My name is Aileen Moreton-Robinson And I’m a Goenpul Joondal on my grandfather's
side.
And Stradbroke is where I grew up.
I was raised by my grandparents out at Moopi which is One Mile.
We’re on the back track to Lake Burmeer.
This is the women’s lake on the island and as a child we would walk from One Mile through
the valleys right to the track; use to cut around the ridges and come out on this road
here and we would walk with my grandmother and this place is fundamentally the Women’s
lake where the Djargun lives.
You see down here where the lake used to be when I was a child and where it is now.
It’s pretty devastating, I guess, to see how far it's reduced.
Basically, when I was a kid, the water was up here, right up here.
And in that time, it's just gradually receded.
And of course in that time, you didn’t have groups like this or kayaking or busloads of
tourists here.
This was very much seen as our place.
And the place that we are here is the women’s lake.
But it’s not been an exclusive lake you know, as long as you have permission from
women or women bring you and proper singing out is done.
Then it’s a place where you can come and be introduced to the country and that way
you are actually accorded the safety of the country.
I used to come here as a little girl with my grandmother and we’d all have to sit
down.
She would throw a quartz stone and she would sing out and announce who we were and wait
for a sign before we would move to come down to the lake.
And then she would take us and we would stand in the lake with her.
And these places are all alive you know like as a child my grandparents schooled in us
that everything was alive and that we were watched all the time and therefore we had
to behave appropriately.
So to grow up in a world in which you see everything thing as being alive and has a
place and has a right place to be here is different from seeing it as a place that like
this lake now, you know, its for tourists.
I also think about what my grandmother would think if she saw this now.
There’s two sovereignties that are prevailing - and that is the non-indigenous tourists
who are here to have pleasure in partaking of the swimming in this beautiful lake and
learning a little bit about you know trees and that, that grow around it and in general
just having a fun time.
And that then gets contrasted with my belief system that I come here and see this place
differently.
What makes us different is about our beliefs and relationship to land and if we don’t
continue those traditions and we don’t pass that on, then what is it that we become?
Teaching our children in modernity what it is to be an aboriginal in modernity is not
about throwing away the very things that make you indigenous but the land which you are
in and of.
Because this is our land, it always will be and it always was.