Songlines to Katoomba
Far
beyond these Sisters three
Are
sistrens many more,
So
ancient that, we’ve lost a lot
Of
this old earth and her lore
For,
beyond the tourist tales that stop
At
Katoomba’s vantage scarp,
Song-lines
start from an older age,
And
time begins to warp
Taking
us to an antique past,
When
bunyips roamed our land,
And
thylacines were sketched on rock
By
the wise melanic hand
The
same hand wrote these songs to guide
Pilgrims
to far-off trails,
To
scale million miles through desert sands
And
crumbling hills and vales
And
songline paths criss-crossed this land
Landmarks
on every page,
Mental
maps for this ancient land
Passed
down from age to age.
They
say, Katoomba’s sisters are the start
For
a songline to the west,
To
the Kimberley plains and Pilbara
At
the far end of this quest
Six
thousand kilometres in a song
To
Karijini’s petroglyphs,
The
land, they say, where it all began
The
harbour to our skiffs
From
that sacred land, the songlines spread
To
Cape York, Uluru’s red,
Some
say, even afar to Tasmania
With
no land left to tread
And
one such stream of Dreaming songs
Ends
here at Katoomba’s three,
From
the mountains Blue, an entire land
For
eyes that are able to see
How
much have we not lost in time.
The
knowledge of the seers,
Who
knew this land, oldest of all
Mapped
in sweat and tears
The
winds blow through the greens below,
As
the vales of Jamison stare,
At
least, this land remains as ancient still
For
hearts that love and care…
9th
December, 2023
Songlines
are ancient Aboriginal walking routes that criss-crossed the country, linking
important sites and locations. They were once maintained by regular use,
burning off and clearing. Many songlines have specific ancestral stories
attached to them, with Aboriginal people using these as means of navigation, a kind
of walking guide, following all the landmarks they sing about. They were like a
passport to a different place, containing information about the land and how
the traveller should respectfully make their trip, including the types of food safe
to eat, places to be avoided and the boundaries and limits of each tribal Country
that the traveller could pass through.
When
the British set up their colony, the early settlers and explorers leveraged Aboriginal
Songlines to find out pathways that had already been in use for millennia. Over
time, these traditional songline routes evolved to become tracks for horse-carts,
then gravelled paths, finally culminating in the asphalt we see today. The Dandenong
Road, Geelong Road and Ballarat Road, Highway 1 between Perth and Adelaide,
highways linking Darwin and Kimberley are some of the few examples of many
songline tracks that were evolved to make the highways of today’s Australia.
Around
the Dampier isles, at the Burrup peninsula in the Karijini National Park lie
millions of rock art – the highest concentration and volume of rock-art
anywhere in the world. Perhaps it was a place of utmost spiritual and cultural
significance for the Aboriginals but it is here at Burrup which marks the
origins of many songlines sprawling all over the continent, some to the north
to Cape York and the Coral Coast, some eastwards to Byron and Sydney and some
even as far down to Tasmania at a time when the island state was still
connected to the mainland. The popular Seven Sisters Dreaming story traces a
songline that originates on one of the Dampier Archipelago’s islands in the
Kimberley and finishes at the Three Sisters in NSW’s Blue Mountains.
It
is a feat of extreme excellence and deserves to be persevered – at least
whatever is left of it – to remind us of the ancient people of this continent who
loved this land, knew its every intricate vein and artery, and yet chose to
preserve that intelligence, not through Ozymandian edifices of little value but
through songs of memory, wisdom and the traveller’s eye of curiosity.
________________________________________________________________
Sources:
Australian Traveller https://www.australiantraveller.com/wa/north-west-wa/pilbara/tracing-the-songlines-through-the-pilbara/
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