Explore I INDIGENOUS TOURISM
90
88-93_EXPLORE_INDIGENOUS TOURISM.indd 90
It’s rewarding when you see [the students] go on their own journey says. “It’s rewarding when you see [the students] go on their own journey.” It’s inspiring listening to both aunties yarn about how ventures
such as the café – as well as the rise of Indigenous tourism - uplift their communities by providing career opportunities. This halfday Indigenous experience, run by Splendour Tailored Tours (splendourtailoredtours.com. au), is one of a growing number of ways visitors can learn more about Australia’s Indigenous cultures. The sector received a boost last year following a Tourism Australia campaign promoting the variety of Indigenous tourism experiences throughout Australia – from the heart of big cities to the remote outback. The campaign’s centrepiece was a short film directed by Brendan Fletcher
PHOTOGRAPHY KATRINA LOBLEY, RED BANKS CONSERVATION PARK
U
nder the Sydney Harbour Bridge’s southern approach, Aboriginal elder Margret Campbell is cradling a tiny pot of ground ochre. As weekday traffic and trains rumble overhead, Aunty Marg, as she’s known, daubs the pale paste onto our wrists, connecting us to Mother Earth and the sandstone beneath our feet. Born at sunset on a bend of the Macleay River in New South Wales, Aunty Marg has 12 different ways of identifying herself – from her mother’s and father’s clans on the NSW mid-north and south coasts to her various animal totems – all of which link her into an extraordinarily deep network of kinship and connection. My eyes are drawn to the ochre symbols drying on her left arm. She tells our tour group what they mean after we travel to the harbour’s northern side to view the outlines of a whale and a man etched into a rock platform. We return to the Royal Botanic Gardens to get up close to the fig trees she considers “grandmothers”. At the base of one, Aunty Marg scratches those same mysterious symbols into the earth and tells her story – a tale that’s for our ears only. We finish the tour surrounded by more sandstone. The Gardener’s Lodge Café near the University of Sydney occupies a tiny building fashioned in 1888 from precisioncut sandstone blocks. Once used to house the university’s groundskeeper, the Victorian gothic structure fell into disrepair. Today, the café provides work for Indigenous people taking the first steps towards a hospitality career. Aboriginal elder, Beryl Van-Oploo (affectionately known as Aunty Beryl) is the café’s driving force. “We’re like a family here,” she
Sharing culture at Red Banks Conservation Park. CLOCKWISE FROM FAR RIGHT: Searching for pippis and hunting mudcrabs with Walkabout Indigenous Tours; Aunty Marg; and her ochre pot.
12/09/2016 2:57 PM