Marion Kickett is a Noongar woman from the Noongar nation and Balardong language group. She has family connections to Wongatha and Yamatji countries. Born in the wheatbelt town of York, Western Australia she spent her early life on the York reserve and commenced school from here. Although Marion has dedicated her career to the fields of health and education, she is passionate about writing poetry and stories of a lived experience as a Balardong Noongar woman.
John Kinsella is the author of over forty books, the latest being Ghost of Myself (UQP). His many awards include the Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry, the John Bray Poetry Award, the Judith Wright Calanthe Award for Poetry and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award for Poetry (three times). His latest books are the three volumes of his collected poems, The Ascension of Sheep (UWAP, 2022), Harsh Hakea (UWAP, 2023) and Spirals (UWAP, 2024), and the story collection Beam of Light (Transit Lounge, 2024). He is a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Emeritus Professor of Literature and Environment at Curtin University, Western Australia. He lives on Ballardong Noongar land at ‘Jam Tree Gully’ in the Western Australian Wheatbelt. In 2007 he received the Christopher Brennan Award for lifetime achievement in poetry and in 2024 he was inducted into the Western Australian Writers Hall of Fame.
Walwayling
John:
This is a story if your people, Marion, a story that goes
to the core of being Ballardong Noongar in the shade and light
of the mountains, of being cradled in the valley where Bilya Googalar
shows the way to and from, where the herons gather and also walk and stalk
alone, where reflections glimmer with moments and observations
that stretch way back, so much further back than ‘settlement’.
Between the two mountains, Marion, I have always heard a conversation
I couldn’t translate, but I knew it in the shade and light, in the rush of birds
and along the trails of animals, I have seen it from the crest of Walwayling
looking across the valley to Wongborel, I have felt my body torn apart
by the damage done by those who would have their leisure
and economics over the sacredness of the mountain and its people.
This pain I have vicariously must be pain beyond pain for you,
This is a story of your people, Marion, a story that goes
to the core of being Ballardong Noongar in the shade and light
of the mountains, a story which is not mine to tell or even fully
understand, but I can listen and learn, I can hear the weather
of leaves and bark, the rush of storms over the granite,
I can listen and learn if you’re willing to tell, Marion.
Marion:
John my story is Ancient and so long ago. It’s hard to imagine that it was such a long time
ago.
It’s my dreaming not my dream time, but my dreaming is what it is. Because there is no
beginning and there is no end. It is continual please let it be said. It is yesterday, it’s today
and its tomorrow as well, it’s a time that we can learn from and borrow as well.
My dreaming is complex and may be hard for you to understand.
Just know that it is everything to do with this land. The birds, the trees and the vegetation
that grew, the animals, the waterways, the sun, and the moon. The stars that twinkle so
brightly above help tell our stories and our song lines that we love.
My ancestors made their home in the valley you speak of. A man and his wives their sons
and daughters too. With many young children who soon grew and grew. Together they all
worked hard to take care of this newfound land. Performing big ceremonies so they could
speak with the land. They spoke with the wind, fire, and dew. They informed the animals
and the bird life of just what they were going to do.
Together with the fire and the wind too, my ancestors began to burn the land this is true.
They dammed the water to make it work for them and cultivated the land growing
thousands of yams. They arranged wide open spaces to allow the kangaroos to graze and
left some bush thick, so the wallabies would stay.
My people were not just hunters and gathers John as most people think. They were the first
agriculturalist so think, think, think. Think about the journals of Dale and others and think
about their description of this land of ours. The land that you see today my ancestors
managed. They cultivated and refined the soil that is used today, to encourage the growth of
plants they ate yesterday.
Their practices of land management were repeated every year. They learnt from what they
did they knew where the animals hid. Yes, the animals were now where they wanted them
to be.
They grew the vegetation the animals liked knowing where it was but not out of sight. My
ancestors came to the valley as we know it and cultivated the land and then repeated it.
Over and over, they continued their practices. Developing their land and making use of it.
John:
Yes, Marion, I hear you, and I see and feel the evidence
of this in every step I take in the valley between the mountains.
I see this as I look back along the ‘timeline’, and look forward.
The failure of Dale and his ilk to understand what was happening
beneath their feet, to comprehend what they were looking at, to consider
the consequences of their ‘exploring’ and mapping. So many still
live in their imprint without understanding the footprint
of the land as spoken and lived by the land’s people
themselves. Or, they choose not to look, and to remake
in their own images. For settlers, the mountains were ‘lookouts’
for surveying, for capturing all they could see, claiming
as if they were the first ones, the only ones. These explorers
were the agents of dispossession, who would be used later
as the underwriters of that disgusting concept: ‘terra nullius’.
Yes, Marion, I hear you, and I see and feel the evidence
of this in every step I take in the valley between the mountains.
I can’t help but think that those who would use Waylaying
without respecting its people are much the same as Dale
and his ilk — wrecking the environment and not nurturing,
serving their own needs rather than the needs of the people.
It’s all selfishness and leisure and profiteering in ways
that goes against the speaking between people
and animals, between plants and animals and people.
Yes, time is different, but we all need to share understanding
of the nature of time and country and its people.
We near to hear your stories of the mountains
when — and where — you are willing to share,
and learn from them. We need to comprehend.
Marion:
Yes, John respect is not evident this is so clear. The felling of the trees their remains have all
disappeared. Destruction committed without fear as they smothered vegetation that was
near such terrible desecration made so clear. Practices on an ancient mountain such
individuals do not care.
But this is what I want to share, the stories of long ago let’s make that clear. Teach the
newcomers of the practices without any fear. Thousands of years caring for the land
thousands of years you must understand. So much destroyed I was in fear so much
destroyed I shed my tears as all was conducted within just one year.
This cannot be allowed such disrespect of my people the old and the young, yet it has
begun. Such people have begun destroying the environment for their own needs, yes, they
are defiant, defiant for their own needs. They are selfish and entitled which gets in the way,
of caring for country this I must say.
It’s their leisure and their pleasure that is what concerns them. Not my people the animals or
the plants which they can learn from. They have two ears not one but still they refuse to
succumb to the information given about the mountain and the land.
They say they have used this mountain so grand for over thirty years they have used this
land. I laugh in their face and think what a mistake cause they talk of over thirty years, but
this is no joke and yet they are stoked for their use of the land for over thirty years. I talk and
I talk, and I have talked for years but my words continue to fall on their deaf ears. I will
continue to fight and fight I will as there is much more to the mountains they are much more
than two hills.
So come with me John let us fight let us fight, we know there is more there is so much more
than just thirty years. We know the mountains both have been for thousands and thousands
of years. Let’s make this clear to one and all that our mountains mean more our mountains
mean so much more.
John:
As I struggled into sleep last night I fell into a state
that was neither awake nor asleep, neither dream nor memory.
I could see the mountain shaking and I climbed with you, Marion,
to investigate. It was a private music concert, a festival of ownership
sold to the crowd as a sharing, and there was not an elder
in the audience, and I was crying with you, Marion,
and you were crying with the mountain. An old-fashioned
colonialism still walks hand in hand with the new variety,
the new variety that tries to make it look smooth and ‘seeking permission’
on the surface, while behind the ‘scenery’ the old ways of dispossessing
flow like a streaming service. The pictures coming out of the darkness
dissolved and I was more awake than I’d ever been before.
Yes, let’s never give in, Marion, never. It’s your dreaming.
It’s complex. And not the dream-state
we all fall into trying to find a way
between waking and sleeping — your people
know country and know how to live with it,
how to sustain an agriculture and sharing.
Your knowledge unfolds through river and mountain,
goes into layers deeper than any plough
can overturn or even greedy miner can reach.
And I was awake in hope, Marion, hearing
the bats track out of the creases of Walwayling,
the mountain regaining its harmony.