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Acknowledgement

3/5/2017

8 Comments

 
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In our daily travels throughout Bass Coast, we are never far from thousands of years of human history. 

By Geoff Ellis
 
THERE aren’t any signs and the walkway just ends. Seagulls hover above us. We are on the edge of a burial place. Out of sight, over that ridge, people laid down their dead and sang the songs of mourning. Bunurong Land Council’s cultural heritage manager, Rob Ogden, points to the top of the dune and talks about what he knows and what he understands.
 
We walk slowly back to the bus.
 
Where once 50 campfires burned through the summer nights, now there are none. Even the seagulls are quiet. No one is far from tears. We learn about sealers, traders and stolen women; can’t quite feel the shots and hear the screams in the sounds of the sea. Bloody story needs to be told.
 
On the bus we talk about definitions. Sealer, trader, pirate, slaver.
 
We know the names and dates, Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner, 1841. Murderers or freedom fighters? The story was written by the mob that tied the nooses.  Safely hidden in the pages of a book, alongside many others. We like our history that way. The truth is in those sands, illegible, indelible, over there on the edge of the tide. Is it blood?
 
Further down the road there’s a midden being blown back to the sea. More than a dozen thousand years old, it holds the crumbs of a million family meals. Interpretative signs are no use when only the wind knows their names. They all had names.
 
It’s not my place to tell the stories of Bunjil, but I offered my respect on the last wet and rainy day in April when I crossed his country in the spartan luxury of an air-conditioned coach that took around 40 of us to sights of cultural and historical significance across Bass Coast. Rob Ogden guided us through these places as he told the stories.
 
We had lunch next to the Bunurong Environment Centre in Inverloch. This enabled a quick tour of glass cabinets guarding stone tools and fragments neatly labelled Harmer's Haven, Cape Paterson, almost everywhere in Bass Coast, actually. Across the room there are dinosaur bones. One of this day's revelations was the unfamiliar closeness of the middens and the makers. We pass them daily and there are many things that need to be said.
 
"Council … recognises that we are situated on the traditional lands of the Bunurong/Boon wurrung, members of the Kulin Nation who have lived here for thousands of years.”
 
These words are part of the formal acknowledgement that are spoken at the start of every Bass Coast Shire Council meeting.
 
The next time I hear them, they will mean more than the abstraction of “the Bunurong/Boon wurrung”. They were just people like us, out there in the sand barefoot with their friends and family worrying about the next meal and whether it would rain and when the tide would next be low.
 
That's why they aren't like the dinosaurs in the museum. We can still see and hear the people who were here before us, if we trust our senses.
 
This study tour was organised by the Mornington Peninsula and Western Port Biosphere Reserve Foundation's Growing Connections project which is supported by the Australian Government. Bunurong Land Council’s Rob Ogden chose the itinerary. Geoff Ellis went on behalf of the people of Bass Coast and, along with council officers, represented the council. 
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8 Comments
Pamela Rothfield
4/5/2017 10:14:48 pm

Beautifully written Geoff - I am so sorry I wasn't able to join the tour. It sounds so moving.

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Janice Orchard
6/5/2017 03:02:39 pm

So much of the real history of this area is hidden in the landscape. I knew nothing of this story until I read Geoff's moving article. It would be wonderful if these bus tours could be more available to the public so that we can all learn and spread the word.

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Anne Heath Mennell link
6/5/2017 04:35:40 pm

Wonderfully evocative, Geoff. I echo Janice' s request that more such tours be offered and publicised widely. When on Wurundjeri lands (Melbourne) I always introduce myself as a visitor from Bunurong country when paying my respects. We need to keep the memories and stories alive.

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Peter Marsh
11/5/2017 12:00:40 pm

Bunurong Country extends from the Werribee to the Prom. John Pascoe Fawkner's journals provide great insight into the true nature of who's Country the settlement area alongside the Yarra was. Great story actually with Derrimut on every second page. Thanks Geoff, well done, amazing.

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bob middleton
6/5/2017 04:57:13 pm

A powerful story told with great insight and feeling. Thank you Geoff I almost feel I was there.Not so sure I want to see bus loads visiting on a regular basis.What was it Joni Mitchell said in her song Big Yellow Taxi...... "see paradise put up a parking lot".

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Geoff Ellis
6/5/2017 05:42:21 pm

Kind words, Bob, thank you.

It was more 'see paradise, put up a sealer's hut'

I'm with Buffy Sainte Marie -

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

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Vilya Congreave
6/5/2017 06:32:14 pm

Thank you Geoff. This surely must be the reason I feel such great reverence when walking on Tank Hill and Harmer's.

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Ray McNamara
8/5/2017 05:50:23 pm

Geoff, thanks for an excellent expression of your feelings when you saw/discover/realise what happened to our First Peoples when the invaders came from Europe and elsewhere. And, it was only a short time ago (mainly in the 1800's) that this cultural genocide occurred. I was deeply moved too.

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