International Herald Tribune While Australia burns Iain McCalman Sunday, March 4, 2007
CANBERRA: This summer, Australia feels like a war zone. Cities and towns across the country are enveloped in a perpetual smoke haze, and the braying of fire sirens is as commonplace as birdsong. Every evening television commentators deliver grim-faced reports from the front lines. Tired farmers look dazedly into the camera. Firemen with soot-smeared clothes and chili-red eyes shake their heads and mumble that they have never known anything like it. As with every modern war report, helicopters make a ubiquitous backdrop. They dip down in front of shrinking reservoirs, then stagger toward the fire front, their water pouches swaying marsupial-like underneath their bellies. "Why? Why, Kamarrang?" asks a tall, slightly stooped Aboriginal man from western Arnhem Land in the far north of Australia. He is Bardayal Nadjamerrek, an elder of the Mok clan, and he is talking to a grizzled "white fellah" named Peter Cook, an ecological scientist. They are discussing the disappearance of whole groups of animals from the plateau of Nadjamerrek's youth. He repeats the question, this time looking upward to address the "Old People" — his ever-present ancestors — with whom he habitually discusses such issues. This scene opens a nearly completed film, "Fire in the Land of Honey," of which I'm a producer. The work of the filmmaker Kim McKenzie, it is one of a trilogy of documentaries about Nadjamerrek and his native land, which his people call Ankung Djang. Collectively, the films will tell how some 50 years ago the Aboriginal people left this vast plateau, the size of Belgium, drawn by the lure of money, tobacco and other novelties offered by distant buffalo camps, mines, stock stations and missions. Today it is a lost world, emptied of people but filled with rock paintings so intricate, ancient and beautiful they take your breath away. He is among the last people to grow up on the plateau, to know its lore and habitat, and to speak its languages. He has returned to Ankung Djang with his wife, Kalkiwarra, because he has a task. It is to show his own grandchildren, as well as Peter Cook and other scientists, how his people used to look after the country long ago. He is also telling McKenzie, the filmmaker, all that he remembers of the history and culture of this ancient place. They are recording his knowledge because otherwise Ankung Djang will cease to have a history. Nadjamerrek is over 80, and his memory is getting shaky; names and places are starting to fade like the old trails he traveled as a young man to gather spear-making materials. But his most urgent quest is to find out why his country is out of kilter. Since his people left half a century ago, fire — a staple tool of Aboriginal life — has turned into an uncontrollable monster, careering across the landscape, devouring the plateau's trees, plants, birds, animals and insects (including Nadjamerrek's beloved native bees). In truth, none of us can really answer his question: "Why?" We do know the controlled-fire regimens that Aboriginal people practiced for millenniums to nurture the land must be reinstated. But, like Nadjamerrek, we also suspect something larger is going on — we fear that Australia's soaring heat, vanishing water and rampant fires are connected to larger global patterns of climate change. Thankfully, we Australians at least have Bardayal Nadjamerrek and the Old People to advise us; the rest of the globe is not so lucky. -- Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright
