Captain Cook, when he sailed up the coast, he's got his diary, and he wrote down all
his stories about his travels, yeah, and where he's been.
We also have our stories, but it's not written down.
We seen him, when he sailed in the Endeavour, and the old people remembered him, and they
handed stories down.
We was taken to them places and shown them stories.
Where we are, we're in Djiringanj Yuin country, and we've got two sacred mountains.
Gulaga – she holds a lot of creation stories.
And Biamanga, where laws and ceremonies come from.
And being where we are, with our two mountains, we had to allow other different mobs to come
down, come through country, and go and do ceremonies.
There was big bunaans, corroborees, and there would have been an abundance of food, and people.
When Captain Cook, James Cook, sailed up the coast there, we watched him.
And when our old people seen him, they were wondering, what is that?
'Minjajin, look there, what's that?'
'Cause we didn't see something so big, and white, swimming on water.
And the only big things we see swimming on water is birds, budjans.
And he was shaped sort of like Gurung-gubba, the pelican.
So our old people thought that he might have been one of them big budjans coming back,
back from the Dreamtime.
'Cause when we talk about Dreamtime, we talk about it as one time.
And when we do ceremonies, we go back into that one time.
All the old people, they all started lighting fires, putting the smoke signals up to look
out here, minjajin.
Yanaga, minjajin.
To look out in the gadhu, what's that big pelican?
Now, with the story of the pelican, Gurung-gubba, he's a real greedy fella.
So when you're fishing, he'll come and steal your fish.
And he'll keep on taking your fish, so you had to watch him.
So, just the same as us watching him when we're fishing, we had to keep an eye out on
that boat.
'Cause if he's a big pelican, we don't know what he's going to do.
He might take off that water, come in, and scoop all us up, all the people.
Little did we know that, eventually, this big bird would sail in, and he did eventually
scoop up everything and steal everything off us.
Cook sailed past and he names our sacred Mother Mountain, Mount Dromedary.
And Dromedary is a camel.
All our mob, no matter where we are, we look at the mountain, we always see a woman laying down.
Even when you're out on the ocean there, you see a woman.
The real name for the mountain is Gulaga.
Gulaga means Mother Mountain.
She gave birth to all the Yuin people.
Gulaga to us is as sacred as Uluru is to the Mutitjulu mob out there, in the desert.
If there was no mountain, Gulaga, there wouldn't be any Yuin people.
Not only the Yuin people, but human beings.
That's where we come from, and when we take our journey, that's where we'll be going.
For a man to be sailing up the coast, and look at our Mother Mountain, and call her
a camel, is the biggest insult for a lot of our people anyway, or for me, anyway.
How would I describe my connection to land?
I'm like this tree, I'm rooted down in the ground.
Done ceremony for the land.
I am the land, I'm not part of it, I am it.
The pelican, he did eventually come in and scoop up everything and take the lands, steal
all the children, put his name on the mountain.
One thing he couldn't take away from us was that connectedness that we have to our mother
mountain, Gulaga.
And that goes for all the Yuin people, all up and down the coast.