Life on the West Island - Captain Cook and the camel

A recently published West Island book seems destined to enter the pantheon of accounts of Indigenous peoples of our nation which have caused us to reinterpret how we understand our history. Warra Warra Wai may well be destined to sit alongside The Fatal Shore, The Biggest Estate on Earth and Dark Emu (among others) as watersheds in West Island thinking.

The publishers describe Warra Warra Wai in these terms:

Both 250 years late and extremely timely, this is an account of what First Nations people saw and felt when James Cook navigated their shores in 1770. We know the European story from diaries, journals and letters. For the first time, this is the other side. Who were the people watching the Endeavour sail by? How did they understand their world and what sense did they make of this strange vision? And what was the impact of these first encounters with Europeans? The answers lie in tales passed down from 1770 and in truth-telling of the often more brutal engagements that followed.

Warra Warra Wai was researched and written by Darren Rix and Craig Cormick, who describe themselves as “a blackfella and a whitefella.” They write that …last year, one question took us on a 4,500km journey along the east coast of Australia. We knew the journey of Captain James Cook, but we wanted to ask what stories First Nations people tell about the coming of Captain Cook.

The book revolves around places and communities. Each chapter tells the story of a locality, or a landmark renamed by Cook, telling stories of its creation by dreamtime ancestors; of the long years of Indigenous life there before European invasions; and of dispossession, mainly by violent means.

One example comes in an early chapter of the book. It reveals that the double-peaked New South Wales mountain renamed Mount Dromedary by Cook was Gulaga to the Yuin people, who regarded it as their sacred mother mountain. The writers say that where Cook saw a camel sitting down, the Yuin people see a pregnant woman lying down, her head to the south, her feet to the north, facing the sea.

Rix and Cormack reported that they travelled from the tall forests of Gunai-Kurnai country in Gippsland to the now developed shores of Dharawal land around southern Sydney and to the bright calm blue waters of the Kaurareg in the Torres Strait, where we listened to the stories of how Cook had misread the land and how he had stepped ashore without the proper protocols. How he had stolen resources and tools. How he had often given inappropriate names to landscapes that already had names and deep stories relating to them.

We heard how different people thought the HMS Endeavour a giant pelican, or a cloud, and the Europeans on board were perhaps the spirts of ancestors returning. We travelled the same journey that the signal fires and message sticks travelled, all along the east coast, warning different peoples that this strange vessel was approaching their land and sea – and we listened.

Sometimes, we found First Nations stories about Cook – or indeed later explorers – did not always agree with what had been written in the journals. But this demonstrated to us how complex multiple interpretations of the past can be. This is particularly so for figures such as Cook, who also exists as a metaphor for colonisation and so features in stories of his harmful visits in many parts of the country that he never visited in written history.

We wish it were possible for more Australians to make journeys such as this, experiencing First Nations lives and culture in a deep way that not only helps them better understand this vast and magnificent country they live in, but also better understand First Nations people. To know the stories that have for too long been missing from our official history. One of the purposes of our journey was to fill in those blanks in our own minds – but we were perhaps unprepared for the emotive depth of personal stories that filled those blanks. It is an understatement to say that the journey was life changing – and we hope the book enables readers to share a little of what we experienced.

The title of the book is based on reports of what Indigenous people cried out to Cook and his crew as they attempted to land at Botany Bay in 1770 - warra warra wai! It has long been interpreted as ”go away,” but more recently it has been translated as “you are all dead spirits,” indicating that the local First Nations peoples may have believed that long-dead ancestors had returned.

Reviews of the book have mostly been positive, with some being warm in their praise. Monash University History Professor Marion Quartly, who is non-Indigenous, concluded:

The impact of Warra Warra Wai will clearly be strongest for people reading about their own localities. Readers who can see Mount Dromedary from their kitchen windows and recognise the pregnant mother Gulaga will be more readily moved to act than readers in the suburbs of Melbourne or Adelaide. But this is a national story, and for any reader its moral is inescapable. We the invaders must listen to the voices of First Nations people, walk with them, and not stand in their way.

So, as he voyaged along the east coast of the West Island, Cook renamed a large number of geographic features with European terms, taking no account of the names and legends associated with them in dreamtime legends and beliefs. Cook saw a camel, but First Nations inhabitants had a much more descriptive and colourful title and told a story almost as old as time. Warra Warra Wai gives us all the chance to share in stories such as this.