photographer FIONA STOCKER
How far back does history go? Two hundred plus years to the arrival of the First Fleet? Twenty thousand years to the arrival of the last ice age? Or 45,000 years to the arrival of First Nations people?
The pretty Meander Valley town of Deloraine has been a hub for its agricultural region since the post office opened there in 1836. The Bass highway passes nearby, the older Meander Valley Road coasts into town, and the freight rail track passes through the centre, bridging road and river.
Alongside road, river and rail lies a trail which sets in stone, literally, the more ancient history that was, for too long, pushed aside.
Tasmanian man Greg Murray grew up a stone’s throw from the river, and spent the summer afternoons of his youth under the railway bridge, swimming and jumping from the buttressed concrete supports.
It’s no surprise, then, that half a century later he was the founder of the cultural trail that begins below the bridge. Opened in 2015, it marks the traces of older, ancient pathways, those of the nine nations of Aboriginal people that have lived on this island.
Then a project officer with Colony 47, a change-making not-for-profit group working with young people in the community, Greg Murray found himself on his old stamping ground for a meeting one day. Spending an hour down at the river, he wondered how the infrastructure already present could entice visitors to linger there for longer. With a passion for bush tucker and bush medicine, it came to him that native planting along beds the river path, and a storyline to follow, might keep them engaged.
What more natural place to tell the story of the seasonal journeys made by his ancestors, who made their homes in the mountains during summer and came down to the coastal regions for winter, passaging between the two on foot or in bark canoes, following the rivers between?
This was the inspiration for the Kooparoona Niara Cultural Trail, its name meaning “mountains of the spirits” in language, the Aboriginal term for the Western Tiers that have long formed the cool, blue ancient backdrop to daily life here.
Project talks ensued, and various agencies came on board, with funding and support, and the most important thing in Murray’s book, hands-on involvement.
“I wanted it to be all-inclusive,” he tells me when we walk the cultural trail along the river together, on a rainy day in August. “Aboriginal meets non-Aboriginal, everyone working together shoulder to shoulder, in a closing the gap scenario, with kids involved from all ages, from infant to high schools.”
Greg Murray is a proud palawa man with a big heart, and it’s easy to imagine the drive and energy he puts behind a project having a galvanizing effect. Schools, local community groups and the arts all came to the party. Over 18 months, there were working bees, the creation of art installations, laying of pathways by council and many local businesses providing in-kind help with native plants and built structures to house them.
Besides being the initiator for the project, Murray became the bush tucker consultant. As we walk, he points out the familiar, like ti-tree and pig face, both good for mosquito bites, and the less familiar, like the Dragon Leaf richea. On his walking tours, Murray invites people to try the native pepper, with hot and spicy results. Today, he passes me a sprig of native mint to rub between my fingers. It looks a little like thyme, but its scent is potent, piercing and unmistakable.
There are informative signposts along the trail telling walkers what they’re seeing: native plants and their common and botanical names. The migratory pattern of the mutton-bird is mapped out, the story of 18 million birds’ annual flight from wintering grounds in the north Pacific. In person, Murray brings so much more to the story, his warm tones and respect for the birds’ hardiness mingling with memories of stories told by those who went mutton-birding on the islands, of an uncle breaking the crust over the mutton-bird oil to drink it from a ladle every morning, and of aunties with skin smoothed by years of processing the birds.
His deep connection with culture is woven through our conversation as we walk, populating the region’s landscapes with memories and a rich store of oral history.
Bringing that history to life on the trail, local mosaic artist Niecy Brown worked with Aboriginal Elder and artwork consultant Aunty Dawn Blazely to create a stone mosaic that runs along a low wall, the signature artwork of the trail. Using smooth, river-rounded stones from the Meander, they created a long story-telling panel depicting the river estuary, its reedy meeting places, swirling rock pools and yarning circles, teeming with native animals.
“It represents the whole of the river’s life,” says Murray, and points out the native Tasmanian emu. “People don’t believe me, but they stood about 12 feet tall before they were hunted to extinction.” Covered in fur rather than feathers to withstand the glacial Tasmanian age, the emu, like the tiger recreated in stripy mosaic further along the panel, was wiped out by colonial settlers.
Sculptor John Parish created eight bronzes of native animals, and the trail’s signage invites visitors, especially kids, to see if they can spot them as they walk the path. Community members collaborated on the choice of animal, its pose and location, with the wallaby, the devil, the echidna and the platypus at ground level, giving a finder’s thrill and an up-close experience to younger kids.
The black cockatoo is more dramatic, wings flexed in the cool enclosure of the bluestone bridge, a microclimate of native plantings around it. Close observers may find a tiny bronze pair of native wrens on a tree alongside the path. Sadly the mutton-bird and another Tasmanian devil, originally sitting on top of a tree stump, were stolen, in what must surely have been a pre-meditated act, given that it took heavy-duty equipment to separate them from their mountings.
The trail’s creators worked on the premise that the more involvement community has in such installations, the more ownership they take, and the less likely damage is to ensue. Aunty Dawn Blazely worked with school students to create designs which were pressed into pavers and sunk into the ground along the path.
While the trail’s features can be appreciated by anyone passing on foot or rivercraft, there is extra heft to be had with a guide such as Murray, who is a natural storyteller and full of detail, such as what the black cockatoo meant to indigenous communities. The bird would be eaten, as most native animals were, but everything coming from it would be used, he says, with nothing wasted. “Claws would be used for adornments and feathers used in ceremony with ochre, and stuck on bodies and faces.”
Soon we’re at the western end of the trail, the perfect length for small children at just 700 metres, culminating in a Yarning/Healing Circle. Nine stones represent the Aboriginal nations, and a floor pattern of coloured river stones depicts the pathways taken to such a meeting place. Today, the central fire pit is capped with a steel plate, etched with a design by Aunty Dawn. It’s secured with a discrete padlock, but modern day families can enjoy a gathering here, as it can be hired through the Council.
“The yarning circle depicts a lot of things,” says Murray. “Modern offices or board rooms often have a round table, and the shape naturally inspires togetherness.”
Perhaps one of its less tangible meanings is the closing of some circle, to a time when all of our ancient history can be present in the landscape. Robust as well as meaningful and aesthetic, the yarning circle will be here for generations, with the locals who helped create it acting as “generational keepers”, passing it when they walk the river bank and pointing it out to their kids and grandkids.
After the trail opened, Murray began a business called Kooparoona Niara Tours. Not everyone is interested in Aboriginal history and that’s okay, he says, and so tours include vineyards and truffle farms, answering to his long-held passion for helping regional businesses achieve their share of the tourism market.
For me, after years of visiting Deloraine’s train park with my family, being given the privilege of hearing stories of culture and country, has brought the unknown resonances of this place bubbling to the surface.
As though in support of this notion, as we stand by the yarning circle a platypus flops midstream, sanctioning our desire to see the stories that are hidden in plain sight. I for one take its presence as totemic.
The author wishes to thank to Greg Murray of Kooparoona Niara Tours for sharing his stories and, as a resident of lutruwita, to acknowledge and pay respect to Tasmanian Aboriginal people as the traditional and original owners and continuing custodians of this land, and acknowledge Elders – past, present and emerging.
Fiona Stocker is a writer based in the Tamar Valley. She has published the books A Place in the Stockyard (2016) and Apple Island Wife (2018). For more information, see fionastocker.com.
