Ancestral voices

Out there is the Coral Sea: perhaps the most exotic, most evocative stretch of seawater on the planet. Heading out to the horizon there is the Great Barrier Reef, number one on my list to be ticked off before one of us dies. Me or the Reef. But it’s the wrong time of year. The weather is turning humid; the sea is full of jellyfish, never mind the possibility of crocs. You can still do the Reef but the locals are disdainful, and the dive-boat operators advise you to zip up in something kinky to ward off the stingers.

We’re much better off close to shore, among the mangroves. The stingers don’t get here, and the crocs stay away, for fear of the trailing roots. We are only going to be wading knee-deep, on the trail of Brandon Walker, whose mission is to teach us to spear-fish, as his Aboriginal ancestors have done here for millennia, long before Moses or Jesus, never mind Captain Cook.

Knee-deep, he said. Definitely. No one mentioned that it was the spring tide, highest of the month, or possibly the king tide, highest of the year. Trudging behind Brandon, the water got deeper and deeper. My pen floated off to join the vortex of Pacific plastic. A wave swamped my notebook, further endangering the accuracy of this account. Soon enough, the water was chest-high. “Now we know where the Aboriginal knee is,” said someone. Only the wit was dry. But by golly, it was fun.

Suddenly, Brandon spotted a flash in the turbid waters: a barramundi, most prized of all Australian fish. He missed. But then came a blue-tailed mullet. A direct hit. When we made it back to shore, he grilled it for our lunch, with lime and chilli.

This is Brandon’s ancestral home: the territory of the Kuku Yalanji tribe. These days it is better known as Cooya Beach, just north of the booming Reef resort of Port Douglas. But one of the few things that have not altered in Australia over the past two centuries is the fact that a beachfront home is first prize in the lottery of life. The coastal dwellers were bigger, stronger and fitter than their desert equivalents, which is not surprising. As well as the fish, they had the benefit of a cornucopia of local plant life.

Every plant we passed on the beach had a purpose, as Brandon explained: there was the umbrella tree, which cures toothache; the beach hibiscus stops you dehydrating; the beach lettuce soothes an eye infection; white hibiscus is for warts.

In his cool shades, Brandon Walker is not exactly a lost-in-the-past tribesman. Even his spear, traditionally tipped with a stingray barb, has been updated: this tip comes from the spoke of an old beach umbrella. But the Walker family – Brandon works with his brother Linc – is a repository of tribal lore (if not tide tables) that is vanishing fast from Australia’s degraded and demoralised Aboriginal communities.

This is not just arcane scholarship. It is worth knowing the difference between a looking-glass mangrove and a milky-sap mangrove, because the milky-sap can blind you. Somewhere in Australia or South America is probably the tree that cures cancer; it is very likely being chopped down as we speak.

White Australians have been slow learners. When they see the wait-a-while plant, they see a malevolent prickly vine whose purpose in life is to entrap them (it is especially hated by army recruits doing jungle training); aboriginals see a useful ally to help them catch tasty tree borers.

And now innovative tour operators are starting to create their own symbiotic relationships: working with talented local storytellers to pass on their knowledge to visitors, providing injections of cash to communities that have long been dependent on handouts, and stimulating interest in the barely discovered realms of this vast landmass. For too long, tourists – and Australians – have assumed that this country comprises five coastal conurbations, Ayers Rock, the Reef and 3m sq miles of stuff all.

In the Kimberley region of Western Australia, for example, a new set of waterfalls was discovered last year, up to 50 metres high. No white men had ever charted or, presumably, glimpsed them. Here in Northern Queensland, such an event is improbable, although new insects, plants or even trees would be a different story.

Perhaps only a thousand or so tourists a year make it all the way up the Cape York peninsula, the very tip of Australia: a week there and back is said to be a mad hurry. On our three-day trip we got as far as Cooktown, where the metalled coastal road runs out. We were still greeted on our return to Cairns like the early astronauts. Actually, even Cooktown can now offer a cracking dinner: blue salmon at Shadows restaurant. The area was too far north to be affected by Queensland’s devastating January floods or Cyclone Yasi.

And up here there are still waterfalls that feel undiscovered. There was Niau, which is on private land and has restricted access. It is awesome: what else can one say about a waterfall? Next day we went down the Bloomfield track to see the Bloomfield Falls, otherwise known as Wujal Wujal. The guide was one of the community leaders: Brandon Walker’s Auntie Frances. She represents a sad village, far more typical of Aboriginal Australia than Cooya Beach. It has been rebuilt by the state government, which appears to deserve the credit for pulling it round from total despair. Even so, Frances reckons that only a dozen residents out of about 500 have full-time jobs. As she showed us round and explained the significance of the water to their beliefs, a larger coach party showed up, getting their spiel from their white driver who was not too proud to admit when he didn’t know. “Is that an eastern water dragon?” he called across to Frances. I can’t remember the answer; I was too appalled by his asking. Later this year, the state’s investment is due to lead to the opening of a café and tourist shop, which means visitors, who do not use indigenous guides, might put some money into local pockets. As things stand, all they bring is their chutzpah.

It was Frances who best illustrated the difficulties that have always beset speakers of any of Australia’s 200 Aboriginal languages. As we peered into the limpid water below the falls, she explained that the Kuku Yalanji word for fish is “kuyu”. Say that to a member of the neighbouring Guugu Yimithirr tribe and it will be assumed you mean “breasts”.

The next day we met the most famous member of the Guugu Yimithirr, Willie Gordon. Willie is hardly an unworldly figure: a showman-cum-shaman, part Irish, which explains a lot, since he rests in the tradition of the Irish seanchai (storyteller) as much as in the local culture. He is well-travelled in Europe but knows his sliver of the earth better than anyone, and his daily delight (and his living) is to share it.

This involves a four-hour walk, which is less demanding than it might sound since he stops every few strides to point out something. The destination is the cave where his father was born in the 1930s.

Willie is a master storyteller and offers a wonderful exposition of the purposes and methods of Aboriginal art. He also has a robust attitude to some of the local tourist industry’s propaganda excesses. All that didgeridoo-dah stuff. “The dreaming?” he says. “That’s just a selling tool.”

“How old are these pictures?” he was asked when we reached his father’s birthplace to be greeted by rocks full of significant interpretations of life and death. He thought many dated back to his father’s childhood. The rough ochres that his ancestors used for the art faded with time, and often had to be redrawn. By the time he had finished, I felt I had taken the tiniest sip from the deep and mysterious well of knowledge that constitutes Aboriginal history. I still felt stimulated and invigorated, and desperate to keep learning.

We saw crocodiles, including the local celebrity known as “Scarface”, sunning himself on a sandbar in the Daintree River. We also saw a pair of cassowaries – father and chick. The cassowary is Australia’s second-largest bird (behind the emu). It wanders out of the forest only occasionally, perhaps for fear of being mocked. For a start, the cassowary has a cartoon-helmet on his head, and looks like a German soldier in some wartime television farce.

These two were unusually unperturbed – Terry, our driver, said he had never seen any cassowaries linger by the roadside so long. We got bored and went off before they did. But, like so much else on this continent, this bird is endangered by loss of habitat. “Buy Your Section of Paradise with the Cassowaries,” says one developers’ sign, blithely ignoring the fact that the very act of building destroys the natural balance that makes it paradise.

As a tourist, one is always conscious of the paradox. By being here, am I damaging what I have come to enjoy? This visit to Cape York – booked in London but operated by local, Aboriginal-owned tour companies – offered a way to ensure a riveting journey and a fairer division of the booty. More sensible travellers will leave enough time to snorkel the Reef too.

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Details

Matthew Engel travelled with Black Tomato (www.blacktomato.co.uk) which offers a three day “Cape York experience” for £1,199. He flew with Qantas (www.qantas.com) which offers returns from London to Cairns from £779. For further information on Australia and to plan your holiday now, visit www.australia.com