LEANNE'S 'DREAMING' ON SYDNEY HARBOUR - 7TH DECEMBER 2016

Standing on the outside of the Manly Ferry while sailing across Sydney Harbour, on the way back from Manly to Circular Quay, I gazed at the distant harbour side cliffs with their ragged browns, siennas and blackening shadows in the twilight of Wednesday evening.  I was thinking intently on their story and of the history of the surrounding landforms as well as the harbour.  I was imagining how some violent volcanic and/or earthquake eruption could have shaped the land in its first formations.  I was pondering upon the thousands of years this land was here since the beginning of time and then narrowed my field of thoughts and imaginings to the past 1-2 thousand years.  The scrublands, bushes and trees had grown over the tops of the cliffs and created a greener landscape that seemed to stretch along the harbour-side indefinitely.  As I looked at this land with intent and wonderment, given where my imaginings were taking me, an image of a tall dark aboriginal man holding a spear popped onto the scene on the cliff tops without my having even considered the human footprints in this place.  In that instance I felt like I’d connected with the ancients of this landscape, the ancients who stood tall and proud as they had lived for centuries off the abundance of life that was there around the Sydney Cove area.  I was touched with a pang of shame as I dropped my gaze and that shame I knew to be that of the white man who had robbed the original people of their land and culture in the last 200 years or more.  And at the same time I also felt in awe of what I’d just experienced on an inner level……a feeling of a deeper connection, just for a moment, to this ancient land and its people from so very long ago.