Tag Archives: Mamara

October 28, 2014 · 12:27 am

Being called (back) by place, cont.

The others left the track before me, choosing to scale up the low sand dune which grew off the side of the track. I kept going, drawn in by the corridor of tea trees that led me deeper into the heart of the big sand drift. The sandy track emerged into a windblown chute in the towering sand dunes. Beyond was an endless expanse of sand, sculpted by the winds that buffer this promontory. I’d expected there to be no other people here, it had always felt like our secret place. Somewhere in the near distance I could hear the sounds of people whooping and whistling as they slid down the steep face of sand dunes. I could see them in my mind’s eye, rolling and catapulting over themselves all the way to the bottom and then scrambling hand after foot back up to the top. Squinting into the sun, I could make out foot tracks, they crisscrossed the dune system below where I stood. More people; things must have changed. I hadn’t been back here for years, maybe ten or more.

Walking in giant steps down the slope, my eyes grew wide at the sight of a large soak (of water) in a depression in the sand dunes. Being early spring it made sense for there to be water around, but having never been here in this season, to see water amongst sand dunes seemed like a fantasy. Tracks from all directions lead to the edge of the soak. Bird tracks, roo tracks, but no human tracks. Confused, I looked out again at all the tracks crisscrossing the landscape around me. Three toes imprinted in the sand glared up at me from the wet sand to my left. Three toes… three toes… ahh! I followed those three-toed footprints away from the dunes. Countless other three-toed footprint tracks intersect the path that I followed.

Led away from the soak, I arrived at a group of acacias just as the emu tracks petered out. The thinnest sliver of a new moon hung low in the sky, making its final descent towards the dunes. The track that I followed brought me here, I felt a sense of having arrived somewhere. Scanning the area around me I wondered why it was that I had arrived here. But I carry on… Clambering up low sand hills, compelled to walk the edges of these sand sculptures, they are the embodiment of impermanence, providing (if any) only moments (or illusions) of stability. Wandering north to find my group, I felt called back. I was meant to be there. I looked back to see the acacias that acknowledged my presence where I had arrived. The only things in this landscape that had some kind of grip on me, I am pulled back, descending the dune, returning and to their circle. Countless tiny seedlings shoot up from the sand, encircling a group of older trees of the same species. Walking forward, I parted the dense foliage of the older trees. Mossy growths inhabit the thick limbs of these trees, I could just make out what appeared to be the ‘heart’ of the formation. Something about this situation felt familiar… the jigal mamara on the sand dune at Bindinyankun. What had appeared to be 10 or 15 trees growing out of the sand dune was actually one. I looked deeper into the thick growth and saw a dense tree trunk emanating from the dune. Tracing the branches, they all led back to this central trunk. One tree. Standing within the spherical canopy of this acacia, I felt as though I was in a world. All round me native bees hummed as they fed on the yellow flowers in bloom. This tree wanted to be seen, acknowledged, and there was a path that led me here.

I have always felt a strong pull by this place, since I was a young child. In my return there is a sense of having been called back. I am not sure why, but there is a strong resonance in my being with this place.

The faint sounds of ‘Coo-eee’ reached me before being swallowed up by the sand. In the distance I could just make out the silhouettes of three figures walking the ridge lines towards me. When we meet I ask them if they too feel a familiar sense of walking on the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail, across the pink dunes at Rujimon. When I think of this place as a home, a camping and hunting place (fresh water, animals to hunt, close to the coast), my feelings shift. Sensing the habitation of a place, the dwelling that is happening, or has happened, creates a profound shift in how I relate to that place. Place as home, it is an invocation, an opening for new things to emerge, new realities to be born.

We headed north, back towards the farmland and the old coast banksias that fringe the path to this big sand drift. My eyes searching the sand as we climbed the dunes, and there they were…

… Small messages lying in the sand that this place is home.

Images by Hayley Bunting

‘Seeing’ home

I had a conversation with a woman in a dream. She told me that she had seen a mamara (spirit tree) that I had written about (see The Women and the Mamara), but not on the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail. I was confused, I had not written about any other mamara. Which place and which mamara was she talking about? This dream was so hauntingly vivid, I felt as though the conversation had happened during a lucid conversation. The next day as I walked through the native gardens close to where I live I looked up and saw her, as if for the first time. It was her, the mamara from my dream. Fat girth, limbs outstretched and caressing the sky, this mamara was old. I found a shallow dip near the base of her trunk and burrowed in, my back supported by her body.

How had I not see her all the other times I had passed by? Perhaps I had see this eucalyptus, but I had not seen her, the mamara. With eyes open, I began looking around at the surrounding country and noticed that I could see a long way into the distance, in all directions. This was the highest point for a long, long way. A big tree on a big hill right under my nose and I’d never noticed… From this mamara, on this hill which used to be called One Tree Hill, you can see unimpeded all the way to the Dandenongs, out to the Yarra Ranges, over to Mount Macedon on the western side of the city and a long, long way to the south.

My friend J grew up next to this park. When I asked her about the tree she knew which one I meant in an instant. She told me a story about when she was little… whenever there would be thunderstorms passing through, she would worry that the lightening would strike their home because they too were perched on top of the hill. Her mother told her not to worry, that the tree (the mamara) would protect them.

A week later I came back to the mamara and started to feel another tree calling. Not far away, near the adventure playground I found her. A sprawling coast tea tree (Leptospermum laevigatum) hugging the earth and creating protective caverns for children to hide and imagine in. Her limbs twisted into impossible turns, diving down into the soil (just like the jigal mamara on the sand dune at Bindinyankun) and rising up again. A child discovered me whilst I was meeting this mamara. He had come to visit his ‘magic tree’ and draw a picture of his secret cave in this journal. I asked him if he thought this was one tree or many. He carefully considered my question, gazing and what looked like at least 10 different tree ‘trunks’ (actually limbs) rising out of the earth. I showed him the emanation point, the place of convergence where all the branches came from – the well hidden original tree trunk. He was shocked that this could all be one tree!

Source: http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m46jblO5eY1rntxouo1_1280.png

To have two mamara (that I know of) close to home has awakened the possibility of seeing other entities in this place. It makes ‘coming home’ feel like a process of renewal; a deepening of my being with this country into which I was born.

The Women and the Mamara

Jigal

It was during my stay in the jigal tree camp at Milibinyarri last year that the trees really came alive for me. I sensed their presence with new sensitivity. I took the time to be with each of these old, old beauties. This year when I returned to that camp I visited each, tried to get a sense of who each was. One had another tree growing in amongst it. They felt like lovers in each others’ embrace. There was an unusual sexual energy near that tree. I didn’t dwell long. The next tree was much older. It had offered me much firewood over the months of staying there. There was a distinct old man energy about this tree. He seemed content to just be there and for me to be there. There was no push or pull. The next two trees which grew quite close to each other felt to be women, but of different generations. This is right near where I pitched my tent. I felt nurtured in this nook and I know of many other women who have camped here and felt the same. Maybe all of these trees are part of the same family. I felt like I was camped amongst a family. Over near my makeshift shower (a hose dangling over a branch) was a big old cutclore (law, initiated men’s business) tree. I tried to give that tree space and always maximum respect. So it was from these humble beginnings amongst the jigal tree family that I started to see, but more through feeling, the other trees on the Lurujarri Dreaming Trail.

Gulung

S had spoken to me after trail last year about an old twisted tree at Murdudun which had pulled at her. She went weak in the legs as she passed it and had to sit with it a while. An old female tree she thought. She said it felt like it wanted her to stay for a while and just be together. I met this tree about a month ago, but not before K told me about her experiences with this tree in the mayi (monsoonal vine thicket). She too had come across this tree and felt compelled to be with her… sit against her trunk, climb into and rest amongst her branches, play in her presence. She is a big old twisted gulung tree with smooth bark and a sprawling canopy.

A small group of us walked through the mayi, learning about the plants that fruit in this extraordinary thicket, when we came upon her. I knew it must have been her from the way K’s face lit up. Another young woman who was walking trail for the first time looked mesmerized too. She walked right up to the gulung tree and placed her hand on her trunk and smiled. That tree made her so happy. I asked her about it days later. She too felt drawn to be with this tree, she felt her strong presence.

Marool and Pittosporum

Last year T took me to her camp under two trees at Walmadany. I had always assumed that they were one, but no, they are a Marool and a Pittosporum living side by side, their canopies intertwined. It feels like an old, old camp sitting under those trees. From there you can see the sun set into the ocean, way out east over the mayi and over the dunes to the south and north. Camping under trees where you know people have camped for many years (thousands and thousands) is grounding. That ground, the trees must remember our form, drink in our heat and feel our presence.

Red Gunbinge

I could feel her reeling me in as we walked along the dune system from our lunch spot at Dugal to Minarriny. Not to say that the walk was effortless, it wasn’t. I was tired, worn out, but something kept me moving forward. Some kind of magnetism. She was way off in the distance, perched high up on a dune. Although she was far way, she appeared large, expansive. Walking up the final stretch of steep dune I looked up at her rustling leaves and felt a warm recognition, like a friend smiling at another in reunion.

We collapsed in her shade. I sat with a happy feeling, a memory of being with this tree and our mob last trail. We were sitting on the side of the dune and under the canopy of the tree listening to Richard tell us a story about his mothers and this place, Minarriny, the place where their rai (spirits) come from. The density of that moment shifted as Richard’s story unfurled. We were taken into something, or in by something, consumed by something that was seeking to emerge. A story… a dreaming… I’m not sure. This tree remembered me from last year, I could feel it. I couldn’t leave her when the group pushed off to Bindiyangun, I needed more time under her canopy, more time to stay in that happy feeling. Resonance in country, a sense that my own vibrations were in harmony with those around me. That’s what I felt at this tree.

It wasn’t until our final night at Bindiyangun, sitting around the billy tea fire that I thought to ask F about this tree. He said that it is a special one. A mamara (spirit) tree. People think that the Red Gubinge is a hybrid of the Marool and Gubinge trees. F has a different theory… that one tree was the original tree and it made the two different trees. A oneness and from that came more.

Jigal

I am a creature of habit. My camp at Bindiyangun is always on the first high dune. From here I can see down to the kitchen, that’s out east where the sun rises, and out west to the setting sun. From here I can see the yellow ochre cliffs glow when the sun is dropping low. All of country looks and feels alive from my camp. On a journey to collect firewood one night I met this jigal tree. In the dark it looked like many. I crawled under the canopy and searched in the leaf litter for pieces of wood, the stuff that burns with a bright blue flame and leaves white ash in its place in the morning. From under here it looked like there were ten or even fifteen trees, trunks rising up from the leaf covered sand dune. In the morning I went back to this tree, I could feel something strong there. Again I ducked under branches and crouched under the low canopy. Suddenly it dawned on me that the trunks sprouting up out of the sand dune were actually branches; diving down, being covered in sand and rising back up to a reach up to the sky. An old jigal tree will do this, send its branches sprawling along the ground, then back up again. It can make one tree look like many. I was incredulous at this realisation… one tree taking up a whole sand dune. How old must this tree be?

I asked P about the tree when we were night fishing for salmon. How old is that jigal on the dune? “As old as that sand dune,” he told me. This tree must have seen a lot of sun and moon sets. J came and sat with this tree for the day. Another friend tried to sleep next to it and had bad dreams and the sensation of being choked. Maybe it’s just a daytime tree.

These mamara called to us women in different ways. They are part of this living country which speaks to us, shows us through feeling how to be with this country.

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Being called (back) by place, cont.

‘Seeing’ home

The Women and the Mamara

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