Dear all,

The songlines are a fascinating concept.

Among other things they are also a map of Australia from the aboriginal perspective.

In theory an aborigine can sing himself right across the land, from one end to another.

The song is like a mental map, a list of routes from one water hole to another, one piece of hunting ground to another.

When an aborigine is born, he inherits part of the dreaming, and this is his responsibility for life, to maintain the land that he inherits through his dreaming, the land sung into life by the ancestors.

When an aborigine goes on a walkabout, he is travelling to the end of his song. When he gets there, he will ask permission from the next person to borrow his dreaming, so that he can find his way across his neighbours dreaming. In this way, an aborigine can walk and find his way right across the continent.

These songlines criss-cross the land, and what is even more astounding is that an aborigine doesn't even need to speak the language of his neighbour. What is important is the melody, not the words, and the melody will tell the aborigine on the walkabout exactly what he needs to travel safely.

Each aborigine belongs to a clan, identified by a totem, each totem representing  a songline.

At times, clans are called together and each member sings their part of the songline in secret ceremonies, over which the elders of the clan preside.

The price of forgetting or getting their part of the songline wrong is severe, it can be death. It may seem harsh, but these songlines are more than just tunes, they are a mental map that has existed for tens of thousands of years.

They mean life or death.

People in the same family often belong to different clans, decided when the spirit opf the ancestor enters the young life stirring within the mothers belly.

The aborigines believe that they should preserve and maintain the land as it was when the ancestors had sung it into being, pristine and forever unchanging.

Then came the white man.

yechydda,