At home with the Aborigines of the Mossman Gorge

This was a fantastic day, and thank goodness, with my feet on firm ground, I was fully recovered to make the most of it! And what ground … I was to visit the oldest rainforest on the planet, and learn about how this now carefully protected natural environment, that makes up a mere 0.2% of Australia’s land mass, was once home to some of its indigenous peoples in the past, and thousands of unique plants and animals today.

I was picked up from my hotel early, and was one of a group of 16 in a minibus with an excellent driver/mentor who gave an informative talk en route about local history, such as the sugar cane industry, early explorers, development of tourism and so on. One hour later, our first stop was the Mossman Gorge on the edge of the World heritage rainforest, and the home of the indigenous KUKU YALANJI tribes. Aborigines are the oldest peoples on the planet and date back 50,000 years, and this is one of the places that was once their home. I met my Aboriginal guide, whose grandfather taught him many of the ways of the forest and traditions of the tribe that had been practiced in the past. The guided rainforest walkabout was absolutely fascinating, as he stopped to point out specific plants and revealed their surprising uses in everyday life.
Their way of life had been about living in harmony with the natural world, in a sustainable way, born out of respect and sympathy with the rhythms and cycles of life. His environmental message was full of universal truths and so relevant to how we need to redefine our relationship with our planet today, and I felt that I had a real connection and sense of belonging with his culture in this regard. We paused at sacred sites that were full of meaning and significance – the Women’s Bathing Pool, a tranquil waterfall- fed pool where women gave birth; the Men’s Area, with its awesome 3,000 year old creeping fig tree whose roots spread 3 kilometres from its base – a magical place where young boys went through male initiation rites at around 14 years old, leaving their mothers for the first time to put into practice the survival techniques they had learnt from the elders during the 3 to 5 month test.

I touched the ancient grinding stones where women prepared gathered fruits, nuts, berries, for all sorts of uses – culinary, medicinal, hunting, decoration. One nut may have several uses – a colour for body paint, a potion for coating a spear-tip capable of paralysing a fish, a night light when threaded together onto a stick and burnt; a specific type of bark could be used as an antiseptic, a certain tree wood for making a boomerang, musical instrument or canoe; a razor sharp, barbed vine for trapping animals or for a fishing line, a glow in the dark phosphorus fungi for marking pathways. At every corner or literally beneath my feet, there lay a natural material that had a use that only the initiated of the tribe were aware of. There was a clear differentiation between the roles of the sexes – women gathered food and did the cooking, and the men went hunting for animals, fish and birds to bring home meat for their families. Knowledge of their way of life was passed down from the male and female elders of the tribe and there were strict laws and punishments- some that are now illegal under federal law. But that knowledge could so easily be lost if these lessons are not passed on and if the young are not eager to listen and learn. With the displacement of Aboriginals and loss of their natural home and way of life, this seems highly likely, and so the Australian government has recently handed back the Mossman Gorge for the Aboriginals to manage for themselves. (I will give you more context about the plight of the Aborigines in a special lecture). The imagery seen in their dream paintings tells of their religious beliefs and the legends that explain the natural features of their environment. We were guided to an ancient primitive rock painting that dated back 2,000 years – the only one remaining in Queensland, that depicted a cassowary bird (seen previously at the zoo) and a witch doctor. The very sandstone pieces and stone and grinding tools that were used to create the red and yellow ochres used in the painting still lie at the foot of the rock face.

Our walkabout ended with tea and damper in a forest shelter, and a talk about the didgeridoo by another Aboriginal ranger. As the haunting sounds rose into the tree tops and joined with the calls of the birds and insects, I felt the music touch a deep, primitive part of my soul from a previous life…. And a sense that once this place had indeed been my own place of belonging, my home!

See my next post to find out what I learnt on a river trip through the Daintree Rainforest!