for my Yanyuwa friends
and two-way learning
On classroom walls we paste
this learning, monitoring
life cycles and health,
in advertisement of eco-calling:
we sit under mango trees, interviewing
family – Yanyuwa bardibardi
an li-Anthawirriyarra Sea Rangers – Maabayny
is Sea Turtle Dreaming, pursued
in the tracks of a turtle’s hauled flight,
and a glaring crystal luminescence
is gasped as air humid and heavy with salt:
each night we will sing
this turtle and hatchling tide – measuring,
tagging, collecting – in a surge
of sustainably flowing law:
the bardibardi conspire,
and recruit me to collect more kids, to press
reengagement’s claim
where self-sabotage grinds
the canvas of those already beaten
low:
camp morning and the chick chacks
flicker from bardibardi to me, while high
on worth I audition the ‘what ifs’
of environmental and medical risks
before the Bing Bong bus to the sea:
a mine’s bullying ‘no entry’ soon disturbs
a sickness site
and iron ore dust suffocates
containment lines
and we are silenced:
we bend round past this port
for a dirt track where the Sea Rangers wait
like popeyes
to ferry us to Carpentaria’s heart:
and soon we’re motoring along
the glass calm waters of the Gulf, dodging
reefs and sand bars with dolphins shooting
through our wake:
Yanyuwa rangers nostalgically
point to ancient Macassan camps and to the sailing
of dugout canoes while bardibardi whisper
into winds: us all forgotten
lil-bit, millad mob who come behind …
on arrival we hoot
up the beach and pitch
our swags under stands of casuarinas
and I again give my eco-spiel about rubbish
plastic ingestion:
waiting for a night’s
science monitoring, I high-wire walk
my team-building initiatives and sports
over a wet tropical paradise that has teeth –
reigning in exuberance to maintain
us whole:
when the tide turns
we fish off a rocky point, casting
for bait before the jerk
of coral trout and parrot fish; knifing
oyster off the rocks; the kids know law, cooking
our feast in a ground oven where it is killed:
and later, from out of the night’s churn
and frothing sea-foam, a pregnant
hauled awkwardness back-handing
dry weight in a nest of sand
and thick clear mucus – a soft-shelled
leathery hoard:
with our field work complete the last turtle turns
and the bardibardi chant, swaying
to the animal’s rhythm
as the kids take small dancing steps, their hands raised
waist high, palms upward, urging
the laboring turtle on –
bawuji barra …
wingkayarra wingkayarra kayikaji ka-wingkala barra …
yuwu wakara nyinku na-alanji wurrbi …
Glossary
Bardibardi: is Indigenous language (Yanyuwa/Garrawa) in the Gulf region of northern Australia for respectfully referring to older women.
Millad: is Kriol in the Gulf region of northern Australia for the first person plural pronoun: we, us, our.
Yanyuwa: one of four surviving Indigenous language groups in the Northern Territory’s Gulf of Carpentaria.
Bawuji barra …
Wingkayarra wingkayarra kayikaji ka-wingkala barra …
Yuwu wakara nyinku na-alanji wurrbi …
You have finished now …
Go, go, go quickly now …
Yes, you have found it – your true home …