The Song of the Land

The Song of the Land – A Prose Poem

At long last the land is beginning to sing.

The words were there at first, lying about randomly.
Words taught to us wadulah by Noongar kids.
We threw boondies at trees.
We took gidgies to spear fish
(at least, some kids did. Fishing was never a pastime for me).

We tried in vain to lure shrewd gilgies out of the water
onto our catcher made of string and meat.
We made our own kylie and failed to kill any birds with them.
We picked bardie grubs off tree trunks and ate them.
Their fat flesh tasted like delicate white fish.

My Dad said, ‘Let’s have a wongi,’ It’s time for a talk.
‘Wongi’ a word from the Eastern Goldfields from the Wangkatja people .

We knew we were wadulah.
We knew the Aboriginal kids, and their families, were Noongars.
We laughed at grown-ups grown stupid with drink.
We called them kaat-wara – soft in the head. We wadulah were double ignorant
and cruel.
For the Noongars, alcohol was a poison and those affected were not to blame.  

The shelters Noongars built were called maya maya.
We put ‘maya’ together with the Yamatji word ‘guna’.  
We giggled along with the Noongar kids.
‘Guna’ is ‘shit’ and ‘maya’ is shelter, so ‘guna maya’ is an outdoor dunny.

We teased the town cop as manitj, the white cockatoo.
The yellow crest of the cockatoo resembled the police cap,
and ‘Manitj!’ became the warning: ‘Police are coming!’

We watched yongar with his trademark hop.
Wesaw groups of ‘wetj’, the birds as tall as men, running across open land.

Quenda scurried about on the dry leafy ground,
while inquisitive quokka snuffled up to visitors on Wadjemup, called Rottnest,
And in coastal heath near Albany.  
Tiny dunnart scampered under bushes, fearful of the wedge-tail eagles flying above.
These animals don’t have a name in English, nor does the word for ‘numbat’.

These names were simply there in the land, befitting the animals they described.

At night, the owl sang, ‘mopoke’.  

The words were there, stirring in the depths of the land.
The words rose up from Noongar
To became part of West Australian English and held on to in Noongar Aboriginal Creole.

And the place names:
We splashed in Lake Toolbrunup, ‘the place that has water when all else is dry’.
It was on our farm.

We travelled every day to school in Tambellup.
The wallaby ‘tamar’ may give Tambellup its name.  
Near our farm were Gnowangerup, the home of ngow, the mallee hen,
and Ongerup, the home of the yongar.

Nearer Perth, Gidgeganup was the place for making spears,
and Willagee was where the ochre wilgee for ceremonies was dug.
Rae and I lived there from 2003-2006.

Like the dry bones in the valley imagined by Ezekiel,
so many words were lying around the landscape,
rattling and trying to come alive.

One day, along came a Noongar with a welcome to her country.
‘Kaya’, she said, ‘Hello.’

Then she said, ‘Wanju – Welcome!’

And with these smiling words changed everything.

We wadulahs are welcome on this Noongar land,
unceded and unconquered as it is.
We wadulahs, despite our colonising destruction, are welcome.

With these words, ‘Kaya, Wanju,’
the relationship between humans and the country began to heal.
With these words, ‘Kaya, Wanju,’ Noongar and wedulah began to reconcile.

With these words, ‘Kaya, Wanju,’
we hear with fresh ears the knowledge keepers of Noongar booja.  
wise men who become to us wedulah as uncles in their kinship system.

With these words, ‘Kaya, Wanju,’ we saw the land with new eyes.
We began to discern song lines
from Derbal Yerrigan, the Swan River,
to Kepa Kurl, Esperance, in the southeast.

With these words, ‘Kaya, Wanju,’ the land opened up and began to sing.