In which Al answers questions

A couple of questions were asked about my recent posts so I thought I would attempt to answer them.When I posted about these Aboriginal hand prints at the Grampians, Kathleen Jones asked about the images “Do you suppose it was some kind of 'coming of age' ritual?”

Well that is hard to say, only the people who made the marks could say for sure. Aboriginal people had many levels of knowledge; some of which were available to anyone and others which could only be revealed to people initiated in the right way.
I remember meeting Aboriginal elders in northern NSW who talked about much of the ‘dreaming’ of their people which had been lost. It was lost because their parents and grandparents had refused to pass it on to even their own relatives because they had not been properly initiated in the old ways.

However given that the hand prints were all of young people ‘coming of age’ was probably part of the story. But it was most likely more complex, the platform the shelter sits above has an amazing view far out into the northern plains. Any ceremony here was likely to have been about the ‘country’ that the young people belonged to as much as about them.

Now a little more ‘down to earth’
Susan Flett Swiderski asked of my last post “I take it you have a LOT of waterfalls in your area?”This is a question that is also a little complex. The simplest way to put it is that depends on your frame of reference.

Victoria, the state I live in, is Australia’s second smallest. It is about the size of Minnesota in the USA or about the same size as the United Kingdom

The waterfalls I have posted in the past few months are in an area 473km (295 miles) across. To a Victorian that seems like a huge space but to a Queenslander like me it seems a relatively short distance. Queensland our second largest state is bigger than Alaska (or in European terms bigger than France, Germany, Spain and Italy put together).

Now as a reward for making you sit through all that some piccies of Trentham Falls that I took on Sunday.I spent a couple of hours shooting the falls from many angles. From almost level with the top of the 82 metre (270 ft) falls
to the river bed at the base. That was quite a climb on the way back up!

Young People

I can’t believe it was Saturday I posted last.

It has been a mad week at work. I seem to be home late almost every night and hit the sack soon after.

Still even long days give me a couple of hours to work on my WIP. I have read it all through a couple of times an am still shuffling sections around and writing bits and pieces to link those sections.

So I guess I’ve sort of begun working on a second draft, but it really doesn’t feel like it.

Now for something different I’m going to share some more piccies from our second day at the Grampians.

In the afternoon we headed towards another spot about ten kilometers (6 miles) from the Ngamdjidj rock shelter.

It was still fairly early so I paused to photograph these odd flower buds

before Deb and I began climbing the side of this rocky hill.

High on the flanks of the hill under a rock ledge very like this

is the Gulgurn Manja Aboriginal rock shelter.

In the shelter is more rock art.
Pictures of emu footprints

Seemingly abstract symbols

And what I think makes this place most special.

For Gulgurn Manja means “hands of the young people” in the local Aboriginal language.

The rock surface is covered with hand prints made by children between the ages of 8 and 12 over many generations.

It is like these young people have left part of themselves in the landscape.

I found it very magical.