In addition to my "sorry day" entry (see previous), I thought I'd include the following entry which actually used to be one of my web pages near ten years ago. I thought it was an apt archive to dust off.
SOQ (which I assume everyone understands to mean "START OF QUOTE", which might indicate that I'm either quoting myself, or quoting someone else)
As I understand it, the Oz aboriginal people's history consists of a range of events recorded in "dreamtime" types of stories, which are recounted both in words song and dance. Corroboree ?
The "Dreamtime" interests me greatly because from what I can figure, it is a timeless type of place which explains both creation and the end of time - "dreamtime" seems to be a place OUTSIDE time ... a place Shamans and the like of all sort of cultures, know, and can visit.
With that in mind, I wonder if this following "dreamtime" account about the two main "mountains" (more like large hills) in York Western Australia, is from our "Past" or from our ever unfolding "Present", or from our eventual "future(s)". It has elements of all within it including a "prophecy of hope".
When I was a child, I used hunt fish with aboriginal children - they taught me how to make and use both the "kylie" and the "gidji", and we used to go for mullet and cobbler in the Swan River around Maylands and the Peninsular. It must be a good 35 years since that Perth area has seen that kind of activity - and I hope I am very wrong in saying that - it would be so sad if the ways of the kylie and gitji are no more around the Swan River.
Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say by all this is that in some small way, I relate to a tribe or dreamtime of sorts, and have lived a sort of tribal life and dreamtime, sometimes. However, I'm not an "Aboriginal Story-teller"and am not trying to take ANY credit here, or trying to offend anyone either. This is just a case of me being touched by the legend, and wanting to see it told to a greater audience.
So, here is "The Legend of Mount Bakewell and Mount Brown" as published in an Avon newspaper, told by Emily Winmar.
"To the Nyungar people the taller mountain was called Walwalling (place of weeping) and the lower hill was called Wongborel (sleeping woman). Koorain kwotjut (a long time ago) in the Dreamtime, the hills Nyungars used to meet the plains and valley people on the flat area at the tjenna (foot) of Walwalling for games and sport.
Wundig was a Moorditj (a good looking person) young man of the hills people who waskwobinyarn (champion) in the skills of gitjul (spear) kylie (a simple form of shuriken or shakken - essentially a flat square blade usually used to throw at fish in shallow water) and tjenna (foot) races, and a lot of young yorga's (women) had their meowl's (eyes) on him.
However, Wilura, a mooditj young yorga of the valley people was tjeruping (had to have) for him. They were not betrothed because in their tribal groupings it would have been a warrah(bad) relationship. The two decided to ignore the taboo and they woort kooliny together.
When it was discovered, the valley Nyungers demanded the return of the young yorga. The hills Nyungars said they didn't know where the young couple were. The valley Nyungars didn't believe them and declared war.
The hills Nyungars came down over the slopes outnumbering the challengers and a blood thirsty battle ensued with the valley Nyungars coming off badly. They called in their Mubarn (medicine)man and asked him to use his mubarn powers.
He was able to change all the hills fighting men into blackboy bushes and to this day you can see the wide band of grass trees where in the dreamtime the warriors from the hills were coming over the top of Walwalling and down the Eastern slope. They stand there still.
The Mubarn man then turned his mubarn powers on the young people who had caused such bloodshed and put a curse on them. Their nortch (dead) bodies were found later and his curse was that the man's kunya (spirit) would stay on Walwalling and the Yorgar's kunya was sent to Wongborel and that they would never meet again until the mountains came together."
Now for more commentry from "derspatz". These two mountains are separated by the "Avon river" and York is on (or near) an earth-quake fault line (about 30 years ago a quake leveled a place called Meckering which is not all that far away from York), so perhaps this dreamtime story is also a prophecy of a day when the two mountains will be shaken together !
Mount Bakewell, the taller of the mounts, is a place where hang-gliders and para-sailers leap off and also the location of telecommunication towers ... male type stuff, and Mount Brown is where a public look-out is, and a water supply tank, and at it's foot is a grave-yard. It is also a place where I'm told young lovers go to kanoodle (grin). A "feminine" type of place ?
Between those Mountains is not only where York township is located, but also where people who like to leap out of aeroplanes get to land ...
I would like to think that the kunya of Wundigand the kunya of Wilura, get to continue their taboo breaking love in the airspace in between those two mountains - perhaps the parachutists are like a "celebration" of an obvious selfish love that rejected the wisdom and guidance and well-being of the tribe, and brought about the ruin told in the story. Love or lust ?
I say "celebration", because I have leaped out of a perfectly good aeroplane and hung on thin air ... some would say a dangerous and selfish thing to do, ah but what an experience, not to mention privilage ... despite it flying in the face of conventional wisdom.
As a hills man I have also broken taboos with valley yorga with tragic results. Once again flying in the face of conventional wisdom. As Mr Neil Finn wrote in the song "Into Temptation", "the guilty get no sleep in the last slow hours of morning and experience is cheap; I should have listened to the warning ... ah, but the cradle is soft and warm !"
Experience is addictive too it seems and at the end of the day, how DO you separate "True Love" from "Selfish or False love" ?
Yes, I understand and probably enslaved to the emotion which was the driving force behind the relationship that Wundig and Wilura formed and that which prompts some of us to leap out into thin air protected only by cradles of silk ...
It is all the same, no ? So that mubarn curse is still in place. So pray that the mountains get to meet soon, and "True Love" may abound !
So who was that Mubarn Man ? He punished hill warriors and the "lovers", but is there a sort of mercy and grace evident in the story, where the hill warriors still "look over" the valley and that one day when "mountains collide", the selfish lovers will be reunited ?
Whoever he was I think I like his attitude ...
EOQ ("END OF QUOTE")
EOQ ("END OF QUOTE")
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