The Rain, the Salt and the Serpent
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‘And how did the rulers make that light appear? Every year it came to the temple for seven hundred years. What if it was cloudy, like it is today?’
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Under the Asphalt
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The body lets out feelings the mind is not allowing, through movement, emotion, sickness.
Read MoreA Dhanggati Story
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The men of our tribe have a reputation for strength and ferocity. There are reasons for that.
Read MoreThe Citrus Tree
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Ropehair began to dream of a garden. At night, when the stars were brilliant, I could feel her happiness as she imagined food growing from the red desert earth.
Read MoreBodies: inside and out
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I was allowed to stand above the patient's head to see his heart and lungs working while the doctors and nurses worked on him. I stood as still as I could, afraid I might fall in.
Read MoreThe Space Inside Things
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I don't believe the plastic bags under the kitchen bench have consciousness. But I could believe it of the exquisite old wooden table on which I type.
Read MoreCreation & Expiration in a Tree
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My Aboriginal grandfather didn’t want to be buried in a graveyard with a headstone after he died. “Put me up in a tree,” he said, “Like the old people did.”
“They put dead bodies up in a tree?” I was incredulous.
Ka-ta Tju-ta and my Father's Map
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There are those who use the old names in the pursuit of a misguided principle — that English speakers have a right to hegemony, to be the unquestioned namers of everything on the Australian islands.
Read MoreWrong Turn on Uluru - Part 3 (Final)
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"I felt something on the top of my head.” Claudia said, “A claw scratching on my skull! I was terrified!"
Read MoreWrong Turn on Uluru Part 2
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“The Rock protects itself,” said our Anangu friend. According to him, anyone who did ignorant, disrespectful things to Uluru or Kata Tjuta would suffer mental illness in later years.
Read MoreWrong Turn On Uluru
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Far below them the three young men they’d come to rescue were stuck inside an enormous chasm.
Read MoreRed Desert, Healing Hands
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Looking out over the orange and pink sands, patterned by olive and citron greens of recent rains, I thought of our friend who died on that road. He flies with eagles.
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Ali's Prize
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I know many of the birds she describes. I have seen how those desert birds rush in wild flocks.
Read MoreMidden Treasures
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As I sat one day on the tall hill of sand and sea grass, I realised that the hill was mostly made of shells. Not just any shells, but large shells of tasty shellfish: oysters, cockles, limpets, pipis and periwinkles. All of them good to eat. Six thousand years of shells.
Read MoreWave of care
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As an alienated adolescent (who would rather do anything but look after – or even look at – sick people and their problems), I stared into the waves at the beach a lot. I knew there was something there for me, if I just kept looking.
Read MoreEducated Dancers
/The old men used to laugh and laugh while their university-educated pupils stumbled along. Now, the men dance with the efficient and compassionate grace of our earthy people.
Read MoreCatching Spirits
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For local Aboriginal people, the Anangu, a person’s spirit can be disconnected from the body, causing sickness. You can even see the healer — the ngangkari — looking for a person’s spirit, finding it under a bush and restoring it to the sick person.
Read MoreSavouring Sublime Sunsets
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An Indigenous friend told me that the Arnhem Land Yolgnu have a huge body of knowledge about sunsets. That idea captured my imagination. I’ve never quite let it go.
Read MoreSkin Colour Pearls
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Next time an Australian with fair skin reveals their Aboriginality, whether by their clothes or jewelry, their tattoos or their story, let your heart swell with gratitude that the web of Aboriginal cultures continues to be woven.
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