Part 1
- Introduction
- Diary / Letter transcript: April 11, 1973
Part 2
- Brief History: Cultural Awakening
Part 3
- Never Forgotten - my memories
Part 1
Introduction
Nimbin Aquarius Festival - 12 - 21 May 1973
At that time I was known as Margaret Sullivan, serving as "Information Officer"
and elected to the Nimbin Progress Association following the festival.
(More details in my 1993 20th anniversary letter.)
Introduction to my April 11, 1973 Diary Transcript - (scanned letter pdf) -
from a collection of un-mailed letters written during the lead-up to the festival.
This Diary entry 'letter' was written late in the evening of Wednesday, 11 April, 1973 (after midnight into Thursday am), following our weekly Wednesday evening general meeting where we reported on the 'expedition' led by Graeme Dunstan, to the Aboriginal Reserve, aka Mission or Settlement, at Woodenbong, about 90km north-west of Nimbin, to speak with the elders about rumours of a curse on the Rainbow Region. One thing not mentioned in my diary, which I have never forgotten, was my surprise to see that the interior walls of the well-constructed settlement houses were removed for open-plan living, which I later learned was a trend across other Settlements.
Page I confirms the Friday 13, April 1973 launch of the Aquarius Magik Caravan, founded by the legendary "Aquarian Songman" Paul Joseph (obituary): A musical "happening" featuring a great range of talents - singers, musicians, actors, puppeteers, touring the towns around Nimbin, from Casino to Byron Bay, during the lead-up to the festival.
Paul Joseph introduced what became our anthem and closing chorus: an excerpt from A Very Cellular Song, by Mike Heron, Tk 4, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter, 1968, The Incredible String Band.
May the longtime sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on/home
Australia's first Welcome to Country
Pages 2 - 4 describe our journey to the closest Aboriginal settlement,
and Australia's first Welcome to Country ceremony, at Nimbin, NSW, May 1973
Two cars: Richard Neville and Graeme Dunstan rode together.
I rode with Paul Joseph (I can't remember who rode in the back seat).
Around that time, Vianne (Vi) Tourle took a term off her final year Economics studies at the University of New England, Armidale, to work on the Festival production. Her insights on rural economics played a key role in choosing the Rainbow Region following the collapse of the local dairy and timber industries.
This trip, an official Aquarius Festival 'overture' in response to rumours of 'a curse' across the Rainbow Region, was part of the NUAUS policy of respectful acknowledgement for indigenous communities.
Paul Joseph thought the Rainbow Region ‘curse’ related specifically to Nimbin, being a male-only indigenous ritual area, while Graeme Dunstan thought it was more severe i.e. a curse on the entire Rainbow Region and nothing white people did there could prosper, exemplified by the monopolisation that led to the failure of the dairy industry.
Thankfully, both interpretations were disproven.
The 'indigenous ritual' that followed in Nimbin, just before the festival, which ‘everyone’ attended, was a symbolic gesture of diplomatic respect for the descendants of the ‘ancient’ people of the area.
The environment movement is a great source of cultural unification - around the world!
Map source
Diary / Letter Transcript
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Page 1
Wednesday, April 11, 1973
After a few days of not writing, there’s so much to tell.
The past few days have been wonderful.
The Aquarius Magik Caravan “Group” is really together now.
We had a meeting Monday evening and decided to contribute worthwhile songs.
Soo! everyone who had a song of value to each other, SANG. It was so wonderful - so happy.
We really came together for the first time.
We’ve all got our own little things to contribute - a complete puppet show - acrobatics and a variety of music. Plus we’ve all decided to do group songs - i.e. “50s type Gospel - Rock & Country & other such as children’s and singalong. Absolutely marvellous!
Page 2
Anyway, our first show will be tomorrow night and we all feel that we will be happy enough to make others happy.
Today I went (with Graham. D. and a few others (Richard Neville inclusive) to an Aboriginal reservation about 80 miles or so from here.
Our motive was to clarify the rumour that this area was cursed by them some years ago.
Apparently they had a system of policing, or discouraging, or punishing wrong doers in the very old days which was simply to go out and “Sing Them” - make it public by singing about it.
The people used to complain and condemn (curse) people or things or creatures that disturbed them.
Anyway, apparently what ever happened was of that nature and not severe or permanent.
Page 3
But our silly interpreters are unsure of the intentions of these people and interpret these things rather superstitiously, I must say.
One thing which really affected me was the style of living these people succumbed to.
Their structures were really adequate and quite attractive. But the children are going to the ‘White Man’s’ school - therefore, are not learning in their old tradition. The teenagers aren’t even learning - just sitting around playing 45s & drinking beer. Not at all interested in History. The Elders are getting too old to dance and too used to an un-stimulating way of life and non-interest from the Youngers, so they’re carrying their culture to the grave.
Page 4
Unfortunately the younger ones don’t have a cultural replacement for the old. They’re supported by the government and discouraged from entering the ‘White Society’ or from being Creative themselves (mainly because they have no leaders). What a dilemma!
Also, tonight we determined the borders of our Community.
Some 60 people are now a family. We recognise each other as a Tribe or unit, and will continue to work together as a self-supporting community. Starting with Arts & Crafts and the Aquarius Magik Caravan. Plus, of course, our individual ‘other’ means.
What a strong sense of unity & purpose has come in this past week!
Part 2
Brief History: Cultural Awakening
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“We don’t accept this idea of British sovereignty because it’s unjust. Now we’re proposing a better way to do things and we’ll tell you through song. We’ll tell you through dance. We’ll tell you through oratory. We’ll take you to court. Then we’ll tell you again through song, and dance, and oratory. It’s really a modern epic of Australian history.” – Professor Marcia Langton, ABC Radio, 2 Nov. 2012
Index:
1959 - 1963: "Walkabout" to Cultural Awakening
- 1964: AIATSIS ACT of 1964
- 1967: Referendum on Indigenous Constitutional Recognition
- 1967: “This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius"
- 1970: The Myth of Equality, Tom Roper
- 1971: First "Aquarius Festival" at ANU
- 1972: It's Time! The Labor Party wins on a slogan!
- 1973: Nimbin: The second NUAUS Aquarius Festival, 12 - 21 May 1973,
Following the Aquarius Festival 40th anniversary: 2013
- 2014: Selected academic reports from the Journal of Media and Culture
- 2018: Reminder: from Kenneth James Newcombe, AUS President, 1973
- 2023:
Australian Geographic - In pictures: Remembering Aquarius
1959
"Walkabout" to Cultural Awakening
How Indigenous Rites of Passage into Manhood became an 'eye-opener' for "White Australians":
The popular story, "The Children" (London, 1959), by English journalist D. G. Payne, published under a pseudonym, was re-released by Penguin Australia under the title "Walkabout" in 1963 and, again, in 1973. (Read Chapter One & Two HERE)
The 1971 film, Walkabout took up the same story: two American children survived a plane crash in the desert and were saved by a boy on "walkabout" - played by legendary Northern Territory Yolngu First Nations actor David Gulpill (1953-2021).
Memorising - a 'rite of passage' before 'going walkabout'
Boys, age 10 to 16, prepared for their 'rite of passage' as a 'journey into manhood' by memorising a song that mapped their chosen route, describing geographic terrains, with multi-language verses identifying neighbouring tribal border lands, so that when they were heard, they were welcomed, rather than feared.
1960s
Passionate pleas for justice.
We want hope, not racialism,
Brotherhood, not ostracism,
Black advance, not white ascendance:
Make us equals, not dependants. ... Kath Walker aka Oodgeroo Noonuccal
During the 1960s international ‘awakening’ to the need for social and political change, for the first time, the Aboriginal Australian poet Kath Walker (1920-1993), as she was known then, was recognised worldwide as a brave new voice calling for understanding and peace.
But I'll tell instead of brave and fine
when lives of black and white entwine.
And men in brotherhood combine,
this would I tell you, son of mine. ... Kath Walker aka Oodgeroo Noonuccal
1962
Digital Classroom
In a snapshot
For much of Australia’s political history, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people couldn’t vote in state or federal elections. In 1962 the Australian Parliament passed a landmark Act to give all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections. But it was not until 1984 that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were finally treated like other voters and required to enrol and vote in elections
DEFINING MOMENTS
From the first federal electoral Act in 1902 to 1965, when the last state changed its law, tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were subject to regulations which prohibited them from voting at federal and state elections.
1964
The AIATSIS Act of 1964
In 1964, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), was founded as an independent Australian Government statutory authority.
1967
Referendum on Indigenous Constitutional Recognition
'Flora & Fauna' - a myth, propounded by many.
Until The 1967 Referendum Indigenous Australians were written into the Australian Constitution as 'Flora & Fauna' - to be ‘collected & controlled’.
Updates:
1989: The AIATSIS Act (1989) mandates AIATSIS to provide leadership in the field of ethics and protocols for research related to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and collections.
2020:
In October 2020 AIATSIS published the Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research.
Download documents in pdf format HERE
View Recent Noteworthy Legislation HERE
Australian anthropologist, William E. H. Stanner (1905-1982) worked extensively with Indigenous Australians. "Stanner was an influential figure prior to the successful 1967 referendum on Aboriginal affairs."
- Windschuttle, Keith (May 2009), Bill Stanner and the end of Aboriginal high culture, Quadrant.
W.E.H. Stanner's words changed Australia. Without condescension and without sentimentality, in essays such as 'The Dreaming' Stanner conveyed the richness and uniqueness of Aboriginal culture. In his Boyer Lectures he exposed a 'cult of forgetfulness practised on a national scale,' regarding the fate of the Aborigines, for which he coined the phrase 'the great Australian silence'. …
The Dreaming & Other Essays (1953), W. E. H. Stanner
Excerpts:
“The ideas of absolute extinction and of indestructible soul or spirit may both be found in the belief system.” p. 55
…
The Australian Aboriginal’ outlook on the universe and man is shaped by a remarkable conception, which Spencer and Gillen immortalised as ‘the dream time’ … I prefer to call it what many Aborigines cal it in English: The Dreaming, or just, Dreaming.
A central meaning of The Dreaming is that a sacred, heroic time long ago when man and nature came to be as they are; but neither ‘time’ nor ‘history’ as we understand them is involved in this meaning. I have never been able to discover any Aboriginal word for time as an abstract concept. And the sense of ‘history’ is wholly alien here. We shall not understand The Dreaming fully except as a complex of meanings. A black fellow man call his totem, or the place from which his spirit came, his Dreaming. He may also explain the existence of a custom, or law of life, as causally due to The Dreaming.” “The ideas of absolute extinction and of indestructible soul or spirit may both be found in the belief system.” p. 57
1967
“This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius"
- Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical, 1967, Off-Broadway.
Hair broke box-office records across Australia, June 1969 to March, 1973.
The Age of Aquarius represented
cultural awakening: peace, equality, generosity, creativity, environment and health awareness. (Wikipedia)
1970
The Myth of Equality, Tom Roper, 1970
National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS)
- Tom Roper bio: Wikipedia
- Introduction (pdf):
Excerpt: “For many years the National Union of Australian University Students has been campaigning for improvements in Australian education. … Over the last three years NUAUS has devoted much of its energies to publishing the plight of disadvantaged groups in the Australian community. Abschol, our Aboriginal Affairs Department, has been strengthened and we have just set up a Social Action portfolio…. As part of our 1969 campaign we produced an eighty one page set of fact sheets on inequalities…This book is intended to provide the facts. It will also argue the case for specific reforms...” - Tom Roper, July, 1970
1971
The National Union of Australian University Students (NUAUS), now the Australian Union of Students, launched the first "Aquarius Festival" at ANU: "a site for politics and protest as much as it was for performance and entertainment." - NFSA
1972
"I do not for a moment believe that we should set limits on what we can achieve together, for our country, our people, our future."
- Gough Whitlam, 13 Nov. 1972 https://www.whitlam.org/
It's Time!
The Labor Party wins on a slogan!
By early 1972, Labor was leading in the polls.
"Unemployment was at a ten-year peak and inflation had reached its highest rate since the 1950s when Labor Party Leader Gough Whitlam (1916-2014) pledged free public education, free universal health insurance, free dental care for students, renovation of aging urban infrastructure, and an end to conscription."
(Additional notes: 1972 Election, Part 6).
1973
Nimbin: The second NUAUS Aquarius Festival, 12 - 21 May 1973, held in the small rural NSW town of Nimbin: A gathering of gifted people, setting out to create the most inspiring festival the world has ever known, on the theme of ‘sustainability’ and 'survival'; The "Rainbow Region" became the meeting point for Bundjalung people, students, and agricultural sector workers, especially dairy farmers struggling under the new co-op regulations that had put so many out of business.
Update: 2018
Nimbin "Aquarius Festival" 50th anniversary celebrations:
AUS President, 1973, Kenneth James Newcombe, PhD.
- Studied Energy Use, Environment and Human Health at The Australian National University: Science majors, leading to 1972-1975 ANU Doctorate:
"Energy and Natural Resources Management and Health Nexus"
- Went to Geelong High School
- Lives in Bethesda, Maryland
Co-Founder & Chairman, non-profit group, Ener-G-Africa
CEO and Co-Founder at C-Quest Capital
Former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
Former Vice Chairman and Head of Origination at Climate Change Capital
Former Energy Specialist moving to Senior Manager and Head of Carbon Finance over 24 year career at World Bank
Joined Facebook, July 2008
My personal correspondence with Ken Newvombe, via email, Nov. 9, 2018
... As far as the Nimbin Festival is concerned, commitment to the Festival was made with my full support as President of the Australian union of Students at the time of its planning and allocation of budget.
The festival was controversial inside AUS at the time and it took a lot of lobbying inside the Annual meetings to commit to its undertaking as an evolution of the series of annual or biennial Aquarius festivals AUS, as NUAUS had launched many years before. These were previously on selected University Campuses whereas the radical notion of something of this scale in a Greenfields location and with such a strong, almost revolutionary counter culture focus was a huge decision for AUS.
Subsequently, I traveled with Johnny Allen and Graeme Dunston throughout the Northern New South Wales region to shortlisted sites, leading to the selection of Nimbin, and then the agreement of town leaders to accommodate the festival.
As for me, here’s a 200 word summary of key career highlights:
Ken Newcombe obtained his doctorate in Human Ecology, ANU John Curtin School of Medical Research, on Energy-Environment-Health nexus, participating in the first study of the Ecology of a City, Hong Kong. He went on set up the energy planning administration in PNG, achieve approval of the first renewable energy policy in a developing country, and restore stable power supply for the PNG electric power utility as its CEO. He joined the World Bank as an energy specialist in 1982, and in 1990 was part of team that designed and established the Global Environment Facility for which he was the first Chief Investment Officer. Subsequently he conceived and instigated the global trade in Greenhouse gas emissions reductions as a means of managing change, launching the first global carbon fund, the Prototype Carbon Fund, and raising US$2 billion to pioneer the global market. After leaving the World Bank, Ken set up C-Quest Capital which is now the largest supplier of clean efficient cookstoves to the rural poor in the least developed countries worldwide.
Hope this helps. You have my email and my company web site is www.cquestcapital.com
Best
Ken |
2013
preparing for The Aquarius Festival 40th anniversary
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2012
Aquarius – 40 years on
IT has been almost 40 years since the Aquarius Festival transformed the village of Nimbin from an agricultural community to Australia's counter-culture capital.
By Mel Mcmillan
October 29, 2012 The Daily Telegraph, Lismore, NSW
Features a photograph of Rhonda Allis, president of the Aquarian archive at the Library of Southern Cross University in Lismore, Dr Rob Garbutt, Jessica Schultz, SCU student and Dr Jo Kijas. Other photos are of the Aquarian archive at the Library of Southern Cross University.
Excerpt:
A NEW community history project is seeking new perspectives on the 1973 Aquarius Festival.
Students from Southern Cross University are asking: What did Nimbin think it was gaining and what did it actually get?
Lecturer in Cultural Studies Rob Garbutt said the project was particularly interested in hearing from anyone who attended a meeting in Nimbin in January 1973 where the town voted to support the Australian Union of Students proposal to hold the festival. ...
2014
After the Party!
Selected academic reports from the Journal of Media and Culture
1. Feature: Aquarius and Beyond: Thinking through the Counterculture,
by
Rob Garbutt, Southern Cross University, Vol. 17/ 6 (2014): counterculture
Excerpt: What does counterculture do? This is the question we asked ourselves repeatedly in curating this issue for M/C Journal.
While incredible examples of countercultural lives—collective and individual—were described in articles we received, what we have tried to do is bring together research on how counterculture is both theorised and practised in local and international contexts.
At the heart of this issue is a two-day conference in May 2013 titled “Aquarius and Beyond: 40 years on…” (Southern Cross University) that marked the 40th anniversary of the 1973 Nimbin Aquarius Festival, held in the northern NSW village of Nimbin. The Festival was one of, if not the, defining countercultural event in Australia. The editors met at the 2013 conference and hatched the countercultural plan to continue working together on publishing interdisciplinary scholarship on the subject. The project grew to encompass wider interpretations of the counterculture.
3. Thesis: Black Fellas and Rainbow Fellas: Convergence of Cultures at the Aquarius Arts and Lifestyle Festival, Nimbin, 1973, (2014), Alethea Scantlebury (BA (Psych), DipEd) Honours thesis in History through Monash University. This article is a summary of that work. "As the new counterculture developed, its progression from urban to rural settings was driven by philosophies imbued with a desire to reconnect with and protect the natural world while simultaneously rejecting the dominant conservative order."
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2023
Following the 50th anniversary:
Introduction
It’s 50 years since the dying dairy town of Nimbin found new life as the counter-culture capital of Australia. We look back through the eyes of three photographers who were there.
The 10-day festival in Nimbin in 1973 is remembered by many who attended as a critical turning point in their lives, and a flashpoint of deep cultural reflection and communion, which shifted mindsets and also permeated wider society. Unlike the larger festivals such as Woodstock in the USA and Australian music festivals that were taking off in the early ’70s, Aquarius was less about music and more a serious attempt at living sustainably.
While Aquarius drew a smaller crowd than other festivals of the era it had a lasting legacy in terms of social change. Land was cheap and many festival goers never returned to their homes, settling instead across the Northern Rivers, which afterwards became known as the Rainbow Region. They formed hamlets and collectives, driving interest in new ways of shared alternative living across Australia.
It was the first festival known to invite traditional owners, the Bundjalung people, and to open with a Welcome to Country. The festival was ahead of its time in other ways too. Organisers secured funding for cable TV coverage, and TV monitors were set up in Nimbin shopfronts showing recordings from each day. And a dedicated transport system connected the festival with places as far as Western Australia, including a special Aquarius train, The Good Times Express, that linked Melbourne and Sydney to Lismore. Local farm and mill workers joined hippies for events such as a tug-o-war in a Festival Sports Day, new businesses opened in derelict Nimbin stores, and performance troupes such as Magik Caravan toured the local area to promote good will. ...more
Part 3
Never Forgotten
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On sharing significant long-term memories - Maireid Sullivan, March 2023
"To come together in every experience;
to know the power and the glow of at-one-ment.
That is our goal—to be united in the centre of our being in love." - Epiphany, Maireid Sullivan, Melbourne, 1972
These words 'dawned' on me at 6am one morning, in February 1972. They became my muse, drawing me into contemplating the meaning of at-one-ment (not atonement) —of compassion, forgiveness, harmony, love, collaboration, and a level of intuition that I wanted to achieve in my normal waking life. I decided that the best way to express myself more intuitively would be to travel: To let intuition lead me on a ‘vision quest’ where I could live more spontaneously and truthfully; Following my arrival in Australia, I became an unaccompanied traditional Irish singer, and felt welcomed everywhere.
Celebrating my memories of the Nimbin Aquarius Festival, 1973:
Thinking back, over 50 years, I have a very personal interest in this history.
I still celebrate my good fortune in connection with so many "arts activists" during the lead up to the festival: The creative genius of so many 'significant others' contributed so wisely to 'cooperative' community developments around Nimbin and across Northern Rivers' Rainbow Region, before and after the festival. Each has a story to tell - celebrating the wonder that inspires a long life of creative collaborations with people who are never forgotten!
It all began for me while I was touring Australia:
Immediately after my Queensland University "Orientation week" concert, in February 1973, UQ Student Union President Grahame Cathcart invited me to perform for the locals at the Nimbin Town Hall. We traveled to Nimbin in his famous Yellow Truck.
As a traditional Irish singer, raised in rural Southwest Ireland, followed by high school/college years in San Francisco, being welcomed by farmers and students was breathtaking, and I loved the intention of the festival, so I stayed on. Shortly afterwards, Johnny Allen, Director of both the Aquarius Festival and the Aquarius Foundation of the Australian Union of Students, asked me to assume the role of "Information Officer" which gave me the 'right' to talk to everyone. One of my ‘jobs’ was to visit the local people, in their homes, to explain the concept of the festival. Needless to say, the theme of “Survival” was easy to explain to the predominantly dairy farming community. On weekends, visitors needed orientation - especially reporters, as well as the students from Sydney and Brisbane who flocked in each weekend to help with infrastructure building over the three months leading up to the festival. In this idyllic setting, I discovered I could talk to anyone when I had a clearly defined purpose, and a passion for that purpose guaranteed that I would not be intimidated by strangers, which led to inspired conversations and long-standing friendships.
I especially love remembering the post-festival acknowledgement - elected to two roles on the Nimbin Progress Association, led by the Chairman and President Fred Cullen: Public Relations Representative, and co-Publicity Representative with Terry McGee, by an enthusiastic standing-room-only gathering, mainly locals, obviously wanting to be sure their town wasn't taken over completely by 'friendly' invaders.
- 1973: With my daughter, Brigette, on 'the hill' at Nimbin before it became a campground. (photographer unknown)
 After Nimbin
1974 Passport photo
- 1974/75: Followed the 'Aussie trail' to Thailand: Resident English tutor to a branch of the Thai royal family while studying Buddhist history- "Expect change".
- 1975/76: Returned to Ireland: one year as an EU current affairs researcher
Thailand 1975
Nimbin 1976
- 1976: Returned to Nimbin - and concerts with many wonderful musicians!
Rehearsal: Maireid Sullivan, Ruth Miller, Phillip Levy, David Hallett
Polaroid photo (photographer unknown) 
Late 1976:
Returned to Melbourne to enrol Brigette in Melb. Rudolf Steiner School.
- 1977: Convenor for over fifty live-in workshops for LaTrobe University Student Union Environmental Awareness Week, 18th to 24th July 1977:
"Evolutionary Cul De Sac: ways out" co-produced by Friends of the Earth and Down To Earth. (Paul Joseph led Nimbin history workshop)
- 1979: Part-time primary and secondary schools dance and singing teacher at Steiner school while raising daughter and three step-children.
- 1984:
Six years - "Cultural Tourism" arts marketing consultant/publicist.
- 1990:
Became a "Celtophile" - researching ancient Celtic culture.
- 1992: Brigette graduated from Melbourne University and I returned to music full time: songs, poems, essays, inspired by "a new world paradigm"
- 1994: Recorded my first CD, "Dancer"- slipstreaming on the "Celtic music wave"
- 1995: Launched maireid.com with encouragement and help from friends.
~
Links:
Music, poetry, essays: Maireid.com
Arts Action: GlobalArtsCollective.org
Multimedia Production: LyrebirdMedia.com
Music Journal: Alternate Music Press
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maireid.sullivan
Bandcamp: https://maireidsullivan.bandcamp.com
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On righting wrongs: from my point of view -
Maireid Sullivan
April 2023
Analysing "wrong doings" by British colonial 'forced' resettlement:
Plenty of researchers have proven that ancient 'indigenous traditions' around the world recognised land as common property - to be occupied respectfully, but never 'privatised for profit'. In addition, European Common Laws handed down across Pre-Roman Empire Irish/Celtic cultures shared a traditional approach to dealing with wrong-doing by a member of a community or tribe who hurt or offended a member of another family/tribe: The family must 'sing them out' publicly until they make reparations. As a "traditional" Irish singer and Celtophile, the fact that "traditional" Australian people also "Sing them out" captured my attention.
As a student of late 1800s US history at San Francisco State, I was astonished to discover the impacts of British colonialism on "Indigenous" Irish, American, African, and Australian cultures. The fact that "Indigenous" Chinese 'out-smarted' Western imperialists is a major cultural lesson.
An important insight came with discovery of Ireland's first Professor of Poetry, John Montague (1929-2016), The Slow Dance (1975) —an especially moving series of prose poems culminating with a single man standing on the earth in the full force of nature’s elements —a man so immersed in the drama of nature that "no-one was meant to watch, least of all himself". With a flash of insight, those words represented the ultimate vision of ‘unconsciousness’ —as pre-consciousness. It made sense to imagine that with the culmination of evolution, "Everyone is meant to watch, most of all ourselves."
Into the 1980s
Popular debate around "multicultural" heritage followed the 1980 passing of the Australian Bicentennial Authority ACT (ABA), with plans for the 1988 Australian Bi-centenary, celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Sydney in 1788.
"The event triggered debate on Australian national identity, Indigenous rights, historical interpretation and multiculturalism. The event was widely viewed as controversial.[9] Planning for the event raised issues of national identity and historical interpretation.[10] Some wanted to remember the colonisation as an invasion, while others wanted it to focus on historical re-enactments. - Wikipedia
During the 1980s, Melbourne celebrated "multiculturalism" with the revival of Marvellous Melbourne, slipstreaming on Cultural Tourism, (Craik, 1997) aka "cultural-economic activity", inspired by post-industrial Seattle and Pennsylvania.
The Cultural Tourism agenda was designed to attract international investment and up-market tourism by focusing on celebrating the performing and visual arts. Before Glasgow, Scotland rose from post-industrial poverty to European Capital of Culture, 1990, their Director visited Melbourne City Council's Cultural Tourism Committee, in the midst of the 1987 economic 'Crash', to show how focus on Glasgow's arts history profile enlivened the entire community, while Ireland rose from historic poverty on the international Celtic music wave (Sullivan, 1995).
Inspired by Papunya Tula Settlement artists
When the Victorian Arts Centre's Theatre building opened in 1984, the Playhouse Theatre foyer walls were covered, from floor to ceiling, with Victorian Tapestry Workshop tapestries, featuring Aboriginal designs based on the paintings of the outback Papunya Tula settlement artists, following the work of their school teacher, Geoffrey Bardon. Suddenly, Aboriginal art forms, using the pointillist "dot painting" technique, awakened international excitement and curiosity. "This was the beginning of the Western Desert art movement that has become one of Australia’s most recognisable art forms" - National Museum of Australia
"The Early Influence of Geoffrey Bardon on Aboriginal Art"
Papunya and Geoffrey Bardon
Excerpt:
If you are new to aboriginal art you may not have heard the story about Papunya and Geoffrey Bardon. This is a powerful story about a courageous displaced people and a man who worked against enormous pressure to bring their culture out into Western view. ...
This story starts in an Australian outback government town of Papunya. It was home to many different groups of desert aboriginal people, including Pintupi, Luritja, Walpiri, Arrernte, and Anmatyerre, who’d been moved there in the late 1960s under a government policy of assimilation.
The town had no cultural significance for the people of these different language groups. Many of them had, up until this time, lived on their own country with their own language and followed their traditional ways. They all had rich story telling traditions that related to their ancestral country. Now they found themselves separated from the very country that had such significance for them. It must have been a truly devastating time.
It’s The Old People Who Know
In 1971 Geoffrey Bardon came to Papunya as a school teacher.
He asked young school children to paint things that related to their world, not to the western ways. Eventually the older men who spoke some English came to him and said, “Why are you asking the young people? It’s the old people who know.”
A group of men started telling very significant stories. This meant they had to work out which aspects of those stories could be told and which parts had to be withheld from public view... >>>more
Celebrating International indigenous arts
British travel writer Bruce Chatwin's "Songlines" (1987) was considered controversial at the time of publication. Chatwin has since received high praise for his tireless efforts.
- New York Times book review:
"his bravest work yet... No one will put it down unmoved."
- Complete book scanned in PDF format here:
'A song', he said, 'was both a map and direction-finder.
Providing you knew the song, you could always find your way across country.'
...
‘So the land', I said, 'must first exist as a concept in the mind?
Then it must be sung? Only then can it be said to exist?'
'True.'
'In Other words, "to exist" is "to be perceived"?'
'Yes.'
1990s
“The ideas of absolute extinction and of indestructible soul or spirit may both be found in the belief system.”
- W.E.H.Stanner, 1953) The Dreaming & Other Essays, p. 55
(See Google Books scan)
Dreaming the Dreaming
Delving into traditional Australian "Aboriginal" cultural heritage inspired my quest for deeper insight on the archetypal Bronze Age Celtic heroes - going back to 3K BCE.
Question: If I can understand the concept of the DREAMTIME, is there an equivalent in my own ancient Celtic history?
Searching for signs of 'intelligence' in ancient "Celtic" heritage, the journey opened up a vast source of knowledge favouring independent thinking:
The core concept of "personal sovereignty" represents the right to protect one's personal integrity.
From 1990, an ongoing series of 'musings', poetry and songs began with this song, written over midnight on New Years Eve 1991/92:
Dreaming the Dreaming
Recall what you knew
when you were nursed in the sea of beginning.
Relive the deep magic from beyond the first dawn.
Wrap yourself in the cloak of ancient memory.
Reveal the dreaming of old.
Dreaming the Dreaming.
Wake to the dreaming.
Wake to the dreaming of old.
Weave the knot of the future.
Draw your strength from the Draighean Tree*.
Play in the canopy of nature,
and bathe in the wide surging sea.
Dreaming the Dreaming.
Wake to the dreaming.
Wake to the dreaming of old.
(*Life force: Blackthorn tree - magic wand)
Copyright 1992 Maireid Sullivan >>>more
During my quest, one resounding question came to light:
What happened to the concept of Personal Sovereignty?
What happened to the sovereignty of those cultures and the intrinsic laws formed by ancient peoples bound to their lands, which had thrived on the Western rim of Europe before the first incursions of the Roman Empire?
It's a riveting history -the slow erosion of the concept of The Commons over many centuries of European dynastic religio-political warfare leading to minutely complex laws around land ownership "in perpetuity".
We are more people on the planet than ever before, part of a living, beautiful, passionate world. More people to hear inner voices of love calling out to kindred spirits - people who have not forgotten where we came from and with whom we go - all hand in hand - across space and time.
Summaries of key learnings:
From ...
-
1995, Celtic Music for a New World Paradigm
- 1996, The Hidden People - the spirit of communication and 'the craic'
to ...
- 2017, Cultural Resiliance: Catastrophes as turning points in the arts
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Back to top
Go to -: Australian Early Settlement - timeline references.
Go to -: Australian Tax System - Past and Future
Go to -: Solutions, Part 1, Australia - how economic 'equality' can be achieved.
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