred ‘nations’. Aboriginal people are culturally and linguistically diverse, but share a holistic, animate, interconnected system of knowledge that knows the stories for country, the spirit in the land and the relationships between all living things. This is entrusted to us from the Dreaming, the boundless, eternal enduring spirit of time. Aboriginal communities no longer have the resources to protect, sustain and grow our knowledge. The story nomads’ tree has grown very large. It is highly prized, well fed and well watered, but it takes all the resources from the trees that Aboriginal people have to nurture and care for, our family trees and the trees in our families. Resources and funding overwhelmingly and disproportionately privilege Western knowledge, which, however prominent, is only one of the knowledge systems that exist in Australia and should not dominate all available resources. There is a national failure to formally acknowledge and value Aboriginal knowledge systems and Aboriginal ways of knowing. There is a national failure to protect Aboriginal knowledge holders: people, places, rock art, trees, animals, and birds. This has disastrous consequences for Aboriginal chil
dren and ultimately all of Australia’s children. If we put the Western and Aboriginal systems together, Australia would have one of the most complete and unique knowledge systems in the world and one that all Australians could share. In such a partnership though, Aboriginal knowledge has to be privileged because it is the knowledge of the land itself. If Aboriginal knowledge is not sustained in this country, if it no longer exists in Australia, it will no longer exist anywhere in this world. If Western knowledge no longer existed in Australia, it would be very difficult for us, but Western knowledge would still exist in the world, in other countries, and we could always pack our suitcases and visit it there.
The great difficulty is that some story nomads call their story the nation’s story and think it is the only one. Its essence is encapsulated in a verse from a poem, Old Botany Bay, written by Dame Mary Gilmore, one of Australia’s most popular poets, and whose portrait adorns our ten-dollar note. To demonstrate the currency of the sentiment (and well matched to Philip Ruddock’s comments about the wheel in the same year), the poem was recited by Australian actor Jack Thompson at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. In Old Botany Bay, the verse concerned is: