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to the Yolgnu Morning Star song-‐line. Listening and learning from the landscape and custodians of that heavenly saltwater/freshwater place, I observed being in a living creation story. Its shape-‐shifting characters and narratives reflected the bright constellations dancing across the dark sky in the symbolically rich waters. Dancing the rhythmic movements of seagull, star, spirit, little bat and brolga on the soft white sand was like floating in golden stardust. The vivid intensities of that place are a different reality from living in regional NSW. The strong kinship laws, respect for elders and family/community ethics reminded me of being in Java. I have been adopted by the Marika family and my skin group is Galikali and clan Rirratjingu. My given name is Murukun. Meaning morning glory flower, I initially identified with this plant as a noxious weed, often banished during local Coastcare gatherings. Questions revealed the purple flower to be significant in the Morning Star ceremony as it blossoms with the morning light and recalls connections with Asian ancestral spirits. Murukun symbolizes listening to the land as the plant’s green vines hold the sand dunes together. I feel the heartache of the Yirrijta and Dhuwa custodians as their land and waters have been ravaged and poisoned by bauxite mining. Many sicknesses initiated by colonial governance continue to cause untimely death and destruction. The Yulngu continue with great heart to sing, dance and paint the patterns of environmental and cultural regeneration. The community is grieving and lamenting for the health and security of their sacred land, with so much sorry business to attend to. The notion of Aboriginal Dreamtime is a time out of time, a time hidden beyond and within the manifestation of the land and its flora and fauna, the earthly sleep, out of which the visible landscape continuously comes into presence. When walking and dancing in familiar and new places, I endeavor to tune into animate energies of the environment and become attentive to the elemental influences of the resting spirit ancestors. The experiential circular time of oral culture has the same shape as perceivable space. Time is experienced as the succession of seasons, the rotation of crops and migration of animals. Space too is known through circular trajectories that travel landscapes with wind directions, currents and tides, or in ceremonies as the sung repetitions of place names. Dawn and dusk frame my time on Earth in sure cycles -‐ earth orbiting sun and moon orbiting earth during days, nights and years. I draw on social and ceremonial values of ‘dance as a cultural practice’ to unearth contemporary relevance for the traditional beliefs I embrace, to nurture experiencing truth and knowledge through perception. ‘Aboriginal peoples interpret awareness, or ‘mind’, not as a power that resides inside their heads, but rather a quality that they themselves are inside of, along with the other animals and the plants, the mountains and the cloud.’ [2] -‐ David Abram