The Walkabout Story

Indamury scans the night sky just as Goomal his ancestor had done. The storms are increasing in number and size and soon water levels in the anabranch will begin to rise. The rising waters will be the signal that the lakes in the north have filled and the overflow now flushes the anabranch and fills the surrounding wetlands.

Indamury tells the gathered families that the time has come. With the rivers flooded and the lakes filled a mass breeding event will soon take place. Birds in their millions, innumerable fish, turtles, crustaceans and frogs as well as kangaroos, emus, reptiles and hundreds of other species will all take the opportunity that this time of plenty brings to feed, find mates, breed and prepare for the eventual re-drying of the now filling wetlands.

For the families the flooding means the start of the journey to the lakes to gather with many other family groups in a time of celebration for the return of the waters and the renewal of the lands fertility. Indamury has an additional reason to celebrate, his young son will take part in an initiation ceremony to be conducted at the gathering.

Indamury and his family gather their few belongings and slowly begin to follow the anabranch northwards. Before leaving he stores most of their heavier tools such as stone axes, grinding stones, canoes and coolamons in a safe place, the fork of a tree and a hollowed log, until their return. On the way they will find items left from the last journey to the lakes and so they are able to travel lightly.

Food for the journey will be gathered on the way, the river never seems to fail to provide enough for their needs. Indamury and the men will gather the many species of fish, yabbies, mussels, turtles and birds, as well as the goannas, possums and small mammals that live in the river red gum and black box trees that line the banks. The floodplains will provide kangaroos, lizards and emus. Children will seek and gather the small tasty turtle eggs from the warm sands beside the rivers and billabongs.

Vegetable foods to be gathered by the women will include nardoo, grass seed, small tubers and yams, along with the roots from cumbungi, water ribbons and club-rush with its hard walnut-sized tubers as well as fruits of the quandong, pigface and native apple.

Sedge grasses growing on the river-banks provide weaving materials for baskets and nets while the trees provide the material for spears, digging sticks, coolamons and canoes. Fire wood for each night’s camp is collected by the children.

With plentiful game to be found now is the perfect time for Indamury and the other men to teach the young boys how to track and hunt. Soon they will have families of their own and will need to provide much of the food. Today the young ones are being shown the difference between the tracks of the red and eastern grey kangaroo, between the sand goanna and the lace monitor, the nests of the galah and the pink cockatoo.

Days blend into weeks, Indamury and the other travellers settle into a routine that consists of an early meal of roo or lizard left from the previous evening and after gathering their belongings they walk during the cool of the morning. While walking the children gather snacks of quondongs and bush plums along the way. Young boys practice their hunting skills, stalking and spearing imaginary emu or possum. Afternoons are spent in the shade of overhanging red gums before the evening food gathering begins, with everyone lending a hand. Nights are spent around the fires, Indamury and the other senior men tell stories of past times, times when Goomal hunted the now extinct giant emu (Genyornis newtoni) and the massive short faced kangaroo (Procoptodon goliah).

Back from the floodplains, in the vast open woodlands, Indamury sets fire to small areas of spinifex, wallaby grass plains or saltbush depressions knowing that the new growth which follows will attract grazing animals, animals which will provide food for the families on the return journey. During these forays away from the river the men also search for the much prized wood of the ‘maroong’ or murray pine, used for fish spears and canoe poles.

The sight of smoke rising into the air on the eastern side of the Anabranch shows Indamury the movement of other family groups, families he will soon meet on the shores of the now much closer lakes.

The smoke from a hundred early morning fires wafts slowly across the lakes mirror surface. Indamury and his family group have arrived at the anabranch lakes and have joined the hundreds of other families. Days are spent with old acquaintances, the men hunting together and the women gathering foods along the lakes shore as the children splash in the warm shallow waters. The gathering also offers the opportunity for family groups from different regions to trade items plentiful in their home areas for those from different locations. Stone for implements is swapped for ochre of many different colours, ropes made from cumbungi fibre are traded for multi coloured feathers or possum skin blankets, mulga wood boomerangs exchanged for balls of resin from spinifex clumps. Indamury trades pine fish spears gathered on the way for compressed balls of dried bush tomatoes and quartz for spear tips.

Stone and wood are not the only trades made. Family relationships are strengthened with the arrangement of future ‘marriages’ between the different families and many young girls are promised to older men when next they meet. Several weeks after arriving the time for initiation of the young men draws close. The senior men gather the youths and embark on a journey of several days duration. They show the initiates sacred areas, they explain to them stories of the dreamtime and guide the youth through the ceremonies, all the while imparting knowledge handed down through countless generations. When they return to their families they will be recognised as men, no longer barred from the hunt or sent to their mother’s side when the ancient stories are discussed.

Each day Indamury checks the lakes shoreline, past experience has taught him that when the lakes fall to a certain level the journey back down the anabranch to the spring floods of the Murray River must begin. By that time the river will have dropped and they will have to rely on billabongs and wetlands to provide them with the necessary foods. Kangaroos and emus grazing on the areas burnt on the journey north will help to supplement what can be gathered from the drying wetlands. But for now there is still time, time for another story, another hunt.

The early morning peace is broken by the excited calls of an approaching party.

These people are not of the Paakantji group and must first seek permission from the elders to enter the camp just as it had been sought and granted at the boundary of the Paakantji lands. Indamury joins the men gathered around the visitors and listens intently as they relate a story of a ‘new’ tribe which has been sighted far to the east. This ‘new’ tribe is said to have skin the colour of a cods belly. Indamury regards the news with scepticism, where could a new tribe come from? he asks. The elders seem to agree with Indamury’s disbelieve, they have always occupied this land, a new tribe will be no threat to the Paakantji.

The lake has now dropped to the level at which Indamury knows he must gather the families together and start the four week journey to the lower anabranch wetlands where they will spend the spring. The return trip follows much the same pattern as the journey north except that food is not as plentiful and more time is needed hunting and gathering. Even the ever present cod seem reluctant to show themselves. Indamury is thankful for the extra help while hunting that his son can now offer.

In time the group reach the area from where they had set out months before. As expected the river has changed. What were peaceful bends are now billabongs, cut off from the rivers flow. Once majestic red gums now lie fallen, partly submerged in the rivers broad channel. Indamury gathers the few items which were stored when last he was here. The canoes and containers are gone, washed away in the floodwaters. New ones will need to be made but first the group must select a campsite. It must be close to the water, preferably on a sandy hill above the hard grey clay of the floodplain and in an area where food can be easily gathered.

With the site selected, fires lit and tonight’s food gathered, Indamury strolls to the rivers edge, glad to be back in familiar surroundings. Tomorrow they will erect shelters and cut canoes from the black box trees.

Little does he know that before the next journey to the northern lakes, his and his families lives will be changed forever with the arrival of the ‘cods belly’ people from the east.

Story by Althea Mitting and Ray de Groot