2019 - OZ 5
Troy’s Guided Tour of Bunbury
Troy
is an Aboriginal Australian.
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| Troy With His Didgeridoo and Hans |
Webster describes Aboriginal like this: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aboriginal
I
feel a kinship with the people who have lived in Australia for eons. They are
not ‘fauna’ as was the pervasive belief before 1967, they are people, humans
with feelings, needs and rights like everybody else.
The
treatment of the Aborigines in Australia is a sad, dark and mostly unresolved episode
in the founding of the country. Most of them could not vote before 1967.
I
don’t have the solution, I don’t even have ideas on how to help each side, but
it is a fact that the they were not treated humanely.
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| Norfolk Island Pine (Monkey Puzzle Tree?) |
They
were literally called ‘fauna’ even though, technically
every studious Australian will say no, they were never fauna. The facts are that
the Aboriginal Australians were seriously discriminated against. They were
pushed into the Ministry Department with fish and were amalgamated to form the Department of
Aborigines and Fisheries (DAF).”
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| Date Palm |
All
of the Aboriginals living in Australia were Hunter/Gatherers. Sure they had
laws, but their laws were developed over a long, long time and are based on
their lifestyle. Their culture is very, very different from anybody else’s on
Earth mainly because they had no contact with ‘outsiders’ during the last 4000
years.
Most
people will tell you that people lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years.
I even read numbers of 70,000 years.
Now,
with the latest DNA studies the numbers change again. The latest finding tells
us an unbelievable 400,000 years of
people being in Australia.
Imagine
the changes that have occurred during even 50,000 years. Romans are 2000 years old.
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| Colourful Frangipani |
Australian
Aborigines did not have a written historical record; they had what is known
today as their ‘Dream-times’. Many books have been written about the Dream-times,
many movies have been made.
Troy
showed us how he looks at daily life. He listens to the wind. He watched
the leaves blow in the trees. He was much attuned to his surroundings. He was
not daydreaming but watched his aura, my aura, Carol’s aura. His upbringing, on
a reservation, made him into a very sensitive, nature-oriented individual. He
lives with Nature as his friend, as his guide. Never is he just idle, he is
always aware of the slightest changes around him.
It
seems he lives in an altered state-of-being. He walked with us but was wide-eyed,
sensitive to our behavior, our way of talking, and our vibes. He
spoke clearly, knew what he was talking about, and seemed to have been educated in a
different way.
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| Walking Along the Edge of the Wetlands |
He
spoke of his mother respectfully, even lovingly. He was proud of his father,
even though he knew little of the man who gave him his genes. He told us
stories of how his mother was abducted as a child, forced to attend a Mission
school and raped. He used the words “kidnapped” and “raped” when he spoke about
his mother’s ordeal when she was away from her family to get a ‘white’ man’s
education.
Those
situations are not exclusive to Australia, however. I heard similar stories
from Native Americans, who were forced to attend schools.
I heard those same
stories in Argentina and I am sure there are other places on earth where well-meaning
people forced education on to the Native People. Is this the right way, the
only way, or the best way, to educate ‘heathens’? How else could they have been helped to see the
light of learning, some folks asked me. I don’t have the answers, but it seems wrong
to my feelings, to my way of thinking. WE, the white people, intruded on
‘their’ land. Was there no better way to live harmoniously with each other
besides ‘forcing’ the Natives to see it OUR way?
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| Great Tailed Grackle |
Our
tour was emotionally moving. Disturbing in some ways, I felt helpless in many
ways, but I at least listened to the gripes uttered by Troy.
Troy
has his family, like all of us. He lives with his daughter; she takes care of
him now.
Troy
was not a young man as you can see in the pictures. He loves playing the Didgeridoo and is really good at
it.
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| Sculpture Looks Like Troy |
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| Sculpture Looks Different From Different Angles |
He was proud of his ‘Aboriginal’ features; he showed us ‘proudly’ that the art installed at the pier in Bunbury is modeled from his face. He loved it that he looked like a typical Aborigine.
Proud
was he, too when he showed us ‘his’ art, the art he painted on the walls in the
park section of Bunbury.
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| Some of Troy's Art Showing the Connection Between His People and Koombana Bay and to the Dolphins. 6 Circles Represent the 6 Seasons |
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| Fish Diet Includes Mullet, Herring, Salmon, Crab & Prawn |
He
makes his living by giving tours to tourists. He has a vision, a wish to
install a more elaborate section of his native ‘village’ for tourists to see.
He wants ‘others’ to share his experiences of life, he wants to show what it
means to be an Australian Aborigine. He loves to talk about the old ways, the “how
it was years ago”. He has countless Dream-time stories he would talk about
forever, it seems.
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| Crest On Troy's Shirt |
Troy is a gentle man; he is like an ambassador for his culture. A culture of people, a life style, which was and is truly in touch with Mother Earth, with Nature. They lived harmoniously with each other, Mother Nature and the Aborigines, they partnered up for millennia.
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| Viewing Platform Being Built |
The
British Empire ‘only’ settled into Australia in the, let’s say, last 200 years.
Compare that with living for at least 50,000 years off the land.
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| Koombana Bay Will Be Seen From the Viewing Platform |
Of course they did not have the internet, they did not fly to the moon, they did not have cars, horses, or the latest medicine, etc. Yet, they lived a useful life, a happy life for thousands of years… Until the British came and dropped their criminals off.
The
rest is History.
