“There’s an emu in the Milky Way and two bright stars, and as the stars get brighter during the month of May, the emu’s neck stretches and that’s when you know there’s a lot of emu eggs around”

The Djab wurrung and Jardwadjali knew that when Canopus the Dog Star rose above the horizon in early spring it was time to search for emu eggs, which were considered a particular delicacy.

Bunjil was known as a good spirit who created things as they are today and gave the tribes their law and culture.

Here at Wartook, sheltered by day and as I sleep, protected by the guardian, the spirit of the escarpment, I am reminded that the people who walked this land, long before European settlers arrived knew that all is connected – land, spirit, people.

“Gariwerd (the Grampians) was a cultural mecca because of the significance it holds. The five main (Aboriginal) mobs around the Grampians would meet up at Gariwerd whenever there was any traditional business. It was a place for celebrations and a place to resolve disputes. It was like Parliament House for the Aborigines, which is why it is the most culturally important place in the region.” (Hazel McDonald)

The people who came here had a very special relationship with the Creator Spirit, with the land and indeed with all of creation. To them, everything was sacred – the animals, plants, hills, mountains, trees, leaves, rocks, stones, river, lakes, oceans, everything. They believed that all have as much right to exist as humans do. If we dishonour their right, we dishonour our own right to be.

As I spend quiet, meditative days here, watching as the escarpment changes colour and mood I know that this is a place where I will be able to make tracks in the land… it is the place where my new story is unfolding.

This place, scattered with granite boulders, remains of old gardens, decorated with bright wattle is a place that speaks to me, a place where I know that I am, like every living organism, the centre of the universe. I know that this is a place where I can safely go deep into sacred wells of knowledge that is deep within us, and come up with a new vision. It is a place that tells me ‘you are mine and I am yours.’ It is a place where I feel called by the land to enter the land, where there is a spiritual wilderness that awaits my tentative steps to go further into the vastness of the cosmos. It is a place where the Creator Spirit, Bunji, tenderly stirs a sense of inner tranquility, without taking away my peace.

If Kangaroo has bounded your way, ’Spirit’ is telling you that Kangaroo has hopped into your life to remind you to share the abundance of your gifts. What is given shall be returned abundantly to you tenfold. So give of yourself and to yourself. Remember to receive, we only need to give!

The Key words for Kangaroo are: Abundance, Family, Never-ending, Fire, Universal Love and Universal Law. The medicine of Kangaroo is Abundance and family. The kangaroo or Great Foot has an abundance of speed making his flight quick. The great feet with highly developed tendons allow energy efficient long distance travel. The Kangaroo mostly brings the medicine of abundance because of its self-supporting attitude. Kangaroo sets down a intuitive path for its young to follow thereby ensuring its growth. Kangaroo has an natural nurturing tendency supporting and fostering and encouraging its young. Kangaroo has a strong sense of family togetherness.

Looking towards Mount Difficult

Create emptiness up to the highest

Guard stillness up to the most complete.

Then all things may rise together.

I see how they return,

Things in all their multitude:

Each one returns to its root.

Return to their root means stillness.

Stillness means return to fate.

Return to fate means eternity.

Cognition of eternity means clarity

If one does not recognize the eternal

One falls in to confusion and sin.

If one recognizes the eternal

One becomes forbearing.

From Tao Te Ching as translated by Richard Wilheim

Waldon went off to live deliberately. Joseph Campbell spent years in the wilderness! I have come to Wartook. Here at Wartook I see and feel what these men felt, understand why they stepped off the well beaten path and isolated themselves. They came because you have to come and create emptiness, be still, with nature, in order to fuse with it and liberate creativity, give one’s art life through merging one’s spirit with nature.

Here at Wartook I know that the spiritual plane is not on some elevated platform, far from my grasp. Here, within the shadows of Mt Difficult I know that spirit walks where I walk, sees what I see, breaths the air I breath, communicates with me through something as simple as a blade of grass, a spire of bamboo grass being caressed by the gentle breeze. Here in this quiet space I can hear her gentle laughter, echoing within the empty spaces.

Here at Wartook I gather dead leaves to accelerate the fledgling fire that warms my womb like cabin. I take dead leaves, hold them in the palm of my hand, crush them and feel them disintegrate. It is self-evident that spirit abandoned these leaves, left them to fuse with the earth, to be gathered by me to fuel flames and heat my coffee pot. I look and understand that the dead leaf is nothing but an empty shell, the remains of an organism that once breathed life, danced upon a bough, amid other leaves, drank the sweet life giving oxygen that surrounded it.

Having taken the dead leaves, gathered the brittle twigs, that once carried the tree’s life blood, I stop, quizzically ponder and in doing so, learn that in the same way our bodies, once emptied of spirit, will stiffen and wither.

Ash’s head drooped within milliseconds, the proud body crumpled and curled, his spirit rose within an invisible vapor, like a curl of smoke from a chimney and drifted out into the cosmos. Dog, human, leaves are a part of the great cosmic force and that cosmic force is a part of dog, human, leaf, until it decides to depart, leaving a shell to be disposed of.

How does this knowing affect what I do here in Wartook? Why am I writing about it? I am writing, quite simply, because the spirit of Wartook, the custodian of this remote valley, has taken it in to its head to sit me in class, insist that I observe, sit wrapped within a snow dome, a galaxy of bright stars. Spirit seems to think that I need to understand that, while my ego would like to think otherwise, I have no real existence outside nature, beyond that galaxy of stars that cloak me.

As I sit within the dome of bright stars, I am certain about some things. I am certain that Ash only exists as remains, lying within a grave over which birds carol their evensong, above which magpies call, announcing the arrival of dawn. Yet I am just as certain that a part of Ash came, to greet me, as I entered Rose Gully Road. He lies here now, beside me, tail wagging, adoring eyes watching, protecting.

As I sit within the dome of bright stars, I know that Darryl’s body, dissolved in to ash, was scattered upon the water of the Stony Creek, floated, like a raft, along with the currents and vanished. Yet he exists within memory, within the stories, told of him. He is not with me yet he is always present, a guiding hand, a reassuring voice, a gentle touch. Where Darryl once stood, where Ash once lay, there is a void, an emptied space. Yet this void is not formless, anymore than the heavens that surround me are formless or empty. They are filled to over flowing, bright stars bursting forth light, forming constellations, patterns, pathways to distant worlds.

The void is just another manifestation of nature, another form of energy, and a place I keep returning to, a well from which to drink and replenish.

Spirit thought I needed to know that from voids, shapes rise, that while I have no existence outside nature I will exist long after I am gone, just as Darryl and Ash will exist for many life times. I have listened to spirit, to the custodian of Mount Difficult. I hear and know that shapes rise, return from the void. The shape that is rising is still imperceptible, is barely discernible, but it is taking a familiar form and within that form is life, the one, the very same spirit who has taken me captive here in Wartook.