Krowathunkooloong The Keeping Place, Bairnsdale
Gratten Mullett reveals the history and heritage of the Gunai/Kurnai people. Share their creation story and learn of the cultural importance of the Keeping Place in Bairnsdale, a sacred site on the Gippsland Lakes.
For more information visit the website:
Bairnsdale Caming Trip Site Set Up Time Lapse
This is our Site Setup video in Bairnsdale near Eagles point.
Gordon Syron The Keeping Place
This documentary tells the story of the ongoing campaign to save the 547 artworks now valued in The Keeping Place, Redfern.
Indigenous Director: Martin Adams
Indigenous Producer & Sound: Jason De Santolo,
DOP & Editor: Fabio Cavadini,
Narrator: Amanda King
Thank you to Prof Larissa Behrendt, (recently named Indigenous Person of the Year) and Adam Hill, artist & activist..
Water levels peak in Bairnsdale
Floodwaters have peaked in the eastern Victorian town of Bairnsdale with houses avoiding the damage that has affected other parts of the state.
4WD being retrieved from Mitchell river Bairnsdale 2013
to view better picture view it on a computer cheers, i had to stretch the image a little for better viewing
Callan Mckeon Bairnsdale 2018
Callan Mckeon Bairnsdale 2018
VMSA Squash Bairnsdale v2 2012
VMSA Squash Bairnsdale v2 2012
Bairnsdale Riverside Holiday Park - Bairnsdale, Victoria
Our Mother Tongue: GunaiKurnai
This is a story about a dynamic group of women who are reviving the GunaiKurnai language throughout East Gippsland in Victoria: Lynnette Solomon-Dent, Dr Doris Paton and Hollie Johnson.
Dr Paton explains that not everything in her language can be directly translated into English. There is no single word in Gunai for ‘tree’. The word they use to name a tree will depend on the food it yields, what species it is and what cultural and medicinal function it might serve. Born of some of the world’s greatest environmentalists, it makes sense that the Gunai language expresses the intimate knowledge its interlocutors share of their natural world.
‘Language isn’t just about speaking, it’s your whole way of life,’ explained Lynnette Solomon-Dent. ‘It tells you what’s in the country, what the stories are, what your obligations are to each other.’ Unpack a single word and you can start to understand a system of kin relations and cultural obligations that are still alive and well. The word for ‘mother’ doubles as the word used for Lynnette’s sisters. If anything happened to Lynnette, her sisters would automatically become mothers to her children. It’s all there in the language.
The scope of words we have and use reveals a lot about what we care about, where our attention lies and what kind of world we live in. In the Arrernte language of Central Australia, there is a single word for ‘the smell of rain’ and for ‘debris from trees floating, left over from a flood’. The Yindiny language spoken south of Cairns has highly specialised terms for noises. ‘Ganga’ means ‘the sound of someone’s feet approaching’ and ‘yuyurungul’ means ‘the shushing noise of a snake sliding through the grass’. Pitjantjatjara has no words for numbers beyond three, but like Gunai and countless other Indigenous languages, it contains extremely complex vocabulary surrounding kinship relations and natural phenomena – right down to describing types of lightening and the spectrum of colours in the sky.
A language can bring you into a community or it can keep you apart from one. Anybody who has travelled in a foreign country without a grasp of its language can attest to the bewildering sense of disconnection from the people, landscape and culture. Words can help you see beyond your peripheral vision. Dr Doris Paton hopes that Australians will turn their heads to embrace the many different languages and countries we have on board our great big island, and all the little islands surrounding it. ‘[Our languages] are quite distinct like in Europe, and that sharing of language also shares knowledge, as it does in European languages.’
The biggest difference is that unlike the majority of European languages, our Indigenous languages are vanishing at an alarming rate. Across the country, people like Doris, Lynnette and Hollie are racing against the clock to revive their ancestral languages, protect over 40,000 years of knowledge and offer all of us the opportunity to better understand this country and its Indigenous caretakers, from the inside out.
Feel free to share your response to the film or the ideas in this blog, using the ‘feedback’ form below. For more background on the GunaiKurnai language and culture of East Gippsland, check out a fantastic article with audio links by ABC Open Producer Rachael Lucas on some local GunaiKurnai place names and click here for a great yarn about a recent canoe-building building project in Gippsland, led by Gunai elder Uncle Albert Mullett. Check out other documentary films produced as part of the 'Our Mother Tongue' series here.
Please note, the Australian Aboriginal Languages map featured in the film is just one representation of many other map sources that are available for Aboriginal Australia. Using published resources available between 1988–1994, this map attempts to represent all the language or tribal or nation groups of the Indigenous people of Australia. It indicates only the general location of larger groupings of people which may include smaller groups such as clans, dialects or individual languages in a group. Boundaries are not intended to be exact. This map is NOT SUITABLE FOR USE IN NATIVE TITLE AND OTHER LAND CLAIMS. David R Horton, creator, © Aboriginal Studies Press, AIATSIS and Auslig/Sinclair, Knight, Merz, 1996. No reproduction allowed without permission.
ABC Open Producer: Suzi Taylor
This video was originally contributed to the ABC Open Mother Tongue project, which invited Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to share a story about their mother tongue.
St Marys Church, Bairnsdale, Victoria
St Mary's Church, Bairnsdale, Victoria is unique in Australia, with a decorated interior that has brought hundreds of thousands of visitors to Bairnsdale, the commercial center of the renowned Gippsland Lakes.
St Mary's is acknowledged by the National Trust as one of the most remarkable red brick Roman churches.
Sadly, considerable restoration is required and this video identifies some of the much needed repairs.
It falls to us now to preserve this building for those who will follow in our footsteps.
St Mary’s needs your help to restore and maintain it's historic Church building.
Smoke plume from Bairnsdale fires getting closer to Bairnsdale
Jambi - Part One
This is the remarkable story of Jambi O'Rourke the sole survivor of a massacre at Butchers Ridge in remote East Gippsland, the Irish settlers who rescued him. An extraordinary tale of reconciliation is told by the Aboriginal and Irish decendants Aboriginal basket weaver Elaine Terrick and Grazier Ken Hodge.
Film by Vincent Lamberti, 2013
Copyright Fringe Dweller Films & NITV
This film forms part of the Black Post White story on the Culture Victoria website:
Bairnsdale nov 22 by Jeanette Severs
Bairnsdale
Bairnsdale is a city in East Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. Bairnsdale has an urban area population of 11,820 with 5,576 Males, 6,244 Females and a median age of 42. The city is a major regional centre of eastern Victoria along with Traralgon and Sale and the commercial centre for the East Gippsland region and the seat of local government for the Shire of East Gippsland. Bairnsdale was first proclaimed a shire on 16 July 1868 and it was proclaimed as a city on 14 July 1990.
The origin of the city's name is uncertain. It would have almost have certainly been Bernisdale, with Bernis-dale originating from Bjorn’s dale, or glen which indicates the Viking origins of the Skye Village. Legend has it that Macleod was impressed by the number of Children on the run, the children of his stockmen, that he called it Bairns-dale, or valley of the children.
In 1876 the Bairnsdale Shire, which went on to become one of the largest in Victoria in the 1880s, was led out of administrative chaos by former shire auditor and shipping agent Herman Bredt. He had also acted as a mine manager for the nearby Sons of Freedom mine. German born Bredt was the father of Bertha Bredt who married the famous Australia poet and writer Henry Lawson. Prior to this she had worked at the Bairnsdale Hospital. In this period the Main Street was fashioned but was unsealed thereby causing extensive problems of dust in the summer and mud in the winter. Asphalting didn’t take place until 1883. Nicholson Street was formed in 1877 and MacLeod Street followed in 1879.
Meetup at Mendy's in Bairnsdale, VIC
Andrew Cohen's global evolutionaries meetup in Bairnsdale, VIC
Left for Wolves = Bairnsdale - Frezza 16/08/2013
Bairnsdale-Frezza 16/08/2013
Premier Brumby opens Patties Foods $21M plant extension in Bairnsdale
The Premier of Victoria, The Hon John Brumby MP, officially opened Patties new $21 million plant extension at Bairnsdale (vision courtesy WIN TV)
The Keeping Place
Art works from Gordon & Elaine Syron at Vanishing Point art gallery Newtown 11/7/2013
Intro from Jeff McMullen
Seeing the land from an Aboriginal canoe
This short documentary film explores the little known contribution Aboriginal people made in colonial times by guiding people and stock across the river systems of Victoria. It features interviews with the historian Associate Professor Fred Cahir and Traditional Owners Uncle Bryon Powell, Jamie Lowe and Rick Nelson.
Directed by Jary Nemo.
Produced by Lucinda Horrocks and Jary Nemo.
Copyright Wind & Sky Productions, 2015.
This film forms part of the Seeing the Land from an Aboriginal Canoe story on the Culture Victoria website:
Participants from Bairnsdale Secondary College