Voices from Down Under

Australia is a country of diverse land scapes, unforgivable seasons and ancient people. Travellers worldwide spend endless days discovering the hidden sea bays, or the never-ending desert plains, all pocketed of wild vegetation. The isolation of Australia has cultivated a unique blend of animals and plants that have become masters of survival on the harsh landscape. The stories that are not often talked about are the voices of the land, the faeries of Australia who sing out in a deep ancient hum. Their song is intertwined with the faeries that have travelled the distant shores with the new settlers who brought their own folklore and heritage with them. The diverse culture of Australia creates a rich braid of faeries that echo their story for those that still remember to listen.

The Australian Aboriginal culture is estimated as 65,000 years old, making it the oldest continuous culture of any group of people on earth. They were strict on their youth to apply the traditions of their tribe that had survived thousands of years before them. Boys and girls were initiated into a tribe at a young age through a vigorous process that tested their survival skills along with their will power and courage. In preparation for a high moral principle, children were told stories by the elders that passed down the history of their people, the story of the landscape and how they came into creation. The unchanged traditions of the Aboriginal tribes preserved the culture and the history of the land through folklore.

Aboriginal storytelling speaks of the ‘Dreamtime,’ where they talk of great beings and astounding events, even extra terrestrial contact. Like most folklore, it contains an essence of truth where the legend creates the seed of a culture and lands history. They recall their own migration to Australia from the north east, geological changes such as the rising sea and the change of lush vegetation to desert. The Aboriginal philosophy talks of a seed power deposited here on earth. Every meaningful activity, event, or life process that occurs at a particular place leaves behind a vibrational residue in the earth. This is evident in the cycle of life with plants leaving their seeds for new growth, the current land formations are an effect of the events that happened earlier with mountains, rocks, volcanoes, riverbeds and waterholes. Everything in the natural world is a footprint of the spirit beings whose actions created our world.

The voices of this ancient land are deep, speaking in a tongue that has almost been forgotten. To hear them you must give in to the frustration that comes when faced with such adverse wilderness and listen deeper into the surroundings. The rock people will talk of a time where their mountains towered high, now they are slummed low with age. The water spirits will talk of a time where they flowed strong, now they dwindle and run deep into the earth during most of the year to escape the scorning heat. The fire spirits dance in the desert by day and sleep in the warm rocks by night. Fire is essential for the Australian bush land so that new seeds will sprout, old leaves will burn and trees will shoot green sprigs once again. The air elementals carry pollen across bush lands, a cooling breeze for the west coast, chaos in the north or swarms of flies from the central plains. It is a playground for the elementals as the harsh wilderness has played its part in protecting itself from the hands of human development. The heat and dry land makes most of the nation unliveable for non-nomadic human folk, leaving nature to continue as it always has unnoticed by the rest of the bustling world.

However Australia was discovered, first by the Dutch and then the French, both considered Australia as not suitable for a new settlement. It was the English Captain James Cook who began the tiresome stages of building a New England in 1770. In less than 240 years there are now many proud Australian’s who call Australia home, though their family heritage seeps from all over the world. With so much land mass and natural resources it was an ideal dumping ground for convicts and lower class citizens in search of a new start. First it was fleets of English and Irish settlers making the deathly crossing to Australia. The native Australian elementals battled the settlers at first, making it almost impossible for them to farm and sustain a colony. It was only through the supplies of England and trading with local Aboriginal tribes that they survived.

Slowly the settlers made farms as they began to understand the seasons and unforgiveable landscape. The kaleidoscope of European settlers carried the faerie folklore from their home countries. In the bitter race for survival the colonies would find comfort in sharing stories from home, their family folklore and faerie tales. The faeries heard the call of their human ties and made a connection to the new land. The Banshee who is known for her connection to royal Irish families was heard wailing in the night, giving news that someone has passed away back home. There is a story that one Irish convict sent to Australia was punished for burning his wife as he thought she had been taken by the faeries and a changeling left behind.

The faerie connection is present in the current Australian communities. Faeries are timeless and exist without borders, their magic flows from one generation to the next through the stories that dwindle from all over the world, and from the land Australian’s call home. Children are encouraged year after year to look out for faeries in the garden. The gum nut faeries were introduced to the rest of the world through cute pictures and ornaments. Australians young and old are nation proud, striving to sustain the unique wilderness and maintain a country that echo’s many voices from within its depths.

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Dipaunka

 La Loba

There is an old woman who lives in the hidden places that everyone knows in their souls but few have ever seen. As in the fairy tales of Eastern Europe, she seems to wait for the lost or wandering people and seekers to come to her place.

She is circumspect, often hairy, always fat, and especially wishes to evade most company. She is both a crower and a cackler, generally having more animal sounds than human ones.

I might say she lives among the rotten granite slopes in Tarahumara Indian territory. Or that she is buried outside Phoenix near a well. Perhaps she will be seen travelling south to Mount Alban in a burnt out car with the back window shot out. Or maybe she will be spotten standing by the higheay near El Paso, or hiding shotgun and truckers to Morelia, Mexico, or walking to market above Oaxaca with strangely formed boughs of firewood on her back. She calls herself by the names; La Huesera, Bone Woman; La Trapera, The Gatherer; and La Loba, Wolf Woman.

The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She collects and preserves especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her speciality is wolves.

She creeps and crawls and sifts though the montanas, mountains, ad arroyos, dry river beds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song to sing.

And when she is sure, she stands over the criatura, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upwards, shaggy and strong.

And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe.

And still La Loba sings so deeply that the floor of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up , and runs away down the canyon.

Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by splashing its way into a river, or by way of a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free towards the horizon.

So remember, if you wander the desert, and it is near sundown, and you are perhaps a little bit lost, and for certain tired, that you are lucky, for La Loba may take a liking to you and show you something- something of the soul.

La Loba. "Women Who Run With the Wolves." Clarissa Pinkola Estes

The Messiah

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great river. The current of the river swept silently over them all- young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learnt from birth.

But one creature said at last, ‘I am tired of clinging. Though I can not see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and it shall take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.’

The other creatures laughed and said, ‘Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you will die quicker than boredom!’

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks. Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger cried,’ see what a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!’

And the one carried in the current said, ‘I am no more a Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.’

But they cried the more, ‘saviour!’ All the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a saviour.