It was whilst at the Botanic Gardens that we found out about Nugal-warra Elder Willie Gordon, who wants his aboriginal culture and history to be understood and appreciated. He does this through leading trips to sites deep in the bush where he lives and to Wangaar-wuri a landscape of giant rocks and sandstone escarpments where his ancestors have left cave paintings. We walked for four hours and he talked of the lives these people lived and the way in which their society worked.

A key to understanding the people is the emphasis they put on their spirit and that of the animals and plants of the environment in which they lived. Note the birth painting behind Willie.

We walked through the bush to a number of caves hidden from view where people had left their primitive paintings of themselves and the key moments in their lives. The boulders were quite spectacular in their own right as can be seen here.

This rock was of particular importance because it resembles a python and was believed to offer protection to the women who came to give birth in the cave below as some of the paintings depicted . One of Willie's own relatives had been born here only 2 generations ago.

Some of the paths down to the cave areas were very dramatic too.

The birth cave was used for this purpose until last century and the paintings, made only with red, black and white ochre, are beginning to fade. One of the issues facing Willie and modern day Aborigines is whether the paintings should be restored or whether they should be left to gradually disappear. Only in the more inaccessible places are the pictures likely to survive long like this hand print.

Of course, the Aboriginal way of life was trampled and destroyed by the white man. Willie told some tragic tales of the way in which their lives were changed, sometimes even their children taken from them for “civilising”.

In one case a white woman was found to be living with an Aboriginal family, she was forcibly removed even though she had been brought up from a young age by Aborigines as their own after both her parents had died of influenza. This “rescue” ended tragically when the woman fell from the horse her rescuers had put her on and died as a result of her injuries.

The callousness with which the people and their lands were treated is just overwhelming. These people had lived in total harmony with their environment for, in all probability, 35,000 years. The society was highly complex with regional groupings of people living in clans or family groups who often spoke totally different languages to the people in neighbouring lands. There were strict laws governing who a girl could marry (to avoid inbreeding) and usually this meant the girl travelling away to her new clan and learning a completely new language. Yet when she died her bones would be returned to the homeland so that her spirit could return to the earth that had helped make her.

Now, according to Willie, only 250 years since Cook first met (and showed great respect for) the Aborigines, there are none living a self sufficient, traditional way life any more. Willie bore no ill will toward the white man but is trying his best to perpetuate the knowledge and the spirituality of his ancestors and incidentally to try to get the current generation away from the dependency culture of living off government welfare. Only in recent years has the national government shown real respect for these people and begun to realise how much knowledge and understanding of the environment has already been lost and could be lost forever.

Despite having been a boiler maker earlier in his life and later a mental health nurse, Willie has kept the power of observation that is apparently innate in Aboriginal people. He demonstrated this on the drive back to the road when he suddenly stopped and got out of the minibus and brought back this frilled lizard that he had spotted in the bush as we drove past.

Willie was able to explain some of the philosophy of the aborigine in relation to hunting, food gathering and coping with the environment which enabled these people to live in harmony with the land for millennia. However, many of the life skills have been lost due to the enforced movement of people off their homelands, children removed from families and educated in different skills, impact of white settlements and attitudes. This has caused a dependency previously unknown to them and has created great a loss which Willie and others like him are trying to address.