Welcome to My Country by Laklak Burarrwanga

Author:Laklak Burarrwanga
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2014-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

5

Walu, THE SUN

Moon and tides and sisters seven

It’s early December and we’re still sleeping outside; there aren’t any mosquitoes and there’s no rain yet either. But there is the first lightning and thunder, wolma. This lightning and thunder is sending out messages to other countries and other homelands, telling everyone – Yolngu, animals, plants – that the season of Barra’mirri Mayaltha is coming. That’s what you know as ‘the wet season’ – around December, January and February. Are you listening? Are you looking, smelling, feeling, tasting it? Quick, Bäru, this is a message for you too, don’t miss it. It’s very hot and humid during the day now, and we’re starting to sweat during the night.

The night sweating is a message telling us fruit like larrani, bush apple, is getting ripe.

When it’s the hot time like this, walu (the sun) dries everything out, makes the leaves fall down. Walu dries the grass. Walu makes it very hot, tells us to sleep outside, makes us sweat. We might use our rangan (paperbark) now as a cup, fold it over and use it to scoop up some water to drink and cool us down.

Walu tells us the time. Do you want to know the time? Look where walu is, look at the shadow, the shadow of the tree and the shadow of yourself. Or when it’s about two or three o’clock you might hear a garrukal bird (kookaburra) singing, telling you the time, telling you it’s nearly sunset. When the garrukal sings, the people remember that sunset is coming. This is the Dhuwa side of the story. Wärrarra is the Dhuwa sunset – djäpana is the Yirritja one. When walu sets it goes to the place where the people with yellow hair and light brown skin live; that’s where walu goes at wärrarra.

Walu is very important and everyone loves it because it brings light and warmth. We use the word walu in many ways. When your washing is wet you put it on the walu, the clothesline, to dry; when you walk all the way from another homeland, you walk through walupuy, daytime. When you fish or get ganguri you always know there is walu, time. Walu tells you when to do these things. We use walu to measure things too. When we were little girls we’d use the walu at sunrise on dharpa (wood, tree) to measure ourselves. So walu is the sun, walu is the day, walu is time. Walu is very important for Yolngu people; it is made by our ancestors.

Now, walu also tells us when it’s time to burn the grass. It’s the end of the burning time now. You drove down to Bawaka last night, didn’t you, in the dark? Did you notice all those fires burning slowly through the undergrowth? They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Did you see the rows of flames all the way down the hills? Djawa set those fires you saw last night. He was driving into town to get you and he saw the dry grass.

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