yaama waabi, hello baby
I’m coming to you in English because the tall ships’ memory is still in my psyche, and in the time when I was born in 1992, this lingo was the first language for most of us on the east coast. Even when my youngest granddaughter passed over, they were still speaking in English.
Because of how often I watch and listen to you from up here, I am becoming fluent in our Gamilaraay mother tongue — something I always wanted to achieve in my own lifetime. Whereas before, I was translating everything you said back into English. My Indigenous thoughts no longer have to be translated, and for that my little grannie, I feel more restful than I ever have.
I felt called to write to you now, in the year 2200, after we spoke in your dream last week — where you called me into your clear mind and your strong body. In your yearnings to know me better, I do something very old: I write you a long letter.
Because of where my daughter was born, you’re connected to the gulayaali. But I am still bigibilla because of my grandmother six generations ago, and also for the wirayl — the echidna quill — because I’m a writer. I am close to echidna, because the wirayl still sits inside my foot. I am bigibilla because she is a mother of pups and the houdini of the bush. I hope the stories you’ve heard of me live up to these expectations bub.
When I was born, I was covered in brown hair — my head, my shoulders, my forehead, even my feet. I remember when my daughter was born, she was the same: a crying, hairy little angel. The vernix that licked her fresh skin was pink with a mix of my blood and biome, which now sits in the soil and the tree you visit on our grandmother Biddy’s Country, on southern Gomeroi homelands.
Baby girl, in nine big moons’ time, I’ll watch you birth your sixth guyaangul-djuul with all the girls around you and I wish I was the one there catching your baby and rubbing him with gurruwii. Our songs have survived these generations — where everything was coming back — and I’m gonna make sure it’s there for you in the wind on your big special night.
In 2022, I joined a powerful clan of women reviving birthing on Country practices within Yuin Country. Back then, that reshaped this continent, my girl — don’t forget what women have done, for you now to birth your babies in peace, in land, in water, in spirit, and in sovereignty.
I remember seeing that change in 2027, all those years ago, with the first of our birth centres. It was the first time I really felt the future was going to be okay for you, bub.
One hundred and seventy-five years later, and now our babies thrive well past the first 2000 days, entering classrooms not only with their pride, but with a huge welcoming presence from the people in there who value them.
In 2059, I watched the helicopters drop masses of mangrove seeds down onto Country for the regeneration of our waterways. That was David Unaipon, long before me — and his technology of flight path and the returning boomerang. The seed collection — well, that was our generation. My mum, and lots of others, taught me how valuable the mangrove seed would be, and that’s why we kept them.
That began the regeneration in Warra, where me and your great aunties and uncles were grown, as the second generation of our family living off Country — where our saltwater Murri line began.
All the land and sea animals have come back now, hey bub. The ones in the ocean near to where you live have colours so vibrant we can see them from the clouds on a still day. By nighttime, we sit up here and watch the bioluminescence sway them in glitter-storm tides. They light up like dancing water trees under the glassy surface, and I sit up here with my cuppa. When I was your age, the seasons were still all mixed up. But now that everything is almost restored to rhythm, I know when to come and watch you take your babies down to the beach in the early evening. When they scream in joy at being the first ones to see the plankton, we hear it all the way up here. I receive noise complaints — that’s your mob, Lulu.
