Tjapukai Cultural Centre

Day 8:

Candace and I in front of the Sydney Opera House

I started the day quite a bit earlier today to get to the Sydney airport and fly out to Cairns. This will only be the second day that I simply get to enjoy being in Australia and for the first time since I arrived some warm weather and sandy beaches hopefully. After arriving at the airport we were briskly picked up and shuffled to the Tjapukai Cultural Center to get an up close lesson about the aboriginal culture here in Australia. They first gave us a briefing of their Dreamtime beliefs. Their religion states that at the beginning of time here were two brothers. One, Damarri (excuse the spelling), liked to make the world more difficult. He was the one who gave the crocodile his teeth and as a result, lost his leg. He also created such things as lightning and poisonous plants to keep the people strong. The other, Guyala, felt that the people should have an easy way of life free of struggle. Due to the clashes between the two brothers, they battled with Damarri emerging victorious. From these two came all of the plants and animals we see in Australia today. After seeing Bundarru the Cassowary bird, Damarri gave him Gidiri as his home. Being a flightless bird, he blew down the nuts and berries from the trees to give him food. Damarri told his people that if they find a Cassowary egg not to touch it and to do a ceremonial dance to make it hatch.

Ceremonial dancing at the Tjapukai Cultural Centre

The Cassowary is now an important token in the Aboriginal culture, being honored by paintings and dances. The Cassowary is now known as the Father of the Aboriginal people, with the Rainbow snake appointed as the grandfather, and the moon mother. After that show we all tried our hand at boomerang and spear throwing. Here is when I found out that I would probably starve if that was my way of finding food. After we were shown other weapons that were commonly used including the hook boomerang and hand-carved sword. We were also shown some of the natural ingredients they used as medicine. Concluding our experience we were given a digeredoo demonstration. The digeredoo is considered the oldest woodwind instrument and is made from a termite ridden, hollowed out tree and native beeswax. Ending our day we tried some of the local seafood.