An Afternoon Spent in an Aboriginal Landscape

Posted on 9 September, 2014 by Connecting Country

This article is about the Baynton Sidonia Landcare group’s Aboriginal Landscapes seminar that took place on Sunday 24th August 2014.

Rodney Monk talks to Baynton Sidonia Landcare president John Baulch.

Sixty-five lucky people (as half that number again had to be turned away) spent six hours immersed in Aboriginal life as it was practiced in the Baynton Sidonia area up until just 180 years ago.

The seminar began with Trish Terry of the Taungurung Clans Association welcoming participants to Country and explaining why she is qualified to welcome us to Country and what the welcome means.

Participants then experienced two outdoors workshops. In one, Tandy Annusheit told Dreamtime stories in the Taungurung language to a rapt audience, with Waa (the Raven) joining in occasionally in real time. It was extraordinarily moving to hear the mellifluous sounds of the language being spoken, probably for the first time in almost two centuries, at that spot.

The other workshop was led by Rodney Monk who is passionate about the preservation of local artifacts including clay heat balls and ovens to scar trees and rock quarry sites. He entertained and educated his audience so they gained a much wider appreciation of the kind of artifacts that still await “discovery” and preservation. He both thrilled and challenged his audience by saying to them that his culture is now the wider Australian community’s culture and as such requires effort, commitment and resources for conservation.

Trish Terry led a session titled “Cultural Landscapes” and in a very short time gave participants several new perspectives. One of these was that the landscape is culture: landscape does not just happen to be the way it is now. It was shaped by Aboriginal people, and that shaping, almost two centuries on, is still clearly visible and used by us today.

Max trying not to knapp his fingers of. Better stick to his day job.

Gerry Gill, formerly of La Trobe University, led the rest of the Seminar and had the audience enthralled with his stories of Aboriginal leaders – also horrified by tales of the doings of some of the earliest squatters in the district. He brought a facsimile of a map (the ‘Selwyn Map’) of Central Victoria, drawn up in 1852. Local people were disappointed to see that though some areas of the map had fascinating detail about indigenous land usage and vegetation, the Baynton Sidonia area was, by contrast, fairly blank. It was obviously still to be closely explored by Europeans at the time the map was drawn up.

Gerry Gill showed two short films, one of which was having its ‘world premiere’ at the Baynton Hall that night. It told the story and revealed the poetry of an Aboriginal stone sculpture on in the Mount Alexander Range. Curving sinuously across the hillside, connecting outcrops of granite, the dry stone, hand-made “body” of what is thought to be a representation of Mindi (or snake-like Ancestral Being) ends in a naturally occurring rock that resembles, quite uncannily, a snake’s head.

Gerry also shared with his audience a poem by Victorian Aboriginal leader and poet, Wenberi, in translation:

We all become bones, all of us
All of them shining white
In our body-country

The rushing noise
Bunjil * great-father of our people
Singing in my body
This inside me

* Bunjil – the Wedge Tailed Eagle ancestral creator being

Asked in the evaluation what had made the greatest impact on participants from the

Gerry Gill. The slide shows an idealalised painting of Wenberi.

Seminar, some of the responses included:

“Man’s inhumanity to man and man’s humanity to man

“The passion of all the presenters. Plus commitment, generosity, strength of purpose and really great knowledge

“I feel “more Australian” being enriched with this history

An interesting and an enlightened way of connecting with Aboriginal culture on an “even” platform

The Baynton Landcare group would like to express its appreciation of the contribution made to the event by members of the Taungurung Clans Association and acknowledges excellent support and part-funding of the event by the North Central Catchment Management Authority. The catering, which was delicious, was by the Burke and Wills Track winery.

Baynton Sidonia Landcare group’s next, and last, seminar for 2014 will be in mid October and will be about helping participants learn to recognize local birds and thus to be able to contribute to the national Bird Census. Further details from info@bslcg.com.au