The Magic of Storytelling
~ A Child’s View of the World ~
Aboriginal lore is firmly rooted in the belief that we are custodians of the natural world around us, working in collaboration for the benefit of all creatures of the indigenous environment.
At the age of five, my family moved to the Northern Territory of Australia, to a mining town called Nhulunbuy, in Arnhem Land, Australia’s aboriginal heartland.
Here I quickly eased into a life of 40degree heat, buffalo sightings, and 700 kms of unpaved roads. We shared the local swimming hole – or billabong – with frogs and the occasional wayward crocodile gone walkabout from the nearest estuary.
In Arnhem Land, the spiritual gatherings were a set time of reverence – telling the stories of The Dreaming – bodies slathered with ochre scooped from the earth, the wooden snakelike wind instrument – the didgeridoo – weaving a vibrational sound through your tendons and muscles until all bare-footed limbs thump a soul-felt rhythm into the bauxite-rich soil.
I participated in such gatherings – jostling for a favoured place seated beside the tribal elder, I’d eagerly wait for my share of the exotic, sometimes wriggling, edibles to land softly on the plate of my palms; this pink-faced ancestor of hardy Irish convicts, embracing a new custom with the pure lack of self-awareness only a child possesses. They accepted me, and I, therefore, accepted my place as one, in this tribe of charcoal-skinned native Australians, tens of thousands of years young.
It was years later that I came to the realization that the spiritual ceremonies I had witnessed, that held such import for me, had an altogether less esoteric name in my pragmatic culture.
Lunch.
Kath Ryan – YogaPlot Founder
It is an enthusiastically-held belief at YogaPlot that thy food be honoured and thy hands get dirty!
Check out what goes on in the AgPlot!
