Post sound-trip to Litchfield with Al, I kept on envisioning sound and how it travels through people and place and where it originates from. I saw loops rising up from the earth, moving up and through people and looping back into the earth. Was this image influenced by what I had read from Maratja (as cited in Christie 2010a) about land, sound and people? He says, ‘It’s the land which holds the sound, and then after that, we Yolŋu people. What we are talking about, is how that sound emerges’ (p. 67).
I though, if there is a cycling, or looping of sound from the land, through people and back again, maybe it would look like this…
Last time I was living on country north of Broome, people were reluctant to talk about the Song Cycle which runs along the coast from One Arm Point to Bidyadanga. I could understand why, increased attention on the Song Cycle from the proposed LNG development at Walmadany had stimulated much conversation and inquiry about it. Countrymen and women were worried that all this talk might somehow dilute the power of this entity… I stopped asking questions.
During my journalling one day I felt compelled to draw this image of an entity weaving through the land, up above the surface and diving down into the earth…
Sound, looping, vibration, snaking, rising, diving, resonating…
Al asked if I would record myself singing. The song that emerged was… ‘Weaving, timelessly snaking through place’. I wanted to use his electronic instrument to improvise with this sample to create a piece of music that would loop in the same way that the images above do. We managed to find a way to do this and the improvised piece that emerged was this…
Christie, M 2010a, ‘The task of the translator’, International Journal of Learning in Social Contexts Australia, no. 2, pp. 67-74.
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Being with Country 
Gorgeous Nia, in every way.xx