Bateman Park

<Aboriginal welcome>
Greetings. The Aboriginal Custodian is welcoming you here to the land of my people. This is the Canning River, previously known as the Dyalgarro Bee. Today my people's spirit lingers around us as we are sharing stories. I've asked the bad spirit to go away and the good spirit to come here and be with us this day. And as I hang this bunch of gum leaves the message is 'I don't come in anger'.

The Djalgarro is also very important towards the lifestyle, and on behalf of the lifestyle of Noongar people. This is where Noongar people would come and wash and cleanse themselves. But more importantly this is where they would come to nadij and kidj, to hunt and gather with the spear or with their durriks like my one. As they came down here they never camped by the river way, and the importance of that is because this is where the land was shared with the rest of the community - the animals, the birds, the fish, the crabs, the gilgies. It was where their supermarket was. So this is where they came to collect their food every day, and they would only collect enough for what they needed for that particular day. The other very important area with the Djalgarro river is that it was a birthing site for Noongar women. And Noongar women would come down here and they would build their little mia mia because it needed to be by the water so that when baby was born the water would wash the baby, and cleanse the baby, and cleanse the mother so that when she went back to her camp she took a beautiful freshly born little baby.

When we look at the food that we caught from the Djalgarro it was great for fishing for mullet, and when the mullet was running it would be the dolphins koolina that would push the mullet down the river, and Noongars knew when they saw the dolphin running and swimming that in front of it would be the mullet, and this would be where they would come and they would make nets and they would also make stone fishing traps, so that when the tide was high the fish would be trapped, and when the tide went out there would be fish there which they could collect, and usually it was the mothers and the children that would go and collect the fish, and unfortunately I never had that opportunity but I could just imagine some of my ancestors and, from the long ago, the kids would be in their glory if they're anything like my grandchildren.

One of the importance of the Djalgarro River, which has been highlighted by several different Noongar elders, has been its place of healing. Now, healing can come in many forms, healing can be sitting around the campfire, getting warm by the beautiful fire, which is my favourite way of sitting down getting rid of bad energy, and having a smoking ceremony done. Healing can become part of sitting down sharing our stories, because through our stories we experience happiness, sadness, laughter or silence. And sometimes it's in the silence that we experience the best healing. And as I've been sitting with you here today I am experiencing that healing. We are feeling the wind blowing, and the wind, or as some people call it, the rua, it means the feeling of the wind. Sometimes the wind will stop and it will highlight the experience of healing that we have felt here today.

Noongar language in the Noongar community had been hidden away for many years because, if like my parents, they were threatened with being put in jail if they spoke the language. But I had an old grandfather who taught us the language behind closed doors, and in many cases this is how our Noongar language has survived, because people taught it behind closed doors. And they thought about when and where to use the language, so for me when I was asked to write up a course at Murdoch University and teach the language, I hadn't spoken it for over 20 years, so I really had to go back, find my dictionaries and my language books and relearn the language, which thankfully I hadn't forgotten, it had just been hidden away. And as a result of it, our little organisation Yelakitj Moort Nyungar Association has done a language package called Yellakitch Koondaam, and we called it Yellakitch after our grandfather Tom Bennell, and Koondaam means dream, or dreaming. And it was always his dream to listen to our language being spoken like it is starting to be today. Yunka! Thank you.

One of the areas that I would really like to highlight here that has become very special is the Pulo Road Living Waters Project, and we talked about the spirituality of Noongar. Well, we experienced it on the first day that we went down there, and my sister Robin Collard and I went down and we met with representatives from Swan River Trust, and as we were walking down to where they were, all of a sudden we were flooded with the beautiful blue dragonfly - ‘Kaalitj – ngort Koondaam’. And I said to Robin this is what our project name is going to be, and they followed us all the way down to where we met up with the staff from Swan River Trust. And as we walked down, I've got this habit of eyes always looking down on the track, and the track was clear, but after we met up with the staff and we started to walk back, one of the young men, Ben, he shouted out 'Hey, look at this turtle shell', and my comment was 'It wasn't there when we walked down'. Us ladies weren't meant to find it, the man had to find it, and after taking photos of that turtle shell, I found out later there was a man's face in it, whom I believe is Yagan.

The other thing that I would like to highlight about the Djalgarro is, that it was also places along here would be set aside for men's business, and also for women's business. And one of the women's business sites that is close by here is Piney Lakes. And the men's sacred lands are down further at Bibra Lake, and that men's site is very sacred secret, and women should never go there, and it's very important that we highlight these sacred laws of the past because they are still relevant today, and things happen on these sites that we can't understand. But we know that the 'Wirn' has come and visited.

One of the best trees in this area around here is the sheoak tree - Kulli - that sings and cries, and when it is crying it is telling us that the spirit of the babies are sitting in the tree, and they are waiting to go down to Koorinup(?) where the river meets the sky. With Kulli, you never cut Kulli down. It is never to be chopped down because of its sacredness.

When you come down to the river we can go 'djenabiddi'(?), we can go walkabout, and there's nothing more beautiful than to go walking, by yourself, with a group of people, or more especially with your grandchildren, where you are teaching them just by walking, and you are teaching them about the mapping of Noongar country. It is important that we teach the children about how the land was mapped out, and I'm often astonished that my people who never had pencil and paper knew how to map their land. They knew where their dreaming tracks were, they knew where their landscapes stopped and started, and much of this learning and teaching can happen as we're walking along the roadway, on the tracks or down by the river. When I look at maps I can see pictures of things there, of 'whadjari'(?) women, pregnant women, nearly ready to have their babies. I see the Waagle slipping and sliding, and making and creating, and most of all we see, in our mind, the way the water runs and where it stops and where it dries up. All of these experiences become part of our healing.

One of the important cultural aspects of Noongar country and Noongar people is the seasons. We have six seasons and they are two months at a time. Without the six seasons we wouldn't be able to know when to go and do our next cultural activities. How do we know when the six seasons change? They work out around two months at a time, and the way that the old Noongar people could tell that they went from one to the next one was the gum leaves. They would hang a bunch of gum leaves on their little camp, and as the leaves died and dropped off, they knew they were going into the next season. Very important because we didn't have clocks, we didn't have timing like we've got today. We didn't have calendars to work under but the Noongar people used the bush to inform them of the change of seasons, and when we changed seasons, we know it's time to go to collect different food, to hunt and gather different roots, to burn different trees, to collect and hunt and gather to suit the needs of that particular season. And it was during those seasons that we would be doing men's business, women's business, marriage would be arranged, corroborees would be held, dance and music, and most of all, stories would be shared. And people would come together, to <aboriginal place names>, and during that time, my people would come together to sit and listen and learn and talk and celebrate.

When Waagle created the Beeliars, the rivers, the swamps and the waterholes, he came all the way down, twisting and turning, creating what we know today as the Swan River, and when he came down to the 'Derbal Yaragan', the estuary of the river, he met another dreamtime rainbow serpent, and together they played and swam, twisting and turning making the 'Derbal Yaragan' bigger and bigger, until one day they had a fight, and Waagle decided to go back to where 'Galup', Lake Monger is, where he sleeps today. But the female rainbow serpent decided to create what we know today as 'Djalgarro', the Canning River. And she has come down weaving her way down these waters along the river pushing the sands aside so that when it rained the water filled up, and it still runs today.

These areas, these lands are the lands of Midgegooroo and Yagan, father and son who fought for their lands when they saw their country being cleared, 
houses being built so they stood up and they fought for the land and they were killed. They were warriors for the Noongar people. 
The other lands around Perth and Fremantle are part of the family structure, Moondine is the elder for the Perth to Armadale area. 
Weeip is on the other side of Yellagonga's lands. Yellagonga's lands are Kings Park to Joondalup, and they were all related, 
and they all were custodians and kings of their lands. But the funny thing is, here in Whadjuk country, it is a matriarchal lineage and so the men are 
not responsible for it, the women are. And the women are the traditional custodians, and the men are there to help them and support them. 
And its very interesting how that responsibity is accepted within families. In my own family that responsibility was put on me at the funeral of my 
mother. And that is why I always bring my (wana) my woman stick because that was made for me in the traditional way. 
And what it's done it's made me a law woman, which really frightened me at first. But as I look back over my time as the elder in my family, 
I have noticed that I have walked down that same path that my mother's family, my mother's mother, my mother's grandmother have walked, and have shared 
their responsibility for these lands in these area.  So Djalgarro is very close to women.