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| Sunrise over Our Little Cottage in Byaduk, Victoria |
This photograph of the gorgeous bucolic setting, near Byaduk where we were staying, shows you why the early European settlers viewed this part of Australia as as an idyllic haven. Due to winds arriving unfettered from the Antarctic, it is cool, with plenty of rain, and the volcanic, basalt soils are fertile. An early explorer, Major Thomas Mitchell, travelled through this land in 1836 with Aboriginal guides, and described it as being lush, inviting and 'flowing with milk and honey'. He even named it 'Australia Felix' - or 'Happy Australia'. He might as well have been a real estate marketer, as his rhetoric drew a rush of European settlers here, in the belief it would be ideal for their flocks and herds.
Of course, when they arrived, it didn't look like our little farm house - much work went into clearing the land to create this rural landscape.
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| Reuben Smith, Our Guide For the Day (Photo By Frances Peters) |
However, Fran and I had not come here for the beautiful, rural landscape. Our interest was to visit a UNESCO World Heritage Site near Budj Bim (Mount Eccles), in Western Victoria. This was not to be a day of spectacular sights - compelling photography was elusive. What was spectacular, was the journey we took with our guide, Reuben Smith, and the stories and knowledge he entranced us with. When he welcomed us to country, he introduced himself as an Eastern Gunditjmara man, who's mob was Kerrup-Jmara Gunditj. If we had relied on our perception of skin color, Fran and I would not have recognized him as an aboriginal man, but as the day progressed, we learned that every ounce of his being was indigenous, as he shared his enormous breadth of knowledge about the area and his people, who have lived here for close to 40,000 years.
One of the first things we figured out was that Reuben was not a fan of Major Thomas Mitchell whose successful marketing drew many Europeans to the traditional lands of the Gunditjmara nation, here in Western Victoria.
(Gunditjmara is pronounced 'goon-didge-mara' - it rolls off the tongue nicely when one gets used to saying it.)
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| Tae Rak/Lake Condah - Eel Population Sampling |
The core theme of the day was revealed when we got to this rather large lake, Tae Rak, or Lake Condah. We learned it had been a key part of a substantial eel aquaculture system that has been dated to be 6,500 years old. The people in the water are not demonstrating the traditional procedures - they are using a fyke net (ooh, I learned a new word!) to trap eels as part of a population study.
Yes, today was all about eels. Now you might think that was a yucky theme and feel sorry for the boring day we were about to have. Let me tell you, Rueben was so excited about eels, and knew so much about them, it was one of the most interesting days I've ever had! It will certainly be unforgettable - I mean it was eels, after all.............
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| Eel Tasting Plate at Tae Rak Aquaculture Centre and Café (Photo From Their Website) |
.......... and yes, we did eat eel with our lunch. Eel is a fatty meat and more protein rich than red meat, so is served in small portions. The dark, curled up food in the middle of the plate is eel, similar to what we ate. The process of smoking it renders the fat out and leads to quite an appetizing flavor. I was hungry and completely forgot to catch a photo of our meal, so I downloaded this to give you an idea of what we had. It was quite delicious - I was pleasantly surprised.
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| Mount Napier |
Before we were to immerse ourselves in the history of eels, we were headed to a volcano. Without consulting a map, I thought this one, which we could see from our rural cottage in Byaduk, would be our destination. It just had that lovely cone shape of a nice little volcano - though it looks as if it lost its top a bit. However, this was not 'the one', as it is just one of many recent volcanoes in this part of the world. I was surprised to learn that Victoria is home to over 40,000 volcanoes and forms the Western Victoria Volcanic Plains. This ranks as the third largest volcanic plane in the world! Historically eruptions have occurred every 5,000 to 7,000 years, with the last one being 5,000 years ago. So....... when and where will the next one be?
The cause of all this of volcanic activity is the very same hot spot that had formed the Warrumbungles 18 million years ago. This area currently has the hot spot under it, causing all the activity here.
Our destination volcano today was Budj Bim, or Mount Eccles, which is 25 miles south west of Mount Napier.
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| Budj Bim - This is a Volcano? |
When we got there on our tour, I kept looking around for the volcano. Where is it? I learned that this is a fissure volcano, meaning that the magma just started spewing out of a crack in the ground and never built up into a mountain of note. It only rises 584 feet above its surrounds. Estimates suggest it may have first erupted 38,000 years ago.
Keep in mind that the Gunditjmara are believed to have been here for 40,000 years, therefore they would have witnessed the eruption, and indeed there is a creation story about it. The story tells us that Budj Bim represents a Creation Spirit who was dancing with his three brothers. When they were finished, the brothers went off to create other parts of the country, but Budj Bim stayed here, laid down and went to sleep. He stayed asleep for many years until one day he was awoken, poked his head up out of the country and looked around. Then he began to spit out his blood, which flowed across the country and his teeth rained out of his head. The people saw this as punishment, thinking it could be because they were not treating the country, or each other, the right way. Slowly they started to see, that as Budj Bim's blood was slowing down, it cooled and turned into solid material that they could walk over - providing the materials and shaping the land to form wetlands. This provided the landscape with which they later developed their aquaculture.
The name of the creation spirit was actually not included in the story, as 'Budj Bim' translates to 'high head' or 'top of skull'. What one can see from a distance is the top of the Creator Spirit's skull, just poking out of the earth. When you consider that this story has been passed down from generation to generation for 38,000 years, you can see why it's called 'the oldest story in the world'!
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| Edge of Budj Bim Crater - Don't Fall In (Photo by Frances Peters) |
The history of the European name - Mount Eccles - is worth noting, too. The 'explorer/surveyor', Major Thomas Mitchell, was shown the site in 1836 by his two indigenous guides. Mitchell chose to name the place Mount Eeles to honor his friend, William Eeles. He had fought beside Eeles several decades earlier, when they were both serving in the British Army, in Spain. (I thought the name Eeles ironic, in view of the fact that this was the area where the Gunditjmara were cultivating eels!) But, this name only lasted until 1845, when a local farmer was having the area surveyed. A draftsman was unable to read the script properly, and transcribed it to Eccles, which stuck until 2017, when it reverted to Budj Bim again.
It seems to me that it makes more sense to call the mountain 'top of head', rather than naming it after a person in England who never visited the site, especially when that became basically a completely made up name connected to nothing. There never was a person or thing called Eccles! While one can appreciate it's origin with Mitchell wanting to honor his friend, that name has little connection to the area.
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| Sheep - How Did It Get It's Name? |
Reuben, our guide, spoke at some length about how places here got their names. In some cases (like the story I told about Coober Pedy) they misinterpreted the words they heard the Aboriginal people using. One of our favorite examples was a place near Ballarat, which we were to visit later in our trip - Wendouree. It seems that a European settler in the area saw a group of Aboriginal people down by the lake and asked what the place was called. The answer was 'Wendouree', so that's what he called the lake. In fact, the word means 'go away' (expletive!) in the local language. Apparently the gathering had been for some ceremony and they wanted him to f*** off, as he had no business being there. We got a laugh over that one.
Reuben also gave examples of the difficulty the aboriginal people had with naming new things that were arriving in their environment after colonization. Take sheep, for example. We know they're sheep, because someone told us when we were little to use that word for that particular animal. But what do we know of the origins of the word? While we might be able to Google its etymology and find it was of Germanic origin, what did the word actually mean to the people who made the attribution. The Aboriginal names are very descriptive. They were astonished by these creatures that had this thick fur, unlike anything they'd seen before. The word they used, guada parrta, translates as 'walking puff of smoke'. Now even if you'd never seen a sheep, that description would help if you ever ran into one. Other examples were a rooster being called 'the cry out for daylight bird' and a caravan being 'the moving house through country'.
I found this conversation very interesting: the idea that we have lost the connection to the origins of many of our words. I came to see that the descriptive meaning of the words used in the Aboriginal language did create a better connection to the entity being named. It helped me get a little better understanding of what is meant by the frequently stated 'Connection to Country', that seems core to Aboriginal identity.
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| Darlot Creek, Near Tyrendarra, Indigenous Protected Area |
The volcanic action of Budj Bim led to the development of widespread wetlands in the surrounding area. Streams like this one, Killara (Darlot Creek) was typical of the routes the eels swim through from the ocean, which is three to four miles south. Now, I don't know about you, but eels have never been anything that I have ever seen outside an aquarium, and even there I would walk past them with a sense of revulsion. Let me tell you, this day changed my whole opinion of eels! They are very mysterious, as they have no gender in fresh water. During Medieval England, they were a favored food during lent. They were a fish with no sex organs, so the church did not feel they posed any risk of creating carnal distractions! Also in Medieval England, when cash was not king, debts were paid in eels. (Happily they were delivered smoked, not fresh!)
Eels are the reverse of salmon, as they leave fresh water to breed in the ocean. Once in salt water, their intestines develop into sex organs and they start a very long swim - without any food. The Northern Hemisphere eels go the the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, the Southern Hemisphere ones to a place near Vanuatu in the Pacific. No one has ever witnessed eel sex, as they drop to the ocean floor for spawning. A popular theory is that sperm and eggs are released into the water where external fertilization occurs.
In case this is not enough information for you, about these amazing creatures, there are many podcasts about them. (Who knew!) The link below has an interview with the world's only 'eel historian', Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee. It is pretty interesting!
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| 6,500 Year-Old Man-Made Channels at Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
OK, so now we've got wetlands formed by the lava, we've got eels swimming up from the ocean, but how does that turn into aquaculture? After all, eels can't be bred like other fish or farm animals, so it has to be a matter of constantly trapping them, doesn't it? Here comes the remarkable development.
Remember I said at the beginning, this was not a day for spectacular photography. These sites are no longer functional, having degraded since the arrival of Europeans. The wetlands were drained for farming, so water no longer flows through these channels. Sheep and cattle have stumbled through, knocking structures about.
In the photo above, you can see channels that were formed through the rocks. These are man-made, created by the Gunditjmara 6,500 years ago. Hot coals were put on the basalt, then once it was heated sufficiently, cold water thrown onto it. The basalt cracked and fractured to form these channels, much like you would see with Pyrex dish being put into cold water, straight out of the oven, .
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| luk bagurrk gunga, Sculpture in Bronze, by Kim Wandin, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne |
The next step is to catch the eels. The method used traps, similar in shape (but not size!) to the one in the photo. These were woven by the women, from spear grass that grew nearby. The firm grass gave them some rigidity. The traps were placed in the channels, with the water flowing into the wide mouth. The eels followed the current, swam right in, one after another, after another, and so on. When they hit the end, couldn't turn around because it was too narrow and there were too many of them.
Trapping was done in the morning and evening, so four hours of work yielded 1,000 to 1,500 portions of food. Because eel is very rich in protein and fat, a four ounce serving is plenty. In three months, it was possible to catch 90 weeks worth of food. This was pretty good living.
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| Holding Pond at Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
Humans do like to find ways to improve things, so the next step was to find a way to have fresh eel available all year round. The solution they found, in the days before refrigerators, was to put the eels into holding ponds. You can see one in the photo above, with phragmites growing in it. Phragmites is a form of papyrus native to Australia, and it oxygenates the water, creating a lovely, big, sustainable fish tank. The omnivorous eels were fed food scraps from other animals and from the guts of other eels. Dams and blockages were used to control the flow of water in and out of the holding ponds. Instead of having to spear the eels, they were 'harvested' by placing a trap in a channel and creating a flow of water. The eel, thinking it can now escape, swims into the trap! Easy pickings!
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| A Small Mob of Kangaroos Look On, Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
A side benefit to the system of creating holding ponds was that it drew other game to the area. This reduced the need for the hunters to spend energy chasing around the country, for different meat. It was all very efficient - few human calories were burned in the process of obtaining food, especially when compared to traditional hunting. Any parts of other game that were not eaten, would be fed to the eels.
Another noteworthy food source for the Gunditjmara and other Aboriginal groups, was grinding seeds for making a form of bread, similar to damper. We had learned of this when we visited the Karrke Cultural Experience near King's Canyon, but did not appreciate the age of this practice. It has been dated back to 65,000 years ago in some parts of the country. This pre-dates European bread making by tens of thousands of years. Also the seeds were not always randomly gathered from the wild. In some parts of Australia, there were forms of cultivation involving fire and soil aeration which contributed to large harvests. It lends credence to claims that the Australian Aboriginal people were the world's first farmers and bakers.
Here's a link with more details if you're interested.
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| A Post Partum Burden |
When humans give birth, we must find ways to carry our offspring around. Many traditions have found 'hands free' ways of doing that with slings and backpacks etc. But the kangaroo mothers have us beat, because the joey can decide when it's ready to get a free ride! I felt sorry for this Mom, as I think her baby looks quite big enough to be getting around on it's own! The joeys may continue to use the pouch for up to a year and a half. Once they get to a certain size, Mom will just push them away from trying to hop back in - she's like 'Yeah, you're 16 pounds now, Joey, I've had enough! Grow up!'
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| Smoking Tree, Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
The eels were smoked in preparation for eating. It would take about three and a half hours if it was to be eaten immediately. The trees were planted and shaped a generation ahead of the time they were needed, so there was always be one available near the ponds. They were hollowed out and packed with clay to stop them burning, and to create an oven. The meat was hung on racks secured with notches carved into the tree. This tree was struck by lightning in 2009, but was the only example still available at this site.
In addition to food, the eels provided a form of currency for trading and for this purpose, smoking would take three and a half days. This made a type of jerky which travelled safely to the more distant areas where trading would take place. This allowed the Gunditjmara to get essential items like spear heads from other tribes.
At Tyrenderra, which we visited, there were two harvesting points, 19 holding ponds and seven smoking trees. At Tae Rak/Lake Condah, there were 12 harvesting points and over 100 holding ponds. This was no small thing - it really was a large, wholistic, food processing plant.
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| Village Location, Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
It comes as no surprise then, that with a certain food supply, there was no need to be nomadic, so permanent structures were built. The visible remains we see today are rocks scattered around on the ground - these were the 'teeth' that the Creation Spirit had spit out. The rocks were stacked in 'U' shapes to form the base of the houses, called wuurns. The roof was formed with a timber frame, and covered with branches, turf, sod or earth to render it waterproof.
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| Image of Completed Wuurns (Houses) |
Here at Tyrendarra there were around 18 houses, plus additional storage and community huts. The entire area of Budj Bim had 150-200 homes and this is where the really sad part of the story begins.
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| Scattered Remains of Wuurns, Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
When Europeans began exploring remote lands, they were supposedly guided by the principal of Terra Nullius, or 'nobody's land'. The doctrine originated with Pope Alexander VI in 1493 and it allowed European powers to 'discover' and claim land that was not inhabited by Christians. By the time Captain Cook arrived in Australia, it was more broadly interpreted as land that did not have 'civilized' inhabitants. Thus, the convenient perception that indigenous Australians were simple nomads, led the British to decide that terra nullius applied - there was no 'civilization' here. Australia was claimed and settlement began in New South Wales in 1788.
The Henty's were the first settlers in this area, in 1834. They were whalers and stayed on the coast at first. After a while they explored northward in hope of finding potential farmland. They found the permanent housing of the Gunditjmara, but this showed a high enough level of 'civilization', that it make Cook's interpretation of terra nullius problematic. Here were people who were not nomads, who had permanent structures and who 'farmed' eel. This dilemma was solved by the the Henty's actions to basically destroy the evidence. Later settlers continued to kill the Aboriginal people. This included massacres. The numbers given by our guide and the numbers found 'documented' online differ from each other, but it has now been recognized as genocide.
Our guide said that population estimates of Gunditjmara before European settlement was about 35,000. (I was unable to confirm this online.) After 34 years of colonization, a population count in 1867 recorded 448 Gunditjmara remaining - a 97% decline. To simply be Gunditjmara was a death sentence.
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| Another Wild Koala, Tyrendarra Indigenous Protected Area |
I thought we might want to move on from that conversation with another koala fix. Fran and I were very fortunate to have a second sighting of a koala in the wild here. We learned that aboriginal people did not eat koalas. You might think Aaw, that's because they're so cute, but no, it's because they're toxic due to all the eucalyptus they eat, and it will 'turn your guts'! It would be like extreme food poisoning. As a result of this, the creature traditionally had absolutely zero predators. Sadly, in today's world, feral dogs and foxes pose a threat. They don't eat them, but will kill them nevertheless. Combine this with deforestation, destruction of their homeland and an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, and the koalas unique evolutionary success is projected to disappear. So sorry.
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| Time to Go |
Eventually our little koala took off. He was done with posing. It's also time for us to move on from this very eye opening day.
I hope I've been able to relay some of the extraordinary things we had learned. I never imagined eels could be so interesting and I left with a better appreciation for the very ancient history that unfolded in my homeland. Although the Aboriginal culture is not my heritage, I'm proud of the work that is being done to uncover, conserve, educate and re-develop aspects of this world's oldest continuous living culture.
Way to go Australia. Keep it up, Mates!
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