Journey to SHC Holder #4 – Australia

Reference the graphic of the Holders that showcases the first five Holders, the dates they undertook their responsibilities and their locations. These individuals have accepted the responsibility to take part in the Systems to Heal the Climate Program. For the reader to experience the process of selecting a Holder in depth, I am presenting the story of my finding and qualifying the 4^th Holder, the Holder for Australia.

On Nov. 10, 2013**(Journey book), I Journeyed to ask, “Who is the Holder for Australia?”  I saw a hand being offered, on which there was a Scottish thistle with its vibrant purple bloom next to the face of an Aboriginal child. Did that mean that Spirit was telling me the Holder would be found in a wilderness area? How is the Aboriginal child involved?

I had seen three women and two girls in yellow outfits performing ritual at the beginning of Toby McCloud’s powerful Northern Territory Australia, Islands of Sanctuary from his Standing on Sacred Ground series***(reference) , a product of the Sacred Land Project. From that video, I learned that Dean Yiburaba, an indigenous land fire manager, had enabled women and girls from Borroloola, NE Australia, to perform a ritual in appeasement and empathy for Rainbow Serpent’s loss.  Rainbow Serpent is the powerful spirit of all forms of water. Rainbow Serpent was bereft because Chinese entrepreneurs had sited a zinc mine in the middle of the MacArthur River, Rainbow Serpent’s now desecrated home.  After meticulous preparations, the ritual was underway when a helicopter landed in front of the ritualists.  One of the men supporting the ritual said, “This is our land and we have the right to perform our ceremonies.”  Three men leapt out of the helicopter with assault rifles.  The Aboriginal people and Sacred Land film crew withdrew.

I had one more Journey before flying to Australia, in which Rainbow Serpent, with whom I had had a joyous experience in an FSS Dream Intensive in September of 2010, took me to an expanse of very large, round, mounded boulders.  He was very happy to take me to this place that is sacred to ritualists who honor him. I later learned the place is called Karlu Karlu, the primary center of women’s sacred ritual in Australia.  I became aware of an Aboriginal woman’s presence nearby and invited this older woman to answer my question, “What should I bring?” —Yellow cloth, was the answer.  I asked another question, “Where should I meet the Holder?” —Where you are (Karlu Karlu).  So I brought yards of yellow cloth in three different patterns to gift to women ritualists in Australia.

Toby McCloud had recommended that I read Deborah Bird Rose’s book, Dingo Makes Us Human***. This dedicated anthropologist had straddled the vast divide of the 60,000-year-old Aboriginal experience as well as her own personal relationship with the Yarrelin people, and the descendants of the original influx of the British prisoners—petty criminals impoverished by the Industrial Revolution—who had overcrowded the British jail capacity and were subsequently dumped on the continent of Australia***. From Rose’s book I learned Aboriginal cosmology and read about the despicable treatment of Aboriginal people, who knew their land well and knew it was sacred. My immediate goal upon my arrival in Sydney in March of 2014 was to write Deborah Bird Rose and ask her to help me find the Australian Holder.  As I couldn’t get my computer to work, I found a coin-operated computer, which unfortunately had no jump drive port. I worked for 2 hours, kept the coin system fed with coins, then the computer ate my work.  At 5 a.m. the following morning I rewrote my letter—by hand, on paper—then found a copy shop and a post office.

I also found a travel agent and booked a ticket to Melbourne, where I met with Tim Flannery, a renowned scientist, explorer, climatologist, author of The Weather Makers, who was one of the major drivers behind the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009.  We both enjoyed the antics of his 9-month-old son, Corbin, as we spoke about the Australian president’s terrible stand on climate—here in Australia, one of the hottest places on the planet, vulnerable to large temperature spikes and wildfires. Tim told me of powerful young people forming CANA (Climate Action Network Australia) and invited me to attend a CANA Board of Director’s meeting in Sydney two days hence.

Following my rich meeting with Tim, I sequestered myself in my hotel room and, with Toby McCloud’s gift of a small photo of the Borroloola women in ritual***, I painted the women in a larger scale in a surround of the four elements and Rainbow Serpent***.  I was still uncertain about the prospective role of these ritualists to my quest for the Holder of the System to Heal the Climate in Australia.

The day after my return to Sydney from Melbourne, I was at the neighborhood store where I had routinely rented the computer. I received a call from Deborah Bird Rose and scrambled for an extra phone charge card, as my phone was low.  Through the timely action of the proprietor handing me a new charge card, I was able to continue the call and write down her instructions as to where we should meet at 3:30 that afternoon.

Following the noon Board of Directors’ meeting at CANA’s office, Tim walked me to the crown of the hill and we flagged down a taxi to take me to Grand Central Station. I ran across traffic, figured how to buy my ticket from the vending machine and just barely made my train.

Deborah and I met for tea at the end of the line in a coastal venue—rural and serene.  She was a striking woman with white hair on which she could sit.  She had read my handwritten materials and brought me a jump drive of stories and a CD of Aboriginal women’s sacred songs.  I described meeting with Rainbow Serpent at a place with large rocks north of Alice Springs.  She kind of looked at me funny and turned to the back of the album liner notes; there was a picture of the large, round, mounded boulders to which Rainbow Serpent had taken me.  It was named Karlu Karlu, “mounded boulders”—or to Australians, The Devil’s Marbles.  “That’s the place!” I exclaimed!  Deborah nodded.  The CD had been printed in Tennant Creek***, the central community of the Aboriginal people on the continent of Australia.  I told Deborah how grateful I was.  OK, I finally know where I am going!

When I returned to Sydney, I went back to the travel agency from which I had purchased my tickets to Melbourne and told the very effective manager I needed a roundtrip ticket to Alice Springs in the morning and needed a 4-wheel-drive vehicle. Not many minutes later, with a broad grin he handed me my airline ticket, return, and a reservation for a 4-wheel-drive vehicle with insurance.

Upon my arrival at the Alice Springs airport, a Quantas Air associate told me “Don’t drive at night, the birds and animals are attracted to the headlights.” There in the parking lot was my ride!–a giant RAV4 4-wheel-drive vehicle used in the mines! I called him Spark! I had 500 km to go and 3 hours of daylight.  No signs. One road north. Two lanes, well paved, with tangerine sand on either side—period. No rescue crews.  AND driving on the left side of the road!

The road was mostly straight for 400 kilometers and I was making good time at 170km/hr.  Suddenly there was a dip and turn in the road, populated by two very large bulls hanging out in the middle of the road in the middle of Australia. It was clear that stopping was not possible.  I looked at the beautiful caramel-colored bull and told him, “You have to move, I can’t!” and he took off and drafted the black bull, who was in the other lane. I was so thankful for Spirit’s protection!  When I accepted my task with the Spirits of Life I was committing to doing whatever I had to do to undertake what they asked.  I had no idea from one nanosecond to another what that might be, but I asked and asked and performed and performed and with each step trusted that I was that much nearer to what I was called to do.

I drove into Tennant Creek and there on the left was the Blue Stone Motel.  I went to the office and checked into the last room.  Alicia told me, “Sorry the fridge isn’t working.” “I am not sleeping in the fridge,” I rejoined and we grinned.  I packed everything I needed for the next day and melted into bed.

I got up early the next morning, as this was the only day I had to find the Australian Holder. It was Friday, and NO ONE did anything on Saturday and Sunday unless it was family related.  I return flight to the U.S. was scheduled for Wednesday, early.  With everything loaded into Spark! and breakfast finished by 8:40 a.m., I headed across the street to Nyinkka Nyunyu, the Art and Cultural Center of the Aboriginal people of Australia. At 8:50 a.m. two cars pulled up and two people walked purposefully towards the gates with keys. I gathered my brightly colored Peruvian duffle bag with everything in it and went to stand by as the gate was opened.  I wished them both “Good Morning! When an opportunity arises, I would like to speak with you.”  “Follow me.” said Kate Foran, the Director, as she brought me into the crafts room.

While waiting to meet with Jerry and Kate, I spread out the components of the System to Heal the Climate for Australia on a craft table.  Later, I explained to Kate and Jerry my directive from the Spirits of Life, i.e. to enable the Spirits of Life to help us create climate stability by distributing six Systems to Heal the Climate—one for each continent on Mother Earth.  I showed them my drawing of the Borroloola women doing ceremony in a location one-half hour from the MacArthur River area where a Chinese zinc mine has rerouted the river, much to Rainbow Serpent’s dismay, and wondered if these women were leads to the Holder for Australia.

Kate said, “Every woman performing ritual has distinctive-origin body paint patterns.  There are women in the next room, who are learning each other’s languages.  There are some Borroloola women there, I will go to ask them.” Kate took the painting and then returned and reported that the women from Borroloola recognized their ritual body painting pattern AND their community members, and knew them by name! So this was the role of the Borroloola women doing ritual—to confirm my authentic request for assistance! Suddenly Kate, looking more closely at the tray from the System to Heal the Climate, and said, “Those are real seeds, I thought they were a photograph.” I responded, “These are kernels of corn.  To the people of the continents of South and North America, corn is a fundamental food and venerated elder. Corn is the Ambassador of Systems to Heal the Climate.

For the next 20 minutes or so we talked about who among the people they knew needed to know about the opportunity to become a Holder for the Continent of Australia.  Then Jerry said, “When I get off work at 5 p.m. I am going back to my ranch just blocks from here.”  He stopped and drew a map. “I teach Wildcrafting—gathering indigenous food in the outback on horseback.  Come to my ranch. Park in the street. We’ll invite anyone we know who might be interested.  You will meet them, and see what happens.” I thanked Jerry and Kate for the gift of their time and their aid, packed up the System to Heal the Climate (SHC), and returned to my motel room.

About 4:00 p.m., I put the SHC materials in Spark! and drove to a local purveyor of food and purchased a gift of food for Jerry and his household.  I parked in the street outside his compound and went in. I greeted Jerry, his partner and folks visiting the household and presented the System to Heal the Climate to Jerry’s partner, Georgia Bracken, who had been the Director of Nyinkka Nyunyu before Kate.  Further, she was the Director of the Battered Women’s Shelter.

At about 8:30 p.m., as dark had settled in, I was presenting the System to Heal the Climate and explaining for the third time that I was looking for the Holder for Australia. As I narrated my story a slender, pale-faced woman with strawberry-blond dreadlocks in summer attire was sitting opposite me.  She had been listening intently and then asked a question in an unusual accent.  “How will you connect all the Holders together?”  I was somewhat taken aback and said, “That is a very sophisticated question.  Are you the Holder?” She said, “No, no, but I am very involved in Women’s Sacred Rituals and could help the Holder for the Continent of Australia.”  I asked her to share more about herself, as she had already heard my presentation.  Janine Andrews was raised in South Africa and has a University degree in Wildcrafting.  When her family moved to Australia, her other family members moved to Perth, but she moved to Tennant Creek, as Tennant Creek is the center of the Australian Aboriginal community.  She had lived in Tennant Creek for six years and calls it home.  She stopped and looked at me and said, “Tomorrow morning, we will go to Karlu Karlu.”  I was elated!  Those were the very words I yearned for: “We” and “go to Karlu Karlu.”  We made a date for breakfast and I thanked my hosts for their thoughtfulness.

In the morning, when I packed everything into Spark! I also brought my own drum. I brought the System in case that was appropriate, as well as some snacks.  Janine said we needed to drive to the Holder’s house and ask permission to hold ritual at the sacred site. It was so interesting to me that the Aboriginal term for the family member responsible for any piece of land was “the Holder,” [ ***  ] the venerable elder of that family, as the Continental “Holder for SHC” has a very similar role.  Janine said she had been working with Barbara Foster, the Holder of Karlu Karlu and the surrounding land, for many years and she and the Holder have a company together where they produce wildcrafted salves and other medicinal products.  We arrived at the Holder’s house and there was a young girl hanging on the fence, who greeted Janine, as the two had known each other for years.  The girl looked familiar to me.  Janine went to talk to Barbara (the Holder and the girl’s grandmother) and returned to report, “She is still sleeping.  She must have had an event that went late last night.”  But Janine must have gotten approval, as we jumped into Spark! and began to head toward Karlu Karlu. But, as I had learned in Dingo Makes Us Human, Aboriginal girls perform sacred rituals with their female relatives and the boys with their male relatives (the only “on the job training”!). So, I told Janine, “We have to take the granddaughters with us.” She exclaimed, “Oh!  You are right!” and we drove back to the grandmother’s house, where the girls were visiting the grandmother with their mother.  The grandmother was still asleep, but their mother said, of course they have to go.

Janine instructed the girls on what was happening and I drove Spark! really fast, as Karlu Karlu—everything—in Australia was FAR AWAY.  Karlu Karlu was “next door”—100 km away—and Janine had a commitment to drive her partner’s mother to the hospital in Alice Springs–500 km from Tennant Creek–that afternoon and return to Tennant Creek, preferably before dark.

When we arrived at Karlu Karlu***, Laquisha (Quisha) (7 years old), the younger granddaughter, walked with me towards a particular cluster of boulders.  Janine said that she and Shaniel (11 years old), the elder granddaughter, would find a good site for ceremony. Shaniel came to guide us to the site that she and Janine had chosen for the ceremony: two large boulders behind us, one having a curve that invited sunlight to come in.  There were two other boulders creating a surround that had the sun directly overhead.

Janine had set up a fire, creating a sacred space decorated with shell, wing, wood whorl, seed pod, rock, beans, quill, and human hands. Janine offered us white clay powder for our hands, which enabled us to experience the four different sizes of our hands with no color difference

I called on the Four Directions with my drum, Janine offered a chant involving the eight families of living beings and we all breathed life into the fire.  As we were packing up, Shaniel suggested that we put all of our hands on one of the faces of Karlu Karlu in the sun.  When we did, all of us felt some manner of shock or energy surge.  We all spoke about it, recognizing that we all felt it, but none of us could account for it.

As we reached the parking lot, I gave the girls snacks and some water and drove back onto the National Highway. The girls fell asleep in the back seat.  Janine was reflective and I drove quickly.  When we were 10 kilometers out from Tennant Creek, Janine received a text and turned pale as she learned that the girls’ grandmother, Janine’s partner, the Holder of Karlu Karlu, Barbara Foster, had passed away as we had our hands on the face of Karlu Karlu.  When we got to Tennant Creek, we pulled into a gas station.  The girls used the bathroom and Janine bought them ice cream, which, apparently, was a REAL treat.  Janine’s mission was to tell the girls about their grandmother and have them tell us where all their family members lived so we could take them to the gathering in honor of their grandmother’s passing. The girls directed us to three or four places and finally we found the family group.  Janine and I bade goodbye and I dropped Janine off where she had parked her car, so she could drive her partner’s mother to Alice Springs. She said she’d meet me for breakfast the next day.  I went to my motel room and looked at the drawing I had made 4 ½ months before of an outstretched hand held palm up, on which there was a vibrant thistle headed with purple bloom next to the face of an Aboriginal child.  It was Laquisha, one of the Holders of the Wild! I finally understood my Journey from November 10, 2013 and the role of Barbara Foster, Laquisha’s grandmother, who made herself known to me during in two Journeys before my flight to Australia***.

When I met Janine the next morning for breakfast, it was Sunday.  I showed her the drawing that I had made four and a half months earlier and she nodded sagely.  She made certain that I had what I needed and what she needed.  I had given her the System for the Australian Holder and told her that I would leave Deborah Bird Rose’s book, Dingo Makes Us Human(***), the CD pressed in Tennant Creek (Yuwalyu Mungamung—Dreaming Songs of Warumunga Women [***]), Deborah Bird Rose’s jump drive of stories, and some maps and papers. I would send copies of all the photos from Alice Springs.

There was a very arresting mural behind the Registration Desk at the Chifley Resort, in Alice Springs where I overnighted.  It addressed my deep curiosity about “How could all those plants be healthy in the middle of hundreds of square kilometers of tangerine sand desert?” There is an aquifer, of course!  Later that night, I heard an Aboriginal woman leader on the radio saying, “NO!  We will not allow the nuclear waste to be transferred and housed under our land.  There are plenty of ‘really wild places.’” …. “YES, you would have to build your own roads and do without land Holders to care for the land physically and spiritually.” The area between Alice Springs (there’s a clue) and Tennant Creek (there’s another) is supported by a vast underground aquifer, which would be compromised by any scheme to transfer nuclear waste to the area.  The Aboriginal people are NOT going to approve the importing of nuclear waste that has been contained in Sydney for many years, only to have it despoil aboriginal land.  This issue is still highly volatile.

I drove to the Alice Springs Airport, turned in Spark! and found some lovely images in the Airport gift shop including a magnificent Aboriginal graphic: Rainbow Serpent, the spirit of all things water, depicted inside a barramundi!  Perfect!

Back in Sydney, I took an airporter limo to my hotel.  I had an animated conversation with the driver.  Not until I was settled back in my little cubby of a room did I notice that I had left my “other” bag with all my pictures and my computer in the airporter limo!  I would have to wait until morning to find out when the next pickup for the airport was scheduled.  It was agonizing waiting until 11 a.m. the next day to take the airport limo to the airport.  Having just gone through the Sydney airport the previous day, I ran through the vast airport and back along the car and limo pickup area and saw that the airporter limo was just about to leave.  I ran over to the driver, waving.  The driver shot me a great smile and said, “It’s still on the bus, I didn’t let them take it because I knew you’d come for it.”  I jumped into the vacant seat next to him and we gabbed the entire way back to my hotel. I saw him again the next day, when he picked me up to return to the Sydney Airport to catch my plane back to the U.S. of A.  This story is part of my “protection!” because we all “get tired, drop a stitch, do dumb things” and I appreciated the help from the Spirits of Life.  I am responsible for all the material manifestations—Journeying and interpreting, deductions, language, proactive planning, traveling, finance, making and ACTION!  But, as in the case of the suitcase, I was VERY appreciative that spirits had my back!