Everything, everywhere with everyone – where creativity and culture belong

As long as we remember them, they are still with us. Increasingly people I have known for a long time seem to be dying - once we went to parties, now we go to funerals. Earlier this year I was notified that a friend and mentor, Wallace McKitrick, who I seemed to have known over my whole adult life, had died. When I heard there was to be a memorial in Adelaide, I booked my flight straight away. There are some moments in this life you just can't miss.

As I flew I reflected that I’ve travelled around much of Australia, never realising that beneath the landscape flashing past, I was crossing from one country to another, with languages changing like the colour and shape of the grasses or the trees. The parallel universe of Australia's own original languages is an exciting world in which, after many decades of sporadic contact, Wallace and I finally caught up again.

Labour Day march, Adelaide 1984.

Many forms, one cockatoo
Wallace had many different forms, while underneath remaining true to himself, but also proving he was able to remake himself. He was most recently Wallace McKitrick. At one time – a long time ago – he was Peter Hicks, and at one stage, he was also Joseph the Talking Cockatoo.

Songlines – an ancient culture for a contemporary world

What interests me in exhibitions about Aboriginal Australia is what they mean for Australians generally, even if most Australians won’t ever see them. After a mere 220 years, in many ways we are still only part way through making our home here. We haven’t yet figured out how to navigate this land properly. When I was at school we learned about so many doomed explorers misinterpreting the country, unable to find their way. Burke and Wills were the perfect examples, undone because they were unable to learn simple lessons offered by the local people on how to make edible the vast supplies of food surrounding them. They starved to death in a field of plenty. It made me realise that we can gain a much richer grasp of Australia through recognising that First Nations culture and heritage is part and parcel of our own Australian heritage.

I knew that the exhibition ‘Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters’ at the National Museum of Australia Seven Sisters was getting close to the end of its run and I knew I definitely wanted to see it. However, like so many things, I discovered that it was only days away from finishing – and even then only because it was extended for a few days. I missed the accompanying virtual reality show because unfortunately that wasn’t extended. I’m told it was excellent.

Visitors view moving digital images of some of the many participants in 'Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters' before entering the exhibition.

Yet I did get to see the exhibition and I am very happy I did. I don’t know what it meant to Aboriginal Australians – I know from years working in the Indigenous cultural programs how much the maintenance and revival of culture and languages is valued. What interests me, though, is what an exhibition like this means for Australians generally, even if most of them won’t ever see it.

A mere 220 years
After a mere 220 years, in many ways we are still only part way through making our home here. We haven’t yet figured out how to navigate this land properly. When I was at school we learned about so many doomed explorers misinterpreting the country, unable to find their way.