Before Following the Fires

31 July

Went north to Woolgoolga to film the Sea Hares in the rockpools.

No Sea Hares found but good to see Buster again. The Buster was a 310-ton vessel, a 39 metre barquentine was built in Nova Scotia. Wrecked in a storm in 1893, about to load timber bound for New Zealand. (I thought they had their own trees). No lives lost. We have her teeth and jaw, beautifully crafted sculpture by men and weather.

We stopped off at Sandy Beach.

History is a blue sea, so vast language just dips its toe in the waters.
History is my labour drafting the Cabinet Minute to establish marine parks in this State, and proclaim this one stretching in front of me.
History is the work ahead to excavate Sandys and Fiddamans true names.
History is young people feeling the breeze of freedom and not always knowing what to do with it.
History is painful, I sit on the lookout resting my sore foot, look over the edge, find history ready to be hung drawn and quartered, burnt at the stake, or leisurely flayed alive.

History is Aboriginal payback, control, judicial spearings, exile.

History is unforgiveable – Gumbaynggirr language imprisoned. How would they describe a white line unscrolling across the ocean? Through the binoculars turns out to be a procession of Silver Gulls.
The Gumbaynggirr speakers of this area avoided some of the worst impacts of early British interference decimation of population from European diseases nearer the major settlement areas. [i] Yet the impact has been terrible on their health, mental and physical, on their cultures, their languages and on their Country.