>[!INFO]+ Meta >Area:: [[Neverland - The Lost Continent of Australia]] >Date:: 2013 >Tags:: #text #Australia #balanda *Rushing about the country with a fanfare of arms of the regulation order, civilised police natives in touch with every other nigger met; all tends to confirm a black's opinion that the white man is 'silly phelar'. Many nights to they entertain their friends around camp fires, laughing and joking at the white man's foolishness.* H. G. B. Mason[^174] One summer night I was walking past Adelaide Railway Station. A man emerged out of the darkness to ask me for a light. I cautiously obliged, and we shared a few words after the exchange. As I was about to move on, he asked me what seemed a simple question, 'Are you a brother, man?' I stumbled. 'No, I'm an ...' I didn't know what to say. If I said I was 'Australian', it would imply my Nunga interlocutor was not. I couldn't say I was 'European'---I grew up with a backyard and my accent is too broad. If this was New Zealand, I could say I was *pakeha*, but here in Australia there is no commonly accepted Aboriginal word for 'white person'. In today's encounters between first and subsequent peoples, the question of what non-indigenous Australians might call themselves seems to be left begging. But there are some possible answers. #### **Dropping the baton** As the most ambitious myth-building event of recent times, the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics revealed a serious fault line in national identity. The pageant began in a proud display of settler strength, with a cavalcade of Akubras on horseback bearing the national flag. This was followed by an equally reverent celebration of indigenous culture, featuring women dancers from Central Australia. This incongruent juxtaposition set up the big question for the evening: how would Aboriginal and European come together? The Europeans arrived in comic mode. Invasion was heralded by a burlesque Captain Cook, presented as an eighteenth century dandy in command of a windsurfing penny-farthing. The process of settlement was enacted in a loud and often comic series of triumphs over adversity---sheep in cardboard boxes emerged as the lawnmowers of suburban dreaming. The world saw little of the stern patriarchy that tamed a recalcitrant continent and civilised a 'backward' people. Australia's indigenous peoples retired backstage during the spectacle of settlement, which reached a crescendo with 'Tin Symphony', a nostalgic celebration of heavy industry. The chthonic and migratory forces finally came together at the end when Yolngu performer Djakapurra Munyarryun joined hands with a wide-eyed girl, played by child star Nicky Webster. Their meeting evoked a familiar scene for Australian audiences. The story of a lost white child who is guided back to reality by a kindly black elder has been played out many times in Australian literature and film. The bathos of innocence---child and native---holds the worldly business of white adults at a safe distance. What the ceremony lacked was a meeting of indigenous and settler adults negotiating a treaty that would establish mutual obligations satisfactory to both parties. Historically, the opening ceremony dropped the baton that might link first and subsequent peoples in a shared story. In the meantime, this scenario is becoming the official post-colonial story, celebrating the spiritual values of indigenous cultures. This is the indigenous story that officiates in public occasions: formal acknowledgements of traditional owners and Aboriginal ceremony now occur where once the strains of God Save the Queen would call the public to attention. Though the story is foreign to the experience of most Australians, it offers a founding mythology inclusive of all races that have arrived on these shores in modern times. Dreamtime is a contemporary Jerusalem that connects Australians today as once Levantine civilisations provided the founding mythologies of European nations. Such indigenous canonisation seems both inexorable and positive in many respects. It not only provides a fixed point of reference for the fluid movement of multicultural identity, it also offers Aboriginal Australians a significant cultural lever in ceremonial occasions. Nevertheless, it does present problems for dialogue between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Take, as one example, recent efforts during the Adelaide Festival's Artists Week. Until recent years Artists Week, a gathering point for artists, curators and bureaucrats from around Australia, provided a lively forum to demonise and laud the influence of conceptualism on the fine arts---to define opposing camps and network behind the scenes. While its recent decline is partly due to the increasing insularity of the art scene, it hasn't been helped by an unimaginative resort to postcolonial orthodoxy. In 1994, Artists Week attracted much criticism for having panels on Aboriginal art filled predominantly by non-indigenous spokespersons. In response, the following Artists Week, in 1996, quarantined one of its five days exclusively for indigenous speakers. This day offered a fulsome opportunity for Aboriginal artists to tell their stories and articulate the indigenous plight. The non-indigenous audience was unanimously supportive. But when it came to questions, when there would normally be rogue disputation or fine matters of difference, no hand was raised. Of course, this silence was not a sign of indifference. There was just no room in the discourse for a non-indigenous point of view. It would have seemed crassly argumentative, or defensive. The day of indigenous speakers seemed a necessary step towards including an Aboriginal voice in discussion of art. But there has yet to be the following step of dialogue between victim and perpetrator. Somehow, alternation of monologues needs to be replaced by a form of exchange that recognises both parties. This becomes more apparent when we follow the formal route of contemporary museology. At the end of the twentieth century, Museum Victoria metamorphosed from its colonial dwellings in Redmond Barry's State Library into the modern campuses around Melbourne. The museum message was radically changed in the process. #### **In Bunjil's eyes** 'In the beginning, Bunjil created this land and the life within it. He created people and gave them law.' These words begin the timeline on the walls of Museum Victoria's Immigration Museum, opened in Melbourne in 1998. They make a radical break from the colonial narrative that had become standard museum ideology, in which Australian history is presented as a linear phenomenon---a billion-year-old land mass, occupied for the last 40,000 years by Aboriginal peoples, and most recently marked by 200 years of European invasion, which though violent has been a mere blip in the story of the continent. By offering a narrative history which begins with the Bunjil creature of Koori cosmology and leads to the arrival of the world's peoples, the Immigration Museum has replaced 'traditional' scientific history with a sacred foundational myth. The museum did not find rioting crowds on its steps as a result of this reconfigured timeline. Its significance is more symptomatic than causative. State museum curators are among the most conservative of the cultural professions. They turn history into stone. In this case, they felt obliged to turn history inside out: rather than grant Aboriginal culture a place within the museum, the museum located itself within Aboriginal culture. Not only does this transcend the role of indigenous people as victims, it also helps even out the ethnic differences between settlers. In the eyes of Bunjil, it matters not whether you are English, Italian or Vietnamese⎯you are all visitors to this land. The Bunjil story seems an enlightened step forward in acknowledging the indigenous cultures that preceded colonialism. Yet, in the process of stepping forward, it loses the thread of another story---of how non-indigenous people came to Australia. If not the spread of British glory, or the inverse story of imperial greed, how is the story of white man's arrival told? How do we represent Europeans in the eyes of Bunjil? The most elementary means of answering this question is to settle on a name for them. A few weeks after my encounter outside Adelaide Railway Station, I visited Tandanya Aboriginal Centre and asked an art curator of Murri descent, Doreen Mellor, what I could have called myself. 'There's a word they use up the top end,' she said, 'Balanda'. Balanda? 'Yes, it's the Macassan word for the Dutch, or "Hollander".' Macassan? 'You know, the sailors from Sulawesi who harvested sea slug off the coast of Arnhem Land, before Captain Cook.' Is this what Bunjil would call these pale strangers: 'Balanda'? It seems a double displacement for non-indigenous people, to be called a word gained from non-European visitors and used for a non-British colonising power. Maybe something in these deferments offers a radical realignment of racial politics in Australia. 'Balanda' is an Indonesian word for European colonisers in general---they could be Dutch, French, Spanish, English, whatever. Australian's non-indigenous are that breed of northerners with grand ideas in their sails who blunder onto the subtle cultures of the south. This Balanda business seems worth trying out. #### **Macassans came first** The Balanda story begins with the Macassans. Macassar is the capital of the Indonesian island today known as Sulawesi, which is little more than a thousand kilometres from Australia---about the same distance as between England and Portugal. Annual monsoon winds and island stepping stones through the Malay Archipelago make the journey a reasonable hop, step and jump. Accounts vary about when Macassans began to visit Australia on a regular basis. Though some estimate their visits began in the sixteenth century, Tasmanian professor Campbell Macknight claims 1720s as the decade when trade commenced. Macknight's *Voyage to Marege* documents the seasonal visits of Macassan fishermen, who spent several months a year catching and processing trepang (sea slug) for Chinese markets. Yolngu did not use trepang, as it was poisonous, but the Chinese used it for medicinal and aphrodisiac purposes. Macassans would arrive on the summer monsoon winds and leave three months later on the southeast trade winds. So regular were their journeys that they planted tamarind trees along the north coast of Australia to provide seasoning for their food. We can only imagine what impression such visitors would have made on their Australian hosts. From nowhere would come their speedy praus, the Muslim call to prayer heralding a people in decorated cloths, breathing smoke and waving shiny tools.[^175] As the only known pre-European contact, the Macassan experience tells a contrasting story of friendly cooperation between guests and hosts. Australians assisted in catching and preparing trepang in exchange for commodities such as knives, tobacco and rice. There was respect for this new foreign culture on their shores. Macassans made certain rocks along the coast sacred, designated as *Karei* meaning kingship, and placed offerings on them. This custom was largely respected by locals, who left their offerings untouched. For Australians, the Macassans came from *Dhawa*, the land of the dead. There were therefore not true strangers at all, but related to their ancestors. They could arrive as foreigners, but they could only stay as relatives. And what about from the visitors' point of view? According to Southeast Asian geopolitics, the Macassans did not come to Australia as foreigners. The southern shores belonged to the Indonesian Kingdom of Gowa, the map of which incorporated north Australia. Before the Dutch East Indies Company, Gowa was a sophisticated regional power. Its rivals, the Bugis, are famous for having the longest literary work in existence, *La Galigo*.[^176] The Macassans first came to European notice in the early sixteenth century, when Tomés Peres, a Portuguese sailor, identified Moors in the waters around Malacca. While mapping the Gulf of Carpentaria on 17 February 1803, Matthew Flinders encountered the Bugis commander Pobassoo, from whom he learned about the Macassan traders. Flinders' account is remarkable for the demonstration of patient curiosity towards the seamen. Despite the language differences, a Malay cook on board Flinders' ship helped translate precise details: > The mode of preserving \[trepang\] is this: the animal is split down > one side, boiled, and pressed with a weight of stones; then stretched > open by slips of bamboo, dried in the sun, and afterwards in smoke, > when it is fit to be put away in bags, but requires frequent exposure > to the sun ...[^177] Pobassoo left requesting an English 'jack' and letter of referral in case he met other English vessels. Given the reciprocal vulnerability of stranger and pirate, it was a remarkably productive exchange. Unfortunately, it was unique. It seemed inevitable that the Macassan access to Australian trade would eventually come to an end as the British extended their control of the continent. Macassan visits formally ceased with the creation of an Australia nation. In 1901, the Australian government prohibited foreign fishing fleets in its territorial waters.[^178] Despite absence of contact for many decades, the mark of Macassan culture is still present in the top end. Besides 'Balanda', there are scores of loan words, such as 'rupiah' (money) and 'jama' (work), still in common use. There are also ornamental influences in coloured headscarves and long tobacco pipes. Perhaps the most profound influence, however, concerns ceremonies. In the Wurramu funerary ritual in Elcho Island, west of Maningrida, the deceased are farewelled by a symbolic raising of the mast, evoking the departure of Macassans north, to the land of the dead. Recently, similar ceremonies have been used in official acts of exchange with the Australian government.[^179] They figured strongly in the indigenous component of the Sydney Olympic opening ceremony. Despite its proximity, the city of Macassar, now called Ujung Pandang, plays little part in contemporary Australian culture. Behind the scenes, however, there is a network of indigenous and Balanda Australians who are renewing this interrupted conversation with the continent's pre-European visitors. Many Western anthropologists have traced the influence of Macassan culture on Aboriginal ceremonies. Of these, Ian McIntosh goes further than most by arguing for the presence of an Islamic influence on indigenous culture, as seen in the community at Elcho Island. McIntosh imagines how impressed Australians were by the customary call to prayer heard from the crow's nests of Macassan ships.[^180] He interprets the name given to the funerary spirit, 'Walith'Walitha' as 'Allah'. Though drawing a long bow, McIntosh's fanciful anthropology does at least suggest there might be stories in Australian history beyond European grasp. For many Balanda, this a-European story offers respite from the 'black and white' history that we have inherited. According to Macknight, 'Macassan story is the best example we have that reminds us Australia did not begin with British colonisation. Too many people equate Botany Bay 1788 as the beginning of the nation, but Macassans show that this hasn't always been the case.'[^181] Some feel this personally. The theatre director Andrish St Clair has produced an opera about trepanging for the Darwin Festival. His own life story stretches across more than one southern ocean. Born in Hungary, he has since lived in each of the three southern hemisphere continents. St. Clair tells me, 'My own history is as a migrant, highlighting the polarised nature of colonisation. In the word "Balanda", I am happy to find an Aboriginal story that mentions a third party. As a migrant who doesn't have a stake in Anglo culture, I am excited that this gives me a position.' Macassans may prove important mediators in a non-Anglo-centric Australian republic in the distant future. There has been a gradual process of restoring contact with Macassans since 1986. The first attempt was prompted by a newspaper report of an old Macassan woman who recalled her father reciting the names of his children in Australia. Some Aboriginal students at Darwin's Bachelor College recognised these names, and teacher Michael Cooke organised a trip to Ujung Pandang. Thus began an evolving series of reunions. In 1993, painter Johnny Bullen-Bullen led a group of ten from Maningrida to Ujung Pendang. 'Bulunbulun' is also the name for a Macassan animist priest. The group performed Marayarr Murrukundja ceremony over three nights of the Loro Cultural Festival in Kupang on Lassiana Beach in West Timor. Marayarr Murrukundja is a Rom ceremony designed to strengthen ties between different language groups. Vehicles advertised the performances with loudspeakers broadcasting the night's program, *Orang Aborijin dar Australia Utara* (Aborigines from North Australia), and the performances were broadcast nationally across Indonesia. Performing with the Australians were transvestite pop singers and chicken-decapitating shamans. Dancers represented two major totems---*lunggurrma* (north wind) and *garr* (spider); the ceremony concluded with the presentation of a decorated pole over three metres long, which represents the mast of a prau on rough seas and the sadness felt at the departure of Macassans each year. After Kupang, the Australians travelled to Ujung Pandang where at the final ceremony the marrajiri pole was finally presented. On top of the pole are lengths of decorated cloth representing sails, and four extra poles for rigging are held by dancers. In exchange for the pole, now kept in the Le Galigo Museum, the Australians were given a model prau in silver. There was great interest in the *Orang Marege* (North Australians) and the vocabulary shared between peoples on either side of the Timor sea. Though there were occasions for exchange during the tour, such as impromptu discoveries of common language, St. Clair felt that the event as a whole was too stage-managed to build a lasting relationship. Nevertheless, it resulted in paintings of Macassans by Bullen-Bullen, which now adorn airports and hotels around Australia. The next stage in restoration of contact was to bring Macassans back to their old destination. In 1996, St. Clair led a group of half a dozen Macassans to Elcho Island, where they participated in an exchange of performances. The set included a Macassan gate and mock prau, around which performers enacted an exchange of knives. Indonesians reciprocated with an official invitation to Australians. Late in 1997, the Macassans invited performers from Elcho Island to Sulawesi, where they participated in the 667^th^ Anniversary of the Kingdom of Gowa. The Elcho Islanders were led by Charlie Mattjuwi Burrawanga, a Gumatj ritual leader. Burrawanga is the grandchild of one of six wives of the last trepang fisherman. The performance was centred on a reunion between Burrawanga and his Macassan relatives. *Trepang* was the main act, and followed the annual processions in front of the local Bupati (Regency). St. Clair describes the atmosphere in front of a crowd of nine thousand as 'like a football game'. *Trepang* featured strongly in Southeast Asian media. Three national Indonesian television stations covered the event, and favourable reviews appeared in Indonesian and even Malaysian press. Despite this coverage, Australian media ignored the event. Ironically, the obsession with Pauline Hanson kept more positive Asian exchange out of the newspapers. One of the side effects of these exchanges has been to stimulate interest within local communities about pre-European contact. Responses to the Macassan story have come from a number of rock bands. In 1990, Milingimbi's Wirrngga Band released a song called 'Takkerena', which was the Macassan name for the trepanging camp in this area. Three years later, Maningrida's Sunrise Band produced a hit for 3JJJ titled 'Lembana Mani Mani', the Macassan name for their town. Fascination with the Macassan story is not limited to those descended from the participants. To Occidental minds, the story of the Macassans epitomises the romance of the seas. On the trail of this romance, the Australian Maritime Museum offers regular tours to the boat-building sites in Sulawesi. In 1988, Peter Spellit from the Darwin Museum reconstructed a Macassan *pinisi* for a commemorative voyage from Australia to Sulawesi. According to Jeremy Mellefont of the Maritime Museum, the sailors' perspective is different from that of academics: 'Sailors see oceans as what connects people, whereas academics see oceans as what separates them.' Thinking about the rich history of traffic in Australia's northern seas, the British leap across to the antipodes begins to seem less originary. The Macassans are, to some extent, the antipodean Phoenicians. For the Victorian English, direct contact between these Semitic traders and the people of Cornwall offered an important historical link to the source of Christian narrative in the Levant. Likewise, as Australia orients itself away from Europe and towards a southern context, the Macassans provide a fateful historical tie to the region. This tie is not about occupation of land, it is about adventurous travel to distant lands. Thus, there is an independent link to Asia that is comparable with the journey of the Europeans to this part of the world. Back in 1987, Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke used the Macassan story as testimony of the enduring relationship with Asia. To extend this beyond political expediency, however, requires consideration of what we look like as 'Balanda'. #### **Balanda as Australian Pakeha?** In New Zealand, bi-culturalism is assisted by the adoption of unique terms to distinguish its two peoples. 'Maori' has evolved from *tangata maori* meaning simply 'ordinary people'. The origins of 'Pakeha' are more obscure. It relates either to *Paakehakeha* ('Gods of the ocean who had the forms of fish and man'), *Patupaiarehe* ('Beings with fair skin and hair who gave people the secret of fishing with nets'), or *Pakepakeha* ('mythical, human like being, with fair skin and hair who possessed canoes made of reeds which changed magically into sailing vessels'). Other less official derivations are 'white pig' and 'bugger ya'. 'Pakeha' was first adopted by missionaries in the 1860s. It continues to be a rich source of reflection on the status of non-Maori New Zealanders. Michael King's books *Being Pakeha* (1985) and *Being Pakeha Now* (1999) both use this term as a lever for white New Zealanders to detach themselves from their countries of origin and identify themselves as equal partners in the land with Maori. King's optimism is countered by representations of New Zealand society, such as C.K. Stead's novel *Talking About O'Dwyer*, that show inexorable differences between Maori and Pakeha. In Australia, there is not the same acute awareness of incompatibility with indigenous peoples, partly because there is not the same expectation of co-habitation. Australian Aboriginal peoples arrived more than 60,000 years before Europeans, rather than several hundred as is the case with Polynesians in New Zealand. European descendants cannot share stories of migration with Aboriginal Australians. The two Australian peoples are much more distant from each other than Maori and Pakeha. Bearing this in mind, it is worth trying on 'Balanda' for size as a term for Australian Pakeha. It may provide a path for co-existence in the unchartered waters that lie beyond reconciliation. At first, it seems a neat fit. 'Balanda' presents identity through the eyes of first Australians, for whom all European colonists were foreign. 'Balanda' reminds us of distant origins, while remaining uniquely Australia. 'Balanda' offers an indigenous framework for identity without the escapism of a New Age spirituality. 'Balanda' seems just the garb for a new Australian republic. Unfortunately, 'Balanda' doesn't travel well. According to Murray Garde, the Cultural Research Officer at Maningrida in Arnhem land, 'Balanda' has become standard Top End Australian English. Yet he believes that to employ it nationally would be to privilege one particular Aboriginal culture over all others. A similar mistake was committed in the 1970s, when the movement of 'pan-Aboriginality' attempted to dissolve cultural differences through an Esperanto-style indigenous language. One of the movement's participants, John Bunby, has now returned to his Birri Gubba heritage. He emails, 'The people didn't want to give up their own language and culture. It is very difficult to transfer these languages from one country to another because they are so dependent on the landscape⎯the country from which they come.' We have a paradox. This attempt to re-orient non-indigenous identity in Aboriginal terms finds itself at odds with the heterogenous nature of the first peoples. Unlike the relatively homogenous Maori culture, Aboriginal peoples have quite separate languages. There is no one common term that would serve as a loan word for white people. There is a way out though. 'Balanda' is not the only term for white person. Each Aboriginal language has its own word to signify Europeans. Would it be possible to develop a federation of such terms? #### **Gubba, Kardiya, Migloo, Watjala, Goonya & Numeraredia** While other words lack the historical depth of 'Balanda', they help to flesh out non-indigenous identity. Many of these words are derived from the physical appearance of white people. *Kartiya* is a popular term around central Australia meaning 'white person', as is *munanga* in Arnhem Land. The Queensland term *migloo* means person of a different coloured skin. Among Nyungah in Western Australia, the term *watjala* is a pidgin version of 'white fellow'. The Arrernte also use the term *alherntere*, referring to the 'pink nose' of Europeans when they arrive at the centre (it is also communicated in their sign language with a first finger run down the nose). The other main locus of meaning refers to the supernatural. This includes the word for dead in Nyunga (*djanga*), Kaurna (*kuinyo*), and 'from the grave' around Adelaide (*pindi*), 'ghost' in Koori (*nanadji*), 'devil' in Kukatj (*kangeranger*) and Wanji Garrwa (*ngabaya*), or simply 'cold' around New Norcia (*nitin*). A word that combines both is *grinkari* (Ngarenyeri), which denotes the colour of pink flesh exposed when skin is stripped from a corpse. It is worth pausing for thought on the association between white persons and the dead. The Chinese also identify Europeans with the funerary colour white. In Maxine Hong Kingston's novel *The* *Woman Warrior*, Chinese Americans see themselves as living among 'white ghosts' (*gui*). While there is a literal correspondence between the pale appearance of Caucasians and the imagined colour of ghosts, this usage offers the opportunity to reflect on the invertebrate nature of the West. Are non-indigenous people ghosts in the sense of people without a chthonic tradition? Are they ghosts in the sense of moderns who have severed their roots in time, place and tradition in order to enhance their mobility? Like Faust, have Occidentals bartered their souls for the freedom of movement through time and space, leaving them existentially homeless, searching desperately for warm indigenous traditions within which they might gain some rest? Meaning is sought from without---from noble savages, children and artists. At least the identity of 'ghost' allows a moment of reflection on that inner lack. Part of the ghostly identity is reflected in the semi-pidgin terminology adopted by white people working with indigenous Australians. What are otherwise generic words become charged with special significance. 'Language' is not a medium all people use for communication; it is specifically Aboriginal languages ('They were speaking in *language*'). 'Business' in not a general work activity, it is sacred activity ('There's a lot of *business* this time of year'). And the word 'community' does not mean the non-official bonds linking people, it means Aboriginal townships ('I like to go up and visit a few *communities*'). While 'mob' is often used to identify distinct groupings of Aboriginal people, it can sometimes be used to signify white groupings ('The council *mob* are proving difficult'). What is happening in this use of language? Is it a kind of reverse colonisation, where Occidental concepts of non-commercial value lose their reference to Western culture and are appropriated for indigenous use? This reverse abstraction reflects the experience of living a secondhand Western culture. The forms by which settler Australians live, such as language, have been inherited from elsewhere, mainly England. Australians have little active role in maintaining those forms, unlike the smaller Aboriginal populations who can feel a collective responsibility for keeping their cultures alive. Imagine if English was only spoken by people in one small Australian town, which conducted its own obscure rituals of share trading. Perhaps they would be speaking 'language' and doing 'business'. White people are also known as 'ants'. It is not clear why the Pitta-Pitta and Wangka-Yutjurru in far west Queensland use this term (*thitha*). However, in the case of the Pitjantjatjara, ants (*minga*) have a literal reference to the line of tourists seen scampering up Uluru. In Western eyes, individualism is one of the qualities that distinguish Europeans from collective mentality of tribal peoples. What the Pitjantjatjara sometimes see, however, is the blind conformity of white society, by contrast with the loose organisation of their own. The most popular word among southeastern non-indigenes is *gubba*. This Koori word is conventionally understood to be a contraction of 'government'. The poet Les Murray has adopted 'gubba' to criticise a certain kind of white person who is associated with the cultural establishment: > To borrow a word from the hardest-pressed section of vernacular > Australia, they're all gubs. The term is derived from governor, and > refers to the most salient persistent characteristic of white men: > they try to run you, to change you, to rule you, and even when they're > nice to you, the bastards always know better.[^182] It is difficult to imagine how 'gubba' might be turned around to a positive, even neutral, form of identification for the non-indigenous. It appears to classify all by the actions of a few who have, or have had, immediate paternalistic contact with Aboriginal communities. Turning 'gubba' around is a challenge facing white Australians, much as repositioning 'queer' was for the gay community. Thus rather than any obvious candidate as Australian Pakeha, we have a virtual federation of terms for each of the continent's regions---Balanda (top end), Gubba (southeast), Kartiya (centre), Migloo (northeast), Numeraredia (Tasmanian), Watjala (west) and Goonya (southern). Using a framework of Aboriginal Australia, we might find way of articulating the differences that make up its non-indigenous population. This includes well-meaning but paternalistic *Gubba*, extrovert and cavalier *Migaloo*, caring yet ridiculous *Balanda*, busy and violent *Watjala* and head in the clouds *Kardiya*. Non-indigenous identity might fracture into the myriad of identities that constitute contemporary Aboriginal presence. Given the homogenising trends in the opposite direction, such a differentiated future may seem near impossible to imagine. However, it is a future that may make a difference in the mere positing. #### **Alice Springs Beanie Festival** To imagine an Australia where non-indigenous have a place within Aboriginal understanding may seem to require an idealism unavailable today. However, there are some contexts in which black and white Australia do come together with a degree of reciprocity. An annual event in the centre offers a taste of Australian Pakeha. The Alice Springs Beanie Festival was initiated by Adi Dunlop in 1998. Dunlop has been employed by the Education Department to conduct training needs analysis with communities. At first, beanie making was merely a device to help establish trust with a new group. Dunlop would bring along crochet hooks and wool to make beanies for her hosts. These crocheted head pieces are invaluable in the cold dry winters of central Australia. Eventually, beanie-making became an end in itself, as Adi Dunlop determined it would be better to teach these skills so women could make beanies themselves. 'As a bit of a joke', she decided to have an exhibition of beanies at Araluen Art Centre in Alice Springs. It proved a sell-out and a more formal competition was organised for the following year. Letters were sent to communities inviting entries, which arrived by the sack load. What became known as the 'Beanie Festival' included fashion parades and workshops. Unintentionally, Adi Dunlop had tapped into a cultural coincidence. To central desert people such as the Pitjantjatjara, the beanie is a traditional item of clothing that has its origins in pre-contact times. Head-dresses were woven from human hair and worn by senior men, who used them as receptacles for precious objects. This practice continues today, as Adi Dunlop explains: > There's a special reason for beanies. It is still the main way of > carrying precious items, like car keys, photos of grandchildren, > condoms and money. It is available for use at any time. Like you would > carry in a handbag. I've seen beanies taken off. They are a private > little pocket that no-one else sees. You might wear it for weeks > without taking it off. For non-indigenous, the beanie is popularly used in display of loyalties in the various football codes. Outside corporate boxes, 'going to the footie' is a pastime that plays with the idea of 'tribal loyalties' among modern city dwellers. Covered stands remove the necessity of protective clothing. The old working class rivalries of the inner suburbs, dramatised in battles between totemic figures such as Tigers and Lions, have been replaced by an allegiance similar to brand loyalty, with merchandising deals. The beanie is a displaced icon for both indigenous and non-indigenous Australians These Yappa and Kardiya beanie traditions come together in Alice Springs. While it can be miserably cold in winter, Alice Springs remains relatively dry. This combination makes the beanie an important accessory for all. Locals will still camp out in winter, despite freezing night-time temperatures. A beanie is a necessary complement to the swag in the 'six-dog nights' when the temperature gets down to minus ten. From this coincidence other themes have developed. The distinctive spiral that characterises the spine of the beanie has great significance for the many 'ferals' that gravitate to Alice Springs. Following an ethic that supports locally made clothes rather than cheap imports produced in sweat-shops, ferals give special significance to the origin of the beanie---where it was made and by whom. As the headgear has special significance in Western religions such as Judaism, so legend has grown that the beanie contains the special chakra that is emitted through the head. As a hand-crafted object, the beanie is a common thing to which indigenous and non-indigenous bring their own cultural traditions. It is in this kind of event that we might imagine Yappa working together with Kardiya---Yappa knowledge of the land with Kardiya fancies. #### **You can call me ... ?** Without 'Balanda', we are left with words like 'settler' or 'whitefella'. Both are flawed. 'Settler' is a generic term which privileges the early Europeans who cleared the land over than the post-war migrants who worked the assembly lines. And while uniquely Australian, 'whitefella' seems a blokey term, with overtones of vaudeville. In the end, the word chosen may not be as important as the process of selection. It seems an intrinsic part of becoming a republic and achieving reconciliation that a word is found to describe those whose ancestors settled in Australia within the past two hundred and ten years. Already, many Balanda are putting up their hands to be counted. Maybe in some future census, they will have the opportunity of nominating their particular place in Aboriginal culture. #### **Sources** The prospect that Australia might not have been colonised at all was the subject of the Making New Ground forum at the Canberra School of Art. Special thanks to Gavin Breen, Ann Carew, Peter Danaja, Adi Dunlop, Murray Garde, Sirtjo Koolhof, Campbell MacKnight and Andrish Saint Clare for their contributions. Margaret Clunies Ross, 'Rom in Canberra', in Stephen A. Wild (ed.), *Rom: An Aboriginal Ritual of Diplomacy*, Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1986. L. R. Hiatt, *Rom In Arnhem Land*, Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, 1986. Michael King, *Being Pakeha: An Encounter with New Zealand and the Maori*, Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985. Michael King, *Being Pakeha Now*, Auckland: Penguin, 1999. Sirtjo Koolhof, 'The "La Galigo": A Bugis Encyclopaedia and its Growth', *Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde* no. 155 (1995), pp. 362--387. Charles Campbell Macknight, *The Voyage to Marege: Macassan Trepangers in Northern Australia*, Cartlon: Melbourne University Press, 1976. Ian McIntosh, 'Islam and Australia's Aborigines?: A Perspective from Northeast Arnhem Land' *Journal of Religious History* vol. 20, no. 1 (1996), pp. 53--**770**. Ian McIntosh, 'Allah and the Spirit of the Dead: The Hidden Legacy of Pre-colonial Indonesian--Aboriginal contact in Northeast Arnhem Land', *Australian Folklore* no. 11 (1996), pp. 131--**380**. C. K. Stead, *Talking About O'Dwyer*, London: Harvill, 2000. Tony Swain, *A Place for Strangers: Towards a History of Australian Aboriginal Being*, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1993 ## **The Queen's Christmas Address from Australia, 2008** Dear People of Great Britain, I speak to you today from our new residence in the majestic Blue Mountains of New South Wales. It is an auspicious occasion, attended by particular regrets but also much gladness . Who could have foreseen that the roots of English tradition and history might one day be drawn up and transplanted to the other side of the world? Thanks to the foresight of our ancestors two centuries ago, the heart of the Commonwealth now finds fresh soil in the southern dominions. I cannot pretend that our present journey has not been accompanied by a great sadness. It was not easy to forgo the role as figurehead of your great nation. This was a responsibility that I had treated with seriousness and enthusiasm over the decades of my rule. Great Britain has matured. You are a diverse nation, and cannot be represented, albeit symbolically, by such a singular family as our own. We accept that, but are genuinely sorry to leave our dear friends and loyal subjects. We are most grateful to our new hosts, the Australian people. It was fortunate that this brave southern nation had carried its loyalty to the crown into the new millennium. At the end of the last century, many were calling for an Australian to be head of state. But the majority resisted, recognising that their constitution had passed the test of time. The 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne showed the world how Australia still embodies the spirit of our forebears. Now their steadfastness has been rewarded, and Australians can stand proud in the world as a nation that has one of its own as sovereign. One of the features we most treasure in our new home is the ethic of *justitia omnibus*---a 'fair go' for all. My family and I are particularly pleased at the restraint that has thus far been exercised by the local media. In particular, I would like to thank the Packer family for re-branding the House of Windsor. Baron James Packer and Sir Edward McGuire have offered our family a positive role to play in their extensive media outlets. In Australia, we no longer need fear the press. But our gratitude extends further than our current hosts. We are thankful to your government for allowing the sale of our family's treasures. Sitting as we are now, in this majestic landscape, it seems a fresh new chapter in the history of the monarchy has commenced. Just as my family\'s ancestors migrated from Germany to answer the call of the English people all those centuries ago, so we now respond to the needs of the fellows that have created a new English nation at the other end of the world. The purpose of our journey has been to preserve rather than sever tradition. You will be pleased to know that we have established a Royal Australian Museum, with branches in each of the states. The Royal Houses in Manjimup, Maranboy, Atherton, Windsor, Warrnambool, Barossa, Canberra and Queenstown have stimulated local economies. Indeed, we are told that tourism, particularly from the Asian region, has increased threefold since the establishment of these museums. We are also optimistic about the Royal House of Australian Wool. This new institution promises to realise the potential of the wonderful fibres grown in this wide brown land by designing unique Australian products, such as tartan suits and desert rugs. Indeed, we have been flooded with proposals to use our royal imprimatur for the support of local industries. Though we will necessarily be careful to uphold the standards associated with our family, we are happy to support the bold aspirations of our new hosts. It is in Asia that we feel our family has an important role to play as ambassadors, not only of Australia, but of the Commonwealth in general. For too long, Australia's standing in the east has been compromised by having a foreign head of state. We are already seeing signs of change. Prince William's recent visit to Indonesia has won for our country new friendships in the region. His study of the Koran and mastery of the Indonesian language has impressed his hosts. We are glad that relations with our northern neighbours are developing so well, and we look forward to realisation of a truly post-colonial Commonwealth which will include those who were once members of the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French and German empires, as well as our own. Prince Charles has also had great success in gathering parties together to formulate the first draft of a treaty with the Aboriginal peoples of this land, which will be presented at a referendum next year. Harry, Prince of Tasmania, has enjoyed setting up bush camps for troubled youth. Our family have never been more productively occupied. This coming year promises to be an *annus mirabilis*. Our family has a busy schedule of events planned for the royal houses. We would certain welcome you to partake in these celebrations and visit our new homes. This summer, we welcome your cricketers to our shores, will enjoy the friendly challenge of winning back the Ashes. May I, in this my sixtieth annual message to you, once again wish every one of you a very happy Christmas. And in energetic spirit of our young people, we say to you:, \'Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi,\' Queen Elizabeth I of Australia