Between Covid-19 lockdowns, fire, flood, landslips, and broken or closed roads, no one would pick Upper Kangaroo River as the place for big things to have grown over the last few years, but at Winderong Farm they have: Dharawal culture is celebrated in Gangagruwan (Kangaroo Valley) in new ways, linking us to our first custodians the Wodi Wodi, and to a beautiful future of unity, reciprocity, and reconciliation.
At a recent dance workshop I attended (excitedly), before corroboree, one wet Saturday, at the invitation of Winderong Farm and Gadhungal Marring, Bob McLeod-Sampson is giving us a warm welcome. He gathers our mixed-ages group into a circle, gently teasing us till we get it, and so we relax. The teenage helpers stand tall, preparing, and the few younger kids squirm. Then we settle and Bob introduces himself, starting with his ancestors and teaching us the word witdhow (pron. ‘witt-ow’: hello) and the meaning of the name Gadhungal Marring. Gadhu is the ocean; gal is a possessive meaning ‘belonging to’; marring is the people. “So we’re the people belonging to the ocean, or saltwater people, and actually pretty much the whole East Coast, and you guys living here.”
I’ve heard this phrase before, at other ceremony events and from another member of the group, Benett Lloyd-Bolt, whom I interviewed over the phone. The translation is very clear, graspable, but it’s the invitation to take on that sense of belonging to country and culture that always strikes me hardest because of its profound generosity. In the last couple of years, it seems to me, Kangaroo Valley has taken up this invitation and run with it, incorporating a local Indigenous presence in events from the Folk Festival and the Kangaroo Valley Show to the Festival of Canoe and Kayak (FoCK), which last year launched a traditional canoe handmade by some of the Gadhungal Marring mob at Winderong. Our Reconciliation Allies (RAKV) group is working with them too, as are bush and landcare groups, and the primary school.
As Benett explained during our call, the Winderong relationship goes back to Covid-19 lockdowns. Richard and JJ, of Winderong Farm, had met Raymond Timbery from Gadhungal Marring at a cultural immersion workshop. When lockdowns hit, and Gadhungal Marring’s cultural education income from school visits and community events disappeared, Winderong Farm offered the members work and purpose. The family-cum-community-cum-business and mentoring entity came to work alongside staff and live-in interns on Winderong’s regenerative farming property, on the crops and in bush care and native-restoration projects. During one of these projects, someone looked around at the creek, the flatter ground cradled at the foot of a eucalypt stand, and said “This would make a good corroboree ground.” So they did make it, scraping and flattening the circle of earth with hand tools. “See how it’s lower than the grass around it?” Bob asks me later, after we’ve danced and been through the smoke there. “We dug it down a bit so it would feel like it’s old.”
I’d been hoping the workshop would be at the corroboree ground but we do our best on floorboards and, with the doors of the hall open to the Sharmans’ paddocks and the creek across the road, nature is present. There is even a moment where my doorway view of a lamb suckling from its mother coincides with Bob talking about the importance of nurturing our mother, the earth, just as she nurtures us.
We all do the Nyarin Nyarin, Bob accompanying on the clapsticks, then women and girls do a reasonable job of the Djirima (willy wagtail). Then the young lads demonstrate the Gwarra marra (spearfishing) dance and I notice their commitment to line in the arms, the personality and expression, the acting, in their different postures. There is real skill here. I’d adjusted my wing movement in the Nyarin Nyarin, too, after seeing the tall one’s timing and commitment to shape. I recall Benett saying “The more you put in and engage, the more you get out”, and that he’d watched for years in the Dunidj Dancers (down Jaithmathang way, in Victoria) before he was ever allowed to join in. Makes me think these boys must’ve watched well. And the wider metaphor is not lost on me either.
By the time we get to the firewood collecting dance, Djungalin (freezing), the young kids are really having fun with it, weaving as fast as they can around the adults, pausing only for a random explosion of giggles. It’s already a workout and then Bob leads us into the Djirila (four animals) dance: goanna, emu, echidna, and kangaroo. In the goanna (men and boys only) dance, I am impressed to see the men – some tourists, some locals – getting low and close to the floor on strong, bent arms and legs, as the demonstrators had done and even adding in goanna-like head movements, despite the fact the abdominal effort required must be like planking. We go through all four animals in one go and are all warmer. “Yeah, it’s a workout,” Bob says, “sometimes we do a speed set”, and mimes a kind of post-sprint gasping for breath. I have a flash of an imaginary future where traditional dance is so ubiquitous it’s taught in studios like yoga.
When we wind up, everyone is smiling, and grateful, many personally thanking Bob. When we get to Winderong Farm (a few minutes’ drive from the Hall) and walk up the treelined track to the forest- grove corroboree ground, ringed with simple shelter, we are hungry for the afternoon tea provided by Angie’s Table, with native teas grown and made at Winderong. Happy chatter rises to the silver-leafed canopy as we mill about and find places to sit.
As more people arrive, welcomed by Richard and JJ at the entrance, I look around, and up to the canopy and grey sky beyond it. This place feels very safe. “The craziest thing in my life is to need to tell [so many] people: You don’t own the land, you are a part of the land”, Benett had said on the phone. “I think it’s just the human ego that puts that aside, thinking we’re on top of everything.” Here, we’re not on top; we’re enclosed, held, and it’s a relief. I’d asked him how we who live in Gangagruwan can pay respect to country in a daily way.
“Honestly just grounding – going out into nature, listening, sitting in the trees, listening to the wind, watching the water, and especially in a place like Kangaroo Valley, where you’ve got some of the most beautiful, freshest water coming down over these most beautiful mountains into gorgeous rainforest and trees and bushes.” And I think of a woman I know who does this, and who is alive to noticing artefacts in the ground, and whose family history goes back to the first white settlers here. I think of the ‘old farming families’ and newer private landowners here who’ve been in touch with Benett and others at Gadhungal Marring for help identifying artefacts, or to know the Aboriginal history. “We don’t mind questions”, Benett said, “we love answering questions. The best thing is if we don’t know the answer, we get to go and find that out and [come back] to you.”
Soon the lively buzz turns to a hush when the dancers come out and Aaron takes a position at the front to introduce himself and welcome us all, in Dharawal and in English, and with a powerful image of connection to country: “My nan’s great nan was born [along the river] in one of the birthing pools.” I recognise him from corroboree here about 18 months or two years ago, when he had been a dancer, perhaps a new one, his young kids in the audience. Now, they are among the child dancers. With them are 16 of the 21 members of the Young Rangers program at Nowra and Nowra East primary schools, who have been coming to Winderong with help from Gadhungal Marring to learn food-growing and bushcare skills, surrounded by country and supported by culture. This is the evolution of that original reciprocal hosting relationship during Covid-19. In Gangagruwan/Kangaroo Valley such partnerships of unity and cultural belonging are increasing. “Why do you think that is? What is it about this place and the people?” Richard asks me after the corroboree, as we have joined the dancing, been through the smoke, and now share a meal of native ingredients, dancers and audience mingling, chatting. It makes me think of what Benett said about Gangagruwan: “For me personally, it’s exact same feeling you get from a kangaroo. You know, they mob together, they travel together, they eat together. It’s not just about it being the grounds where the kangaroos are, it’s a deeper thing as well – the meaning of the kangaroo itself.” From dark times, we are travelling somewhere new. Together.
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The next Gangagruwan Corroboree at Winderong Farm will be on 13 July 2024. Go to https://gadhungalmurring.rezdy.com/595689/gangagruwan-corroboree-at-winderong-farm.
The Dharwal language words used in this piece are from a southern dialect shared locally, and were mostly spoken to me, not written. I apologise for any errors in spelling or translation, and all errors are my own.
