There is a quote from the late renowned Arnhemland artist Paddy Wainburranga that I’ve been trying to find again for years without success until earlier today, when I found it in Deborah Bird-Rose’s 1996 book Nourishing Terrains*.

My search was prompted by the following paragraph, which for mine captures in a few brief words the depth and nature of the intense and undeniable relationships between Aboriginal Australians and the birds that form such an important part of their secular and religious life.

There are different kinds of birds here. They can’t talk to you straight-up. You’ve got to sing out to them so they can know you. …

That’s why I talked to the birds this morning, and all the birds were happy. All the birds were really happy and sang out: ‘Oh! That’s a relation of ours. That’s a relation we didn’t know about’.

That’s the way they spoke, and they were happy then to sing out.

But the full quote reveals even more about the essential relationships between country and people. “You’ve got to talk to the country … All the trees and birds are your relations.”

I’m here telling you this story in this place called Bulara~that’s the big country name for this area. …

We used to make our camp sometimes without water. Then early in the morning we’d get up and sing out and look at the country carefully, so we could find water and go hunting.

That’s what this part of Arnhem Land is like. Other places are all right but here in the middle you’ve got to talk to the country. You can’t just travel quiet, no! Otherwise you might get lost, or have to travel much further.

That’s law for the centre of Arnhem Land. For Rembarrnga people.

My father used to do it. We used to get up early in the morning and he’d sing out and talk. Sometimes he didn’t talk early in the morning, only when travelling and we used to stop and he’d talk then in language.

It would make you look carefully at the country, so you could see the signs, so you could see which way to go. …

The law about singing out was made like that to make you notice that all the trees here are your countrymen, your relations. All the trees and the birds are your relations.

There are different kinds of birds here. They can’t talk to you straight up. You’ve got to sing out to them so they can know you. …

That’s why I talked to the birds this morning, and all the birds were happy. All the birds were really happy and sang out: ‘Oh! That’s a relation of ours. That’s a relation we didn’t know about’.

That’s the way they spoke, and they were happy then to sing out.

Paddy Wainburranga was better known as an artist than a philosopher and his paintings are held in numerous collections in Australian and international galleries and museums. Aboriginal art gallery owner and author Adrian Newstead says of Mr Wainburranga that:

His major works … provided a unique Aboriginal interpretation of relations between black and white that artfully refigured history in the national imagination.

These large barks and works on paper included magnificent narrative paintings entitled Too Many Captain Cooks, The Coming of the Welfare System, World War II Supply Ships, How World War II Began, and Macassan Traders. Human history is about cultures meeting the influences and conflicts that inevitably give rise to change.

In the film Too Many Captain Cooks (1988) and bark paintings of the same name, Paddy Fordham gave an alternative view of the sequence of events following the ‘discovery’ of Australia by Captain Cook. History is re-examined in terms of his people’s understanding of it. Every piece of land was already spoken for in their oral history and song cycles. His narratives reveal a new layer of history, a rich source of creative initiative and spiritual sustenance.

That 1988 film by Penny McDonald was a revelation for many non-Aboriginal people, both in terms of Mr Wainburranga’s exposition of his relationship with this land and its history but also in the casual and knowing manner with which he moved, at peace and one, in his land.

You can see Too Many Captain Cooks, in a less than great rendition, at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School website here.

There is also a book that Mr Wainburranga’s close friend Chips Mackinolty worked on with him – but I’ve yet to get hold of a copy of that. You can read Chips Mackinolty’s wonderful tribute to Mr Wainburranga from following his passing in 2006 in the Sydney Morning Herald here.

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* See at page 14, Nourishing Terrains. Australian Aboriginal Views of Landscape and Wilderness(1996). Deborah Bird Rose. Australian Heritage Commission. ISBN 0 642 23561 9. Originally published in ‘Talking history’ Land Rights News. July 1988 at page 46.