It is my great pleasure to welcome Ross William to the Sense-making in a Changing World show. Ross, who’s traditional name is ‘Tummulba’ means lightning, is a proud Bindal person of Townsville to Burdekin regions (on his father’s side). Bindal people are star people. On his mother’s side he is connected to the Islands and peoples of Erub and Mer Islands of the Torres Straits. He is part of two indigenous led initiatives here in Australia – Future Dreaming Australia and Regenerative Songlines Australia.
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Morag’s 4 part introduction to permaculture video series.
I loved talking with Ross and so grateful for how generous he was in helping us to understand indigenous land management practices and perspectives and ways of restoring and regenerating Australian ecosystems and ways of knowing too. We talk about regeneration, governance models, Australian food, dance, energy, the stars, dark matter, the unseen, water, climate change, continuing semi-subsistence lifestyles of remote indigenous communities.
He describes songlines too – the stories of country, ways of sharing and connecting knowledge for survival and how the first law for everything was always the environment.
I was really thrilled to hear him say “Permaculture is a modern version of the way we watched and looked after land, and how the land provided”.
Grab your notebook and listen in. So much richness here.
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Read the full transcript here.
Morag Gamble: Welcome to the Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble, permaculture educator, and global ambassador, filmmaker, eco villager, food forester, mother, practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it’s been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life, we first need to shift our thinking. The way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever and even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on, so our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection? What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I’ll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we’ll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking, community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can’t wait to share these conversations with you.
Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face. I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I’ve seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what’s happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I’ve created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women’s self help groups in the Global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you’d like to find more about permaculture, I’ve created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We’d love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly, and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I’d also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I meet and speak with you today, the Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging.
This week on Sense-Making in a Changing World, I’m yarning with Ross Williams. Ross is a proud Bindal person of the region in North Australia around Townsville to the Burdekin on his father’s side and on his mother’s side, he’s connected to the peoples of the Erub and Mer islands of the Torres Straits. His indigenous name is Timmulba meaning lightning. Ross has over 40 years working with traditional owner groups, elders leaders, government groups, non-government groups, environmental, social, cultural, economic, and planning groups. He’s facilitated the statewide first nations futures program for the Great Barrier Reef he’s been involved in environmental strains, reconciliation action plan, and he’s co-leading Future Dreaming Australia with professor Mary Graham and Michelle Maloney, and Ross and I are part of a group called Regenerative Songlines Australia, which is an indigenous-led nationwide network here in Australia, connecting regenerative projects and practitioners. And when I started to hear about the work that Ross has been doing, I was so incredibly inspired. And so I’m delighted that he joined me today on this podcast. He’s a humble and gentle man and deeply inspiring. And I hope you enjoy this conversation just as much as I did. And I’m really hoping that we can keep these conversations going. Thanks for being here today.
So thank you so much for joining me on the show today, Ross, it’s an absolute delight to have you here. We were chatting the other day, at the AELA house. What is it? Australia Earth Laws Alliance house in Brisbane about redesigning the gardens there. But I invited you onto the show after hearing you speak at the launch of the Regenerative Songlines Australia event, an organization that we’re both part of, there were so many things that you said there that just, I wanted to learn so much more about, and I know that so many people who are listening to this show will just be fascinated about you were talking about things about, you know, song lines and music and then the unseeing and unlearning. And when I read your bio, you were talking about sharing with people to deepen understanding about first nations knowledge through a first nations lens using first nations narratives. And I would just love to spend hours talking to you about this. There’s so much, so much to learn. But maybe we could just start with like a little bit about where you’re from and where’s your country and where you are situated now too.
Timmulba: Yeah, thanks, Morag. Yeah, my name’s Ross Williams and obviously, cause you introduced me as that, but my traditional name is Timmulba, it means lightning. My mom is from the Bindal in the Townsville region, just a little bit north of Townsville all the way through to ultimate Elliott and down into the Burdekin and within that group where there’s roughly around 12 different clans all up that we identify with. And so wadamali is what we say because that’s hello. I think that’s really important as a bit of an introduction and wadamali is a language word that we use for not only welcome, but also say hello and see you later and all the other things in between. So it’s a greeting if you like. I now live in Brisbane or Meanjin, is Meanjin I should say for the better pronunciation is the land of the Turrbal and the Jagera people. So special acknowledgement to those as well and thank you for bringing us on and having a conversation.
Morag: Thanks. And I’d also like to acknowledge, too, that I’m sitting here on Gubbi Gubbi land or Kubi Kubi. I’m never quite sure which one I meant to say. And I wonder whether you know, whether you can help me with that. Cause it seemed like, yes. Some men say one and some men say the other, so yeah.
Timmulba: Yeah, it’s very interesting. And depending on the group who saysor interprets it as such, I follow the same. If I’m with more being up there, let’s say Kubi Kubi, then I’ll go with that. And if I Gabbi Gabbi, I’ll go with that. It’s a universal thing but it’s still, you know, I guess the double pronunciation in the word is the key for many people. Yeah.
Morag: Yeah. And I think that that’s really interesting too, when we look at it, look at Australia, Australia wasn’t one country, you know maybe we could start there, you know what? It was many nations.
Timmulba: Yeah. It was roughly around about 250 nations all up, and around about 650 different languages or different dialects if you like, sorry, there’s this perception that we were one nation, but we’re actually only in one continent. And on that continent, these many nations and those nations all had different governance structures and laws and responsibilities for each of those particulars like local government, if you like. But with different nations rather than different locations in terms of the one peoples.
Morag: And I think what you said, what Mary talks about too, Mary Graham, Professor Mary Graham, she talks about there being, you know, you might have all of those, but there’s no one higher authority over the top of those, which is different from the local government. It’s not like a state government level. There’s no federal government level that they all are just nations in and of themselves, aren’t they?
Timmulba: That’s right, exactly right. And we don’t have any hierarchy in the context of local government or federal government, we don’t have that elected process and we don’t have any of the, I guess the inconsistencies that goes with that. And that, I guess different levels of power and responsibility and policies and procedures of each of those levels of government, we don’t have that and we never have. And that’s why it was a pretty well organized sort of society in so far is that even though we had many nations, not one nation invaded another and I think that’s the fundamental thing is that sometimes when things were difficult in neighboring countries, they could by acceptance, come across to other nations for food and in other resources where, if they were, their nations were less or more impacted, whether it’s through environmental conditions or whatever it might be. So there wasn’t, there was fighting on the land, but not over the land. I think that’s the fundamental thing. And if you have a look at the world generally, I mean the only way conflict has always started is invasion, you invade somebody else’s country. We don’t do that or we never have. So I think that’s a fundamental difference about.
Morag: Why do you think that is? What is different about how you’re organized and how the nations communicate between one another is that that was not a thing that’s huge. That’s yeah.
Timmulba: Yeah, it’s massive. And if you look at nations across the planet, there’s variations in the way people operate, but generally, you have different, this has been learned over thousands and thousands and thousands of years. So I think, if you’re talking about 110,000 or 60,000, it took a while to get it right, or I would assume. And once the adaptation between the groups and between the environment and environment ruled, so there was a fundamental first law, and once that law was understood and the obligations were there with that law, you could live quite comfortably within the existing structure. So each of those nations had different responsibilities, had different things for trading, had different food sources, watercourses and food sources. If you look at the biodiversity across Australia, there’s a replication there around indigenous landscapes as well and around the country, if you like. So, and there’s not to say that those boundaries didn’t move at some stage, it’s not a fixed boundary, it’s a fluid boundary and some groups might have then eventually, over time, you know, immersed into each other. And those boundaries have become fluid depending on food sources, water sources, and so forth. So, intermarriages or marriages, as in two other groups that you’re required to marry into, so that there was that structure as well, by law.
Morag: So you’re saying that the ecology was the key, the ecological system was the key. And so that in a way, the boundaries of the nation was the boundaries of that ecosystem or that, so we’re talking bioregions, is that?
Timmulba: Yeah, absolutely. If you look at, I was lucky enough to work in the area around the biodiversity and landscapes enough, and I found it quite fascinating that these groups, most groups were already knew that, but I didn’t know that at that time, in a way where you look at it from a broader scale that each of these areas do have covered by bioregion, biodiversity and in landscapes throughout. So there was a synergy between indigenous landscapes and in-country and the bioregion. So I’ve found that quite fascinating as well as I’ve grown uh, older grayer and hopefully a little bit wiser, you know, but my knowledge experience has been fantastic and learning from a lot of the elders that are now gone from a young fella and going out and hunting and gathering with my father and uncles and so forth and growing up, doing that sort of stuff. I learned all about that, so all of a sudden, as you get older, you put science together, you put indigenous knowledge together, and then you come up with, oh, okay, there’s these parallels here around cultural adaptation and cultural responsibility.
Morag: Mm. So there’s lots of things already that I want to pick up on threads. So maybe just start with where you were just talking about then, about this handing on of the knowledge. So this is something that you learned out there with your elders, so you’re part of an organization called Future Dreaming. And so how is that organization or the work that you’re doing in other ways helping to keep that knowledge alive and adapting and growing in this changing world that we’re in, because I can imagine that it’s the knowledge that you, that all of these nations developed over time, was not fixed. It was always growing and changing and evolving, and with the times, with the shifts and changes that happen. So what’s happening now with this handing on of the knowledge?
Timmulba: Yeah, I guess with Future Dreamings Australia, thanks for bringing that up, it’s a wonderful little organization we’re trying to build. And the idea really is to make sure that we try and provide Australia, more broadly and internationally, if people want to understand a little bit about the landscape and how we interact with the landscape, not only historically, but in the present day and those activities and what we do now are very fluid, but also, purpose-built. So Future Dreaming Australia is really designed to make sure that we educate or provide information for people to go out and rethink what they’ve learned. And a lot of people learn by books and programs and that sort of type stuff, but as I said the other day is really about, you gotta unlearn what you think you know and then reapply some additional knowledge and that knowledge can, it’s very much like permaculture. Permaculture has a lot of things that, it’s a modern invention. If I could be so rude as to say, permaculture is just the modern version of the way we watched and looked after land and how the land provided and everything along those lines.
Morag: That’s not rude Ross, that’s actually a huge honor that you say that.
Timmulba: But it’s so true. And look, there’s some divides where we start to separate in terms of pathways around permaculture, as it’s identified, it’s really about agriculture and water harvesting and things like that. We don’t do that sort of type stuff, we never have. Opportunity, you know, opportunities sort of, so to speak, we would do the environment provided for all those things whether it’s water or whether it’s, even just flour for food and things like that and knowing where to find all that stuff. So nature provided it so we didn’t have to grow it in large portions and because we didn’t have large groups and like I said, in my geographical location, we have 12 different clans, we didn’t then impact massively on a particular location, whether it’s on the coast, whether it’s on the river or back into the mountains. So the seasonal opportunities and those are the type of things and it’s a real modern day, way of, the extension of Aboriginal culture and the way we used to do things and in some places we still do.
Morag: Yeah. So a couple of things there though, I keep thinking, getting to these bifurcation points, which way should I go here? One question I want to ask you about, where is it that it’s still happening like that? And well, let’s just go that way. Yeah, so where is it you’re seeing?
Timmulba: There’s a lot of semi-subsistence lifestyle particularly in regional remote areas. I think that’s one of the things that Australia doesn’t know about. Even the language map, you know, talking language and where English is the fifth, third, fourth, and fifth language, or you’ve got a place to look in remote communities, particularly across the North where a lot of these semi-subsistence lifestyle, whether they’re depending on sea resources or in land and vegetation and types of fruits and berries and so forth are quite heavy, and the problem is, is that it becomes a supplement of Western style food, processed food, and that’s why we had the medical issues and complications in terms of that sort of health-wise and the health statistics of indigenous people, then you got people, groups like in Arnhem Land and Northern territory in parts of WA where their diet is pretty, heavily reliant on Bush Tucker for the one of a better word. And that Bush Tucker and Bush medicines are critical. It’s the pharmacies, the food source, if you like, and they still use it.
Morag: So when you said Bush Tucker, so to speak, is there a better word to be using?
Timmulba: Just food. Aboriginal Australian food? You know, it’s really, it’s a family. Somebody has to put a brand on it, you know I say Bush Tucker, well, it comes from the Bush and it might be Tucker.
Morag: But it’s not necessarily always been the Bush either.
Timmulba: No, it isn’t, I would say it’s just food. From that perspective, food, you know, is a finite resource and that’s how we’ve always treated it. So even though it might look plentiful at a given time, um, it doesn’t always stay that way, very much like the environment. It has its seasons and its movements and behaviors and patterns, whether it’s drought or whatever, we’ve always had that here. So we’ve had to culturally and socially adapt. Surely .
Morag: I think the key thing that what you were saying before about Australian food is that it’s very much reliant on the ecosystems being intact and that it’s not necessarily, you’re not farming, the food is everywhere when the ecosystem is intact. And I think this is where in a way, my perception of permaculture aligns as well, that it’s very much about creating forage gardens and food forests and compressing the footprint of humans as much so that the restoration of ecosystems can be the main work that we’re doing that in actual fact, the main work of permaculture is ecosystems restoration. So I think, you know, that, how do you see, how would you like to see that move forward, that the restoration of Aboriginal food and local food in Australia?
Timmulba: I think one of the biggest things is the aggressive behavior, the arrogant behavior of colonization in terms of its belief in its control over the environments and therefore its destruction. And you’re absolutely right. I mean, the environment and all these foods are very dependent on each other from an environmental point of view, but also from a landscape point of view, you try to start to interfere with certain landscapes. You try to get trees, you then take out species with those trees and who then depend on other species and other species depend on them. And then all of a sudden the shift has changed. So, your environment and your conditions for those particular foods are destroyed or taken away. It’s like labs, large landscape destruction, land clearing, the massive amounts of trees are taken away. It’s even like the fires in New South Wales in Victoria. It’s those fires that changed the landscape in terms of the eucalyptus far as coming back, coming forward. And it’s all changed, all the matrix of the landscape. So all of a sudden you’ve got a very high fire source there in terms of eucalyptus with its oil and so forth. So you change the landscape, you change the way each of these plants and these animals depend on those particular plants and environment. The other thing is that, a lot of birds and so forth, that once taken out of the environment or not allowed to come back because of habitat trees not there no more, and it changes everything. So they depend on seeds and so forth. And we depend on them dispersing seeds, those types of things. We, people get angry about possums. I mentioned that the other day, but they don’t understand that possums, when they go from tree to tree and blossom time, they’re actually doing wonderful things for us, you know, they’re making sure that we’re passing on those seeds and they’re spreading it like the bees, as such same thing. Once we start to understand what our environment does and how the synergies are, then we start to then understand that we’re a part of the environment. We keep on saying that we dominate the environment, that’s not it, you and the planet as it is now is becoming so self destructive, by the Me Me Me movement rather than the We We We. We’re on a precipice and some people, some of the scientists are saying that we’re over that tipping point. Sadly, I think they’re pretty close to being right, because we read the land and I speak to people in North America and in Canada about the behaviors and climate and the way animals and birds are changing. But when we live in a bubble, like we do, like the majority of Australians and others in the society live in a bubble, unless that bubble is affected, then they don’t give, you know, true fruits, so to speak. But we can see the broader picture of what’s going on in terms of our planet. So yeah, it does affect it and the environment and environmental change does affect it. But at some stage we’re going to have to wake up. We can’t, you know, in Australia, for instance, produce food for 85 million people. Hello, how many we got in this country and how many of our neighbors do we need to really share that rather than commodify stuff?
Morag: So, gosh, you know, we have to take a break. Like, I feel like I need to take a big deep breath in there because that’s the reality of the situation. And we can’t turn away from it. We have to face it head on and really work out how we can all be working together to be learning the most important lessons that we need to learn at this time to move forward. And I wonder where that, you were talking about Songlines the other day, and I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about Songlines, particularly around maybe describing what actually they are and how it relates to food system and water. And is there a key within that in terms of regeneration?
Morag: Songlines are very much a storytelling mechanism, a knowledge holders mechanism. If we look at society generally, whether no matter what culture you’re from, when we became human, we had this technology of being able to use and master language and song, because song is a very powerful thing. If you listen to a lot of the words through song, whether you’re country Western or wherever or you’re RNB, or you’re reggae, the song has a story in it and those stories give you a picture if you know what those words are, and you understand those words, you sing it out loud, you think, oh, okay. And look, we used to sing songs even from the sixties. We didn’t even know what that meant, but now as adults we’ve learned the words, we think oh, should we be saying that, you know, things like afternoon delight. Yeah. I love that song, but all of a sudden, as I got into the adult, I was like, oh, okay. But Songlines are about a whole variety of different ways of telling a story and passing that story on and songs do exactly the same thing. It’s about, we didn’t have pen and paper. We had walls that we could draw on and we could tell a story through that way. But the mechanisms for songs is really about, if you sing a song continuously and you repeat that, you start to learn the process of walking, so for instance. So you go through the landscape. So that song would say, well, you walk a certain way and you go this way, this is the track that leads you past that grass, or those trees, it’ll lead you to a waterhole where that might be a permanent waterhole is always there. Or that be ready for that season or that it’ll take you through different pathways through your country. And it’ll also extend beyond that, because the other neighboring clans and groups would also then take up that song. So you could sing that song to the young people. And they knew exactly where that landscape was, you know, so that big tree over there on that hill, you go left there 500 meters, there will be the water. Then if you hear them birds singing, you know, them little birds, walk by the waterway, you know, there’s water there, or you go into an area where you see the massive, big gum trees in a creek bed, but it’s dry. But that song line can tell you just stop being lazy, dig about five feet down, you get water, you know, that type of stuff.
Morag: So yeah, sorry, go ahead .
Timmulba: It’s a creative way of actually telling a variety of different stories for survival, as well as story lines. And we used to be able to sing scary songs too, you know, make them kids stay in the camp, so that’s a wonderful thing. And so is dance, and dance does exactly the same thing. So you can dance a story. Those song lines are really, really important. and a lot of people, in my country and I’ve realized in other parts of the country as well, because we rely a lot on the stars. So astronomy is huge. My mob, the Bindal mob, we are the sky people. So we knew, what, where those landscapes were from the sky. And that would then be created into a song line. So we would find that pathway the next day, it’s like a falling star. It’s a falling star that fell a certain way. And one mob saw it or a person saw it, then we’d know that there’d be trouble over that way. So we wouldn’t go that way the next day. So there’s a whole variety of ways of being able to it’s like, Halley’s comet, you know, for us, that was the big spirit coming to visit. And for us, that spirit was, is a big spirit. So we knew that that spirit was almost like the creator, but it was a spirit being, coming to look over us and look after us during that period. And even though the Halley’s comet would go through every what, 80 something years and pass over the sky. Over a couple of months, to us and we still got it now, paintings and stuff on our walls and all that type of stuff, stars and planets and moon and sun, it’s all navigational aids.
Morag: Hmm. Someone once told me, a friend from around the port Macquarie area, he was telling me about, what do you say that originally you’re from the stars, that’s part of the draining. Is that right? Did I get that right?
Timmulba:
Some groups are from the stars. I could never work out. When I used to and I still do artwork. I could never work out why I was always drawing spirit beings from the sky and it sort of, I guess eventually dawned on me even as a young fella, I used to love doodling and these spirit beings. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just thought it was, they were pretty cool. It turns out, you know, after a little while, the family said, yeah, we are the sky people. And it’s really important to understand that some people believe that we come from the sky and we come from the stars. It;s not to say that we don’t come from somewhere, but you know, as far as I know, we come from carbon dust and from carbon dust, we’ll go back to it. So that’s the energy.
Morag: Yeah. Yeah. So dark matter, dark matter then.
Timmulba: It’s a bit of a play on words. I’ve always liked the word dark matter because dark matter is hypothetically it’s matter in our whole planetary system, but you can’t find it. And dark matter for me is a bit, it’s just a play on words, because even though some people have never seen dark matters, well, you’d never seen Aboriginal people either, you know, sort of type stuff. And then, but some people deny that dark matter exists, well. hello, you deny we exist even though you want to argue that we don’t exist, but some people believe we exist, so it’s a bit of a play on words, as much as energy. For me, dark energy or dark matter, we’re here, we’re in the environment, we’re a part of this planetary system or a part of the landscape and the amount of many of our nations’ mobs, they’ve gone back to carbon, back to the earth. And all that dark matter is to me, is so critical, even though they can’t find it’s there, it makes up our universe. And that’s what I try to say to people, well think of it as in dark matter, I’ll lead you down that pathway. Cause I like dark matter and I like to watch scientists try and search for it as well. But yeah, that’s my little play on words. I’m dark matter, I’m dark energy. So I watch out.
Morag: And that kind of relates a bit to something you start to talk about. You had a very short chance to say something at this event the other day. And I think it was every single sentence you were saying something that I’ve picked up,I thought I’m going to ask you that. So you talked about the unseen and what can you talk a bit more about that? Because I’ve just been recently spending a lot of time with a woman called Nora Bateson, who’s a systems thinker, her father’s Gregory Bateson, and a lot of systems thinking and you know, generations of that coming forward and her, she has this new theory that she’s just put out into the world, and it’s all about the power of the unseen and how that’s, where basically everything that really matters is sitting and what comes from that is in the relationality of what’s in that unseen there. And I’m just trying to understand what she’s saying and I would love to hear what your take on the unseen. And that’s why, I guess I was asking about the dark matter too, because that’s, it’s all part of the universe that we are not kind of just right in front of us, right there at the time.
Timmulba: Yeah. It’s things that just happen automatically behind us or within us. And it becomes so automated. We just don’t see it and the unseen is like dark matter exactly like dark energy, it’s there. It powers us along, but we don’t realize that it actually does what it does. It creates a universe and it speeds up the universe or slows down the universe. It creates aging, which is one of the problems that we have, you know, but I’m glad that I’m in, the laughs aside, I’m glad I got to the age that I have in terms of some people and some of my friends haven’t quite made it that far, but for the unseen, it’s for me, it’s just, it’s things that you do automatically. You don’t see it. So you don’t understand that it’s there, that it exists and that existence alone is what happens. It’s likely the environment. If you don’t, if you can’t see the environment, if you can’t see the environment adapting, you can’t see the environment changing. That’s the unseen, that unseen has implications on all this. It’s just like we’re sitting in the lounge room, we’re living in our bubble. While the sea levels are rising while the Arctic is starting to reduce its water load. And some people will say that that’s part and parcel, but humans have accelerated all the climate change and whether you want to deny it or not, that’s the unseen, you know, it’s taking away all those filters and biases and seeing the planet for what it is, seeing that the planet is doing what it’s doing, seeing that the planet is moving around with its energy, with this adaptation. Cause it’s got to adapt to our behaviors. But equally, the reaction that the planet has to us is the opposite of what we wanted to do. we can’t control it. So that’s the unseen, we think we can get away with it. You know, the planet prays to it’s deities that it will protect us. It’s never going to protect us. We’ve got to look at ourselves and look at the way we do things and realize that there’s so many unseens behind the scenes that are impacting on us here right now that will ultimately take us to a point of no return or ultimate damage because you see, humans across the planet are moving because of loss of water, no water, can’t grow farm plants and food. We’ve got to look outside of ourselves to understand the unseen cause the unseen is coming up behind us and it’s coming up rapidly.
Morag: Mm yeah. So it’s really a sort of a conversation around something that’s out of the scale that we normally observe and notice or outside of the time period that we’re normally noticing change. And I think that’s somewhere where the culture that you’re coming from has this depth of knowledge, whereas everything’s just so fast now we don’t kind of look far enough forward or far enough back. We don’t have a point of reference. And so, time and space.
Timmulba: Yeah. I mean the rapid change in society, particularly from the 1950s, the industrialized society and the way we changed, I think Will Stephenson really explains it so well and people got to get on to the information that he provides and the science behind what he says, that you’ll really start to understand it and that is what we’re talking about from a cultural point of view, we can see these changes. There was, trying to think of that American-Indian that said, it’s not until all the trees had fallen down, that we can realize that we can’t eat money. There’s a story behind that, you know, I had elders who have now passed, but who have said we’re in trouble from an environmental point of view. So what are we doing to our planet? Because you know, what is the legacy we’re going to leave behind and particularly for our kids, I mean, we’ve got politics that are playing politics rather than looking at adaptation wise .
Timmulba: To how can we best protect our children, our children’s children, you know, they’ve got to end up with this legacy and the legacy is not about, and they’ve got to put stupid politics aside and realize that we are in a real danger zone. And just because the next nation over the road doesn’t do anything, therefore it doesn’t justify why you shouldn’t be doing anything as a government or as a nation. We have a responsibility here and in saying that people are making informed decisions about the way they get electricity, the way they are using electricity, and they’re making financial choices as well. So I have a little bit more faith in people doing the changes without government than I have in government, no matter what the color of government is.
Morag: I’ve come to that point of understanding too. I think I keep getting to the point thinking maybe someone like you or people should be stepping up and being the leaders will find an alternative parliament, but then actually it’s the broad, myciliating network of people who have the strength, which is more the kind of governance that you had before which is where the actual power lies with the people power, but we just need to get change happening. And so I wonder, coming back to a conversation way back earlier, talking about the song lines again. So the song lines were describing, as you were saying, certain water holes or pathways. So the landscape has been completely destroyed and changed and altered since those song lines were first sung. And I know that they changed over time as ecosystems change, but with this rapid change of the environment that exists here in Australia, how have the song lines been able to maintain integrity or adapt and change, or where are new song lines forming and how does that even work?
Timmulba: Songlines will continue to change. There was quite a number of different songs and there’s a lot of songs that are continuing as well. Even though some of the destruction of those landscapes or that waterhole doesn’t exist, it still says that there was a waterhole there. Songlines can always, and always will change, and with your environment, and some of the song lines are pretty much fixed in terms of the coastal region, the river systems and so forth. And some of those river systems have been changed as well, but the song lines stay the same even if they introduced dams across some of those waterholes where those song lines are, those song lines are a part of the creation for some people as well though. So those rivers were created by the creative being. And so the lot, even though those might’ve been interfered with in terms of dams or weirs or whatever, the song is still there. So the general principle of countries still exists. There’s you know, obviously you’ve got the Juukan Gorge, which was destroyed recently, that would have a very strong song line. But over generations and no doubt in the future generations, it will tell of the Juukan Gorge, but it’ll tell it in a different way. So it recreates a new song line. Even though the destruction, there is still really important sight for people, for their mob up there. And so what we do is change and adapt. So the song lines can change and adapt. So we might be able to go, it’s like down in Shoalwater Bay, North of Rocky, there’s those traditional owners who have been locked out of large portions, you can’t go in there unless you want to be shot, or you want to step on a landmine or whatever. But yet they can still, through the negotiations with the military and I don’t know whether they should do it, is go to a country on the ocean side so they can still enjoy the camp there and then enjoy the country as much as they can. But that’s a part of their song line, it goes out to the ocean. So Songlines are a wonderful magic way of telling stories and in a wonderful way of translating those stories over to others and songlines can then talk about the destruction of our location and that songline can then tell a story to the next generation, and then that lives in memory.
Morag: Yeah. So they stay alive by being constantly told and retold and adapted and changed over time. So I wonder how many songline stories were interrupted.
Timmulba: It’s hard to say and with colonization and with the introduction of things like smallpox and guns, that sought to the destruction of indigenous people, so the destruction of Songlines that went with it, there’s a lot of groups now are bringing back Songlines re-introducing song lines or creating new song lines. And even coming back to language, speaking language is really important too for cultural identity. So you can create a wonderful new song line by going back out to the country, understanding the country, learning where the country is, where the water holes are, where those creek beds are, where them different trees, where the plants and animals all are so you can create a whole new song line, and that I think is the fun part, you can sit down and sing it with all your little ones, you know.
Morag: There was something you were talking about the other day too, about becoming, so non-indigenous people becoming contemporary custodians. Was that the language you were using?
Timmulba: Yeah, everybody has to become a custodian in some way, and non-indigenous people always find it difficult to associate themselves with a particular place, but yet they, a lot, relate to a place overseas, to the different nations. I mean, we’ve got,, if you want to, you’ll never, for me, it’s really about if you don’t understand Australia, don’t understand the landscape of Australia, you don’t understand the first nations people of Australia, you’ll never be connected to this country. You’ll always look up into the left-hand corner of the flag and see that map of where England is, that type stuff, the old British flag on the corner. So you’ve got to start to take ownership and responsibility for where you live. And most people, I guess sort of understand that effluence is a big issue when it comes from affluence type stuff. So the whole system of understanding, and then understanding what your landscape is, where you live, your local suburb, your local place, your local, whether it’s Brisbane or Sydney or anywhere, or Grafton or Longreach, if you understand your actual local environment and get to know that a little bit better, you start to then take responsibility for that. And that’s the relationship arrangement if you know some place. And it’s like, I try to explain to people, it might’ve been the first place where you had your first kiss, you know, um, that place is sacred to you. So all of a sudden it becomes something else. It becomes a live thing. And if somebody says, oh, we’re going to destroy that place, or we’re going to rip it down for new buildings, you’re going to be in an uproar because you have a relationship with that area. And so what I’m saying to people is that create your own relationship with your land and with the people within, inside that landscape. But most importantly, the land, because without that land, we have nothing comes second. It’s as simple as that, if our environment is first law and we got to fit in with that first of all because Earth gives us what we need. And if we understand what that provision is and how the provision is then distributed amongst people then, and we take politely rather than destructively of that stuff that she provides and she says, they say she, I say anybody, you know, she’s just nature, it’s a wonderful thing. So get a relationship with your local area, get a relationship with a place that you love, or you might want to, people like to go to Byron Bay but that place becomes love to death. And then everybody wants to buy a building there, they want to buy a home there, they build new buildings and rip down more plants. Ah, that’s not what it’s about, people, you can learn to love your environment without going in, and then destroying it for other purposes. It’s the way you have a relationship with, and it’s like, so with young kids, pick an animal that you really like, you really love. And I used to say to them, well, that’s your totem. It might be his turtle dugong, and might be a possum, might be a snake. Some kids like insects, that’s your totem. You’re gonna look after that now. And all of a sudden they then realize what environmentally happens around that species. So it’s an unseen that becomes seen, you know, all of a sudden, Aw, okay, so if I throw that plastic, it goes down the river, it goes into the ocean, that poor turtle picks it up and it kills that turtle. You’re doing your totem damage. So.
Morag: It’s what you love, you care about more, isn’t it? What you’re connected to? Absolutely .
Timmulba: It is. And once you understand that you then can live, I think mentally and physically within that environment and mentally is where we need to be.
Morag: Isn’t it? It’s really, it’s that connectedness. It’s a meaning, it’s a purpose and it’s a shift in perception about your relationship before any action that takes place. That seems to be where.
Timmulba: What are the consequences If I do this to my environment and…
Morag: Yeah, sort of what you were just saying that I feel really resonates a whole lot with what permaculture does. The very first thing before action is observation and getting to know the local place, the culture, the deep time, looking at where you are situated within the bioregion, what are the cultural, you know, what’s happening in the neighborhood, those different things before you start acting.
Timmulba: Yeah. Observation is so critical to permaculture and to culture. For us, observation is over a long period of time. Observation can be a short period of time. It can be over one season. It’s as simple as birds moving into a place that you don’t, you might’ve heard or seen that bird, but some people might say, oh, I’ve only heard that bird this time last year, where did it come from, might it come from Siberia, might it come from somewhere else, you know, in Papua New Guinea, the storm bird, for instance, you know, it’s all these types of things that once you understand it, you then see how that fits in with your environment and how you fit in that environment. And you can still live quite healthily within that environment. Just don’t become so self-destructive.
Morag: Yeah. And I love the thing about when you start to notice those things, how it does change how you feel about a place and how you understand the food as well. So I know when I hear the storm bird coming, that the mulberries are about to come on and on a particular tree, because they come back to the particular tree, they have been for years. And so then I know to start going, looking out for other trees and it starts to become these indicators. And I can get a sense that this is sort of the type of living that is what was here before, you know, is when you notice something it’s a relational thing that means something else is happening. And the seasons, it’s not summer, autumn, winter, spring, here’s your chart of what you plant in January, February. There’s something else that goes on. So I wonder how was that sort of knowledge around seasons and that relationality of a food system is shared, was that also song lines or is that, how was that?
Timmulba: This is shared knowledge, but there’s also can be songs and dance particularly around you know, there’s a saying, dance where they do the, what’s it called, the fish dance, for instance, that brings back the season, making sure that the Barramundi dance, for instance, there’s other sort of dancers that bring on plants. And so, for instance, different types of fish, stingray and diamond mullet, it all does exactly the same thing. It’s the, there’s increased ceremonies to make sure that that’s plentiful for this time and next time around, there’s certain ways of taking your foods and stuff and knowing what to do with those bones and making sure that it goes back to the proper place in terms of the Earth and how to make sure that that song is then sung, or that animal who gave it’s life for you is then sung back into the land. And so the spirit guides back in and then it replenishes your environment. So there’s all these types of different ways of communicating, can be through stories and through historical aspects. So it’s a wonderful way of learning a lot of things, and you can’t know everything. But I do know that there are certain songs around those wonderful opportunities for plants and animals to be plentiful for next season. So it’s called an increased ceremony for instance. Yeah.
Morag: So ceremony is something that we don’t really have in contemporary Australian culture. You just go to the shop, stick it in a bag and bring it home, and then chuck it away, this sort of, and without, you know, maybe it’s, obviously it’s a complete loss of ceremony around this and relationality that has got us into this trouble that we are because of that disconnect in all cultures, I think.
Timmulba: Yeah. You know, these days, it’s like going into, and if there’s no toilet paper, then you have a song and dance about there’s no toilet paper. For the one of a better word, you’re absolutely right. And if you even look at the way England is the same thing from a cultural perspective and an island from a cultural perspective, there’s all these different ways of celebrating your different supply of fish and food and all that type of stuff. The plentifulness of it by song and dance and the getting on the drums and having a good old sing-along you know, those are all parallels. And I think we forget, we don’t exercise those parallels well enough that there’s so many synergies and so many parallels with, but with non-indigenous people that moved too far away from the planet and from their own cultures. So they’ve lost any sense of culture and cultural expression and cultural adaptation and moved so far away from the planet that we can just destroy it for whatever sake it is and that’s for greed and for money. So we’ve lost touch with what we had and what we have. I’m lucky that I still have it but at some stage, I don’t know into the future, whether it’s going to still survive and that cultural element and the importance of it. I think in our psyche, it’ll always be there, but whether we can practice it because we don’t have control then that and itself is a difficult thing.
Morag: Wow. So both of us are part of something called Regenerative Songlines, what’s your, and this is for those of you listening, this is an indigenous-led group that’s connected to a global movement of countries to find regenerative ways forward. And so I wonder Ross, what is it that you hope this will be able to help lead us forward? What’s your hopes with it?
Timmulba: I think it’s a rediscovery of Songlines generally and what it is that for, particularly for indigenous people across the whole of Australian continent and what those song lines meant and how we can start re-introducing the song lines and the importance of those song lines. And then I think, eventually the other parts of society can then start to weave their own song lines into it and tell a story. So I think it’s when I talk about regenerative, we’re talking about a home, it’s re-bringing back to stuff, re-exercising those obligations from a cultural and social point of view. And sometimes economic, because some of those song lines relate to economics. So it’s actually finding out where it is, what it means, it’s like my mob in Townsville, there’s a song that goes from Townsville all the way to South Australia, that in itself tells you something. And I think I mentioned as well that when I was in Canada in Haida Gwaii, the song line from there, which is South of Alaska, on the islands there, the song lines come across those oceans and you’re thinking, wow, the stories are so powerful in those songs. So I think we just need to be able to not only adapt, but we need to understand the landscape. And if people can understand that landscape through song and dance and bringing non-indigenous people back to culturally where they were, generations ago as well, it was a common thing. But people will think, oh, we didn’t, we never used to do that. Well, have a look at your history.
Morag: Everyone’s indigenous in some way at some point.
Timmulba: We all sang songs. We all sang for a reason. What do those songs mean? What are the languages, the words inside those songs, what do they say? It doesn’t have to be about, even like country songs, they talk about the country and riding horses up in the hills and that becomes history. And that becomes song lines over generations. You know, Bismarck.
Morag: I need to ask you because it’s from someone who’s non-indigenous, this whole idea of becoming, I don’t know it just sounds really weird saying it. So you got to pull me up and this idea of becoming indigenous in the landscape. So I’ve been born here and multiple generations of being here. I feel deeply connected to this place and it feels like I understand it to the level that I can. What do you say to people like me who really feel that deep sense of connection and wanting to be part of healing, part of moving forward regeneratively, that whole sense of connectedness. Cause I think like there seems to be a sense of feeling like there’s like not to say go away, you don’t belong, but there is that sense, I guess. And the guilt that comes in with things and all of those layers with, you know, facing the trauma of hearing for the first time, the history that has been hidden, all of that unseen stuff. Where is it that you kind of interface with those sorts of conversations and
Timmulba: Yeah, I think one of the really important things is that people start to understand who they are and in the landscape, no matter who you are, once you understand who you are in the landscape, then you can feel comfortable with yourself. And then obviously you need to then, you know, and Australians are, I find quite distressing that Australians don’t know their history from not even, not only just from an environmental point of view, but an indigenous history point of view and the amount of stuff that is very rude and hostile on social media, about indigenous people. And they don’t even know us, when you’ve got comments about going back to where you come from, uh, hello, we didn’t, we we’ve been here, you know, we’ve became human here. So but it’s about your own journey and finding yourself.
Timmulba: I think the thing where people have it really non-indigenous people have is that they want to become an indigenous person. You’ll never be an indigenous person. You need to be yourself, you need to understand your landscape within which you live and do the best you can for that landscape and care for that landscape. And it runs parallel with what we’re doing, how we seek country. Now we see the planet and how we see our relationship with our planet. That’s where it should be. And I think you’ve got that more agenda from a little of speaking with you. I get the sense that you’d know that and being part of permaculture is critical to that as well. You know where you want to be, how you want to be, and you want to live your life with a healthy respect for others and a healthy respect for the environment. So run with that. That’s all I can say, unless you’re born into an indigenous culture and even though you might’ve studied it, you know, people have studied it for years and years, 40, 50 years, they’re still not indigenous. They still see it from the outside and for us, it’s a lived experience. I can’t be unaboriginal for instance, I can’t go and live in some white society and be accepted, you know, [inaudible] will get into me and vice versa, so it’s about yourself and how you operate within the system. And if you come on the journey with us and you’re having, you know, looking after your environment and you’re doing all the stuff that we automatically or would normally do, then power to you, I say absolute power to you. Cause it means that you’re wanting to change the way we interact with our environment. And you want to change the way we as human beings live from our environment, not destroy it.
Morag: So kind of the permaculture underpinning ethics that come with it to sort of earth care is number one, which fits people care, care of people in the country, and then fair share. And that’s not just about between people, it’s that relationality, it’s between other species with future generations, with their ecosystems. And so I feel like in so many ways that, you know, for non-indigenous people, permaculture seems to be a really valuable tool to help them to move forward, to be in the land and in relation in a way that makes sense.
Timmulba: Exactly. And that’s why I said to you that permaculture is just the modern word for how us mobs did do stuff, used to do stuff. There’s a little bit of a segues from it, but generally that’s the principles and if we can get that right and from a permaculture point of view, and I think it was, I’m trying to think who coined this permaculture anyway.
Morag: Oh, Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. Yeah
Timmulba: Okay, but I think the values and the principles of permaculture bring you on the right track. And I think the more people that join permaculture and will join permaculture generally and understand what it does and how you fit into it and how you have a relationship in the permacultural system and we will go many places in a positive way.
Morag: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Ross, it’s just been an absolute delight to toss around a whole lot of different ideas and questions with you. Thank you for being so, so gracious in answering all my questions with you. I wonder, is there some way that if people want to find out more about the work, I can put some notes down in that, in the show notes, any links to your work or to where people can find out more about the projects that you work on?
Timmulba: I think Future Dreamings Australia is probably the best vehicle for that. We do webinars every month. we have booked in, we have people that come on to those webinars and with different experiences from fire to different food sources too from a cultural experience. And I think Future Dreamings Australia is the critical part for us. And that’s a good pathway, I do a lot of things but never recorded in such a way. And I do a lot of talking rather than writing. But I think there’s some future writings coming out eventually, but I’m very much in the cultural lens and that’s a storyteller. And I learn from other people and practices, and then I then pass that on and that’s what Future Dreamings does through our webinar. We learn things and then we pass them on and we teach things and for people to move to the next level where they want to be, we don’t entrap people in terms of our discussions. We just give them ideas and suggestions and let them go on their learning curve themselves. And I think we need to drop that word permaculture into there and what that means just quietly.
Morag: So people are welcome to join those?
Timmulba: Absolutely. Come to, just go on a www, whatever it is and look up Future Dreamings Australia and you have a website there.
Morag: Yeah, futuredreaming.org.au and I’ll put the link down below and
Timmulba: That’s the best way to get into us and tap into team Ali, Mary and Michelle Maloney and myself and come on and have a bit of a listen and who knows where that might lead.
Morag: Yeah. And I wonder whether too, whether we could do something actually in the garden for local people at the Future Dreaming house, we’re walking around the land together for those of you listening Ross and I were walking around a garden the other day, looking at how we can integrate some permaculture and Australian foods in the garden there. And maybe we could, maybe there’s something there that we could, you know, something that I would love to learn more about personally would be more about different types of foods, how to prepare them, their qualities, maybe medicinal, like, is that something that you’ve got knowledge of? Or are there some people that you work with that have that knowledge? I would so love to learn that more. And I know that a lot of people listening here would also love that.
Timmulba: Yeah, I’ve got a friend down in New South Wales who does medicinal stuff and turns plants like gumby gumby and others into medicines and also into soaps and everything. It’s good for your skin and just good for yourself generally, and healthy products as well. So, yeah, by all means, I’d have to put my thinking cap on, but there are people around, we do little bits and other people do lots of bits. So different types of skills require different types of techniques on preparing certain things. You know, like the gumby gumby which was a great medicine.
Morag: Yeah. All right. Well, that’s for another conversation at another time. Thank you again so much for joining me today. I look forward to catching up with you again soon. Bye. So that’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email, and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment, and if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this. The more podcasts bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.