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Most people little realise the history of Aboriginal Australia, partly because it cannot be seen and partly because they have little understanding. One of the arguments put forward by the early settlers was that the Aboriginals had not mapped Australia. They little realised that pathways did stretch throughout Australia. Europeans in Australia know these pathways today as ‘Dreaming tracks’ or ‘Songlines’. Aboriginals know them as the ‘Footprints of the Ancestors’ or the ‘Way of the Law’. The Aboriginals sang out the name of everything that crossed their path, birds, animals, plants, rocks and so in this way not only sang the world into existence but mapped Australia. As they walked through the country, they scattered a trail of words and musical notes along the lines of footprints that they created. These Dreaming tracks lay over the land as ‘ways’ of communication between the most far-flung tribes. When an Aboriginal moved into another tribe’s territory, he would learn the Songlines of that tribe and thus would be able to move further through the land.
Today, I’d like to think that in some small way, the Internet is doing the same thing and is creating its own pathways over which words rise up to cross the world. Linking humanity, building friendships and opening lines of communication so that we can better understand each other’s interests. In my imagination I see the trail of the lighted moonbeam, like a chain of wakening paths full of message, faith and eternal hope. Yes, a thousand dark nights might come, but the pathways will forever remain dauntless, voices of comfort, Songlines, calling brother to brother across the world affirming faith in land, nature and God. |
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