Fraveler'= Tles Guides, Zeco BRUCE CHAT TIN *** Sing Tuveiimacaand oh ee; MY REASON POR COMING TO AUSTRALIA WAS TO TRY TO LEARN or myzelf, and aot fom other men’s books, what a Songline +vas—and how it worked. Obviously, was aot going to get fo the fear of the mater, aor Would I want to. I had atked a fricod in ‘Adelaide if she knew of an expert. She gars me Ackady’s phone number “Do you mind if we my notebook?” Lasked. "Go abead" I pulled fom my pocker « black, oildoth-coyered notebook, ite pages held in place with an elastic bund “Mice notebook," he sid “T used to get then in Pare said “But now they don't make ‘hem any more” “Paris?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow as f hel! never heard anything so pretentious, _Then he winked and went out taking, + pet to grips with the concept of the Dreamtime, he said, you ‘ies to understand i as an Aboriginal =quivalent of the first 1wo chapters of Genesis—with one significant differeace. ln Genesis, God first created the “living things" and then fash- Father Adam from chy. Here in Australia. the Ancestors cre Hf themiches from cay, hundreds and thousands of them, one Pe wtarasearae So when an Aboriginal tells you,'T have a Wallaby Dreaming,’ ‘neens,"My totem is Wallaby. I am a member of the Wallaby S02 Dreaming is a clan emblem? A badge to distinguish ‘chem? ‘Our country’ from ‘their country’? Much more than that" he said jrery Wallaby Man believed he was descended ffom a univer~ [Wallaby Father, who wat the ancestor ofall other Wallaby Men iho al living wallabies. Wallabies, therefore, were his brothers, fo iil one for food was both fratrcide and cannibalism. f¥eu" | persuted, "the man was no mort walliby than the ciish are lions, the Russians bears, or the Americans bald eagles?” p/Any species,” he said, "can be a Dreaming. A virus can be a ‘You can have a chickenpox Dreaming, nin Dreaming, eadssert-orange Dreaming, 3 lice Dreaming, In the Kimberieys herve now got 2 money Dreaming” And the Welsh have leeks, the Scots thistles and Daphae was aged into a leure.” Same old story," be said. Aushala: te shries ef Ife down under ‘He went on to explain how cach totemic ancestor, while mav- through the county, was though to have scattered + tail of and musical notes along the line of his foorprins. and how ne iy se wey cae berwees the mos: far-flung tribes. A song" be said, “wes both map and deecion-finde: ow knew the song, you could always Gnd your way county” “And would + man. on ‘Walkabout always be travelling down of the Songlines?” the old days, yes,” he agreed. “Nowadays, they go by tran S 'Sappose the man stayed from his Songline?” “He was trespasing, He might ger speared for it” “Butas long as he stuck to the track, held always find people who shared ho Dreaming? Who were, ia ow, ts some face, fis brothers?" thing 've wld no | “Yeu one You mighta't beliews me | "Member when we first moved "From. whom he could ‘expect hospitany?™ “So song is 2 kind of pass oct and meal aches? “Again, i's more comph- ced” Tn theory, at least, the whole of Australia could be read ar + musical score, There ‘wat hacily = rock or creek in the country that could oot or fad not been sung. One should peshaps visualise the Somglines 26 2 spagheni of Tiads and Odyseys, writhing this war and that, in which every “episode” was readable in terms of geology. “By episode," I aiked, “you mean ‘sacred sie’? ther? Couple of might. ou ame ove os the back verzadch sod found Glade and me sit fin there, meer we made you po ay? You wa aba i the wrong place atthe w=ong sine Well. we was inte’ 0 sui. I wa he blacfedas plan’ their didgesidoos and slogia and ugh’ down in the rap: Your mother could hese i Lid te one alght."T nin! down there and el hose ‘atives off Who do thy think thoy are, waka all the white yeople up” That whea Giaddie old me She sid “Doo go dows thee, Mam. ‘beret no oat there only Bush” “You se, we was beatin’ the people from long ag. Our pee le who used to Eve here ot der before the white maa sane “The kind of site youre : Fanay, they stopped playa! afer PEE RE OR EOE ‘your fither died. | think 20 “Pat it this way.” he said. “Acywher in the bush you can point to some feature of they was protectis’ wt Fancy, ch? Thoue dea olé people. You eee blackfell: mows all the landscape and ak the “oor sis ‘Aboriginal with you,"Whar's | . the story there? or “Whos | lly Morgan. My Pla ae eke a eeSing 2. tha?’ The chances are he'll answer ‘Kangaroo’ or "Budgerigar’ ot ‘Jew Lizad depending on which Ancestor walked that way.” “And the distance between two such sites can be measured a5 2 sureéch of sang?” “That” said Arkady, “is the cause of all my troubles with the railway people.” Te was one thing to persuade 2 surveyor that a heap of boulders ‘were the eggs of the Rainbow Snake, or 2 lump of reddish sind- stone was the liver of « speared kangaroo. It wat something ele to convince him that « featureless stretch of gravel was the musical equivalent of Beethoven's Opus IIL ‘By singing the word into existence, he said the Ancestors had. ‘been poets in the original sense of posis, meaning “creation” No ‘Aboriginal could conceive that the created world was in any way imperfect. His religious life bad 2 single aim: to keep the land the ‘yay it vas and should be. The man who went “Walkabout” was ‘making 1 ritual journey. He trod in the footprints of his Ancestor. He sang the Ancestors stanzas without changing 2 word or note— and so recreated the Creation. "Sometimes" suid Arkady, "Tl be driving my old men’ through the desert, and we'll come to 2 ridge of sandhill, and suddenly they'll all sart singing. What are you mob singing? I'l ask, and they'll sy,‘Singing up the country boss. Makes the counmry come ‘up quicker’ ‘Aboriginals could not believe the country existed until chey could see and sing it—just as, in the Dreamtime, the country bad ‘pot existed until the Ancestors sang i So the land,” I said,"“must frst exist as a concept in the mind? ‘Then it must be sung? Only then can it be said co eaist?” “True” “in other words, "to exis isto be perceived’?” te “Sounds stspiciously like Bishop Beckeky'’ Refutstion of Mater.” “Or Pure Mind Buddhism.” said Arkady, “which also sees the ‘worid as 20 iusion.” “Then 1 suppose these 300 miles of steel, slicing chrough innumerable songs, are bound to upset your ‘old sen’ mental balance?” “Yes and no," he said. “Theyte very rough, emotionally, snd very pragmatic. Besides, they've seen far worse chan 4 raway” "Aboriginals believed that all the “Eving thing: had been made in secret beneath the carch’s crust, as well ar all che white man's gear—his aeroplines, bis guns, his Toyors Land Craien—and tvery invention that will ever be invented; chambering below the surface, waiting their cura to be called. “Pedhaps!" I suggested, “they could sing the nailway back into the created world of God?” “You bet" said Arkady. ince Chatvin sna: theeuhor of in Patagoria. The Viceroy of Ouidah, (On the Blick Hil, Utz, and The Songline, fom which dis sory wat Cnpted. What Am 1 Doing Here, « ollesion of tse, maeogues ond ports serfs let book, Chat died outside Nix, Fran, on Jonnery 17, 1989,