Mount Keira is a women's area and six sisters lived up there, the the six daughters of
Oola Boola Woo, the West Wind.
Each time he come home, the house wasn't clean, the kids never done what he told him
to do.
So there was one that was very naughty and very cheeky.
So he really had enough of it. So he picked her up on a piece of the mountain and threw her
out to sea.
Each time Dad come back and the daughters didn't do as they're told. And, you know, if
they were cranky or lazy or didn't do what they're told them to do, he picked another one
up and blew her out to sea.
All the people, their cousins and families from here on Hill 60, used to travel up to
see them up on Mount Keira.
They took them shell food and shells and stuff to do a bit of bartering.
Anyway, so because of their nastiness, Dad threw another daughter out to sea. And so
this happened to another two daughters. So becoming the five islands of Port Kembla.
It's a beautiful dreaming story, even though the dad blew them out to sea.
But eventually the daughters, even though they fretted they ended up turning in the
mermaids and they swim around the islands.
The daughter that was left up there, her name was Geera. And she fretted for her sisters.
So she sat in one spot on the mountain until she was covered by the leaves and the moss
and she became the top of the mountain which is now Mount Kiera.
So this is the abbreviated story of the five islands and how they were created.
This is representing Hill 60 and the Wadi Wadi people, we wanted to do the nation of
Wadi Wadi proud.
They were part of the Oola Boola Woo story. So, you know, their tribal people would have
probably told this story many times.
And so we wanted to include that because we do want people to know that there is
dreaming stories in the Wollongong area. And we're very proud of this.
So we hope that the Wadi Wadi nation feels privileged that it has been done for them.
Yeah.
This here is representing the daughters of the five islands.
This here is representing the connection between the areas along here, along the
coast, and the connection to the mountain.
We have some of the sealife that represent this area. You can still see them here this
morning actually, all the dolphins and that.
We've got the stingrays in because some of them are a part of the totems along with
the humpback whales.
So this is the women's symbol which is of the woman, the shape of the woman and the digging
sticks that represent them as the gatherers of the tribal people.
These here are like their meeting places. Some of these can be the men with the spears
and the meeting places as you can see, right along, right through the art.
And as you can see, we stretch the daughters right through, the daughters of the five
islands.
And so we included some of these designs here, which we class as our special places.
And we put them in symbolizing not only the coastal, but the special areas, because the
ocean was a special place to the Aboriginal people also because of our food system.
We included that so people know that it was a part of this area that was really, really
important to the Aboriginal people because it supplied so much good tucker.
In different seasons.
Yeah, yes.
We got the traditional hunting and gathering. And we got the stories acknowledging the East
Coast tribal people.
And these are some of our medicinal plants and sources of food.
And the special places I grew in.
The shoreline, our area of coastal fishing is our canoes.
So in this we got our canoes, our woven net is symbolized in here and the special places,
connecting to the past and the present also.
These here are canoes of the tribal people so, you know, the canoes we used.
Like in one of the other art pieces up the front it shows that we've got boats included,
so that was in the 50s.
But in this one are the traditional things.
These represent the leaves of our coastal plants, pig faces which has a fruit on it
that we ate.
And a lot of the shell foods and the shellfish that that we ate as well.
We got all the special places on here, because it is a special place.
And it still is today a special place.
And you know, we have big communities here now in Wollongong.
And it's good also for other people from other countries to learn the history of this
area along with our people, and our local people.
And you know, we're proud to have a history here.
We got the little hands in here. This is representing that generation after
generation.
This one here is showing our coastal communities, which we're still very
well connected with today. So you know, like the Coomaditchie community, Wadi Wadi people
were like the central area where people stopped over and we still do it today.
And so this is representing all their coastal areas of Aboriginal peoples or the
Aboriginal missions, from La Perouse right down to the border.
And we also put in like the black and white representation of it as well.
We have a few cultures in here and we wanted to represent that by not just the black
feet, but also, you know, the other feet there.
If you look at the art works, the one here, that we're on here, it's about the connection
of people here.
It's also about the foods, the traditional foods, that we ate that we still have today.
And I put in King Neptune's necklace there, because it's sort of symbolizing some of the
stories of the non-Aboriginal people also.
These here represent the meeting place, it's a big meeting place, not only for the
Aboriginal people from a long time ago, right up to today, but also the non-Aboriginal
people.
It's a very special area that we have here. And we wanted to make sure we included that
in the artwork as well.