Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin

Noongar man Larry Blight can feel the presence of spirits at culturally-significant sites and experiences a racing heart in those for ‘women’s business’.

The Koorumdinup (Mt Hallowell) traditional owner says the granite outcrop sends spiritual signals of Pibbulmun men’s business due to phallic-shaped rock formations.

Likewise, female-shaped landforms such as Warriup Hill 100km east of Albany was shaped like a women’s breast with a nipple and was significant as a women’s business site.

While visiting a site near Styx River for research purposes with another Noongar man recently, Larry and his companion felt they could venture no further.

The site was sheltered with overhanging red gums, a rock pool and thick moss surrounding it.

“I stepped in and my heart started racing big time,” Larry said.

His companion had experienced the same earlier and had wanted to test it out on Larry.

“It was definitely a place of women’s business – possibly a birthing place,” Larry said.

Larry was speaking at a Denmark Environment Centre-presented field trip at Koorumdinup on November 7 along with professor of biodiversity at the University of WA, Stephen Hopper.

Steve described Mt Hallowell as ‘an evolutionary laboratory’, the rock formation dating back to 1.1 billion years and once part of the Albany/Fraser orogen shared with Antarctica.

“This is a venerable habitat – some of the mosses and invertebrates are about 400 million years old,” Steve said.

“Some mosses are global and some plants are only known to occur on Mt Hallowell while the flowering plants are a more recent addition.”

The area shows evidence of human activity from 48,000-52,000 years ago and artefacts for tool making such as adzes, axes and spearheads have been found.

Larry says many have been brought in from other areas, including red ochre only used in men’s business ceremonies.

Other ochres – yellow, pinks, white and brown – could be found along Wilson Inlet.

“This leaves an imprint that people have been using this area for many thousands of years and we still feel their spirits,” he said.

Field day participants were shown a lizard trap which Larry says are in fact lizard ‘homes’ or ‘shelters’.

Studies show the Noongars had been ‘farming’ the reptiles for thousands of years.

Larry’s family rates tiger snake, (norn) and racehorse goanna (karga) as ‘top of the tree’ for palatability while the king skink is not favoured.

He described the flesh of the tiger snake and the racehorse goanna as the Noongars’ KFC, a cross between pork and chicken and the same colour as duck meat.

Only some individuals, mostly women, were trained in snake handling, and Noongars would never eat a venomous snake which was killed by a white person.

“If you hit it on the head the poison can go two ways,” Larry said.

“You have to grab it by the tail and snap the head so the poison goes out then cut it behind the poison sacs below the throat.”

Larry has not tried to eat king skinks saying they have a bite like a crocodile’s. “They are all muscle, rip and tear and roll,” he said.

Steve recalled talking to Denmark-raised Menang elder Lynette Knapp how her people would ‘mine’ for lizard traps by tapping the surface of granite with spears.

They would hear a hollow patch in the ‘exfoliating’ horizontal-fracturing rock and would tap an segment about 1sqm with stone axes.

After asking everyone to clear the area, the people would light a fire on the tapped out rock cracking it apart to form the trap.

“It was risky – granite explodes easily,” Steve said.

Larry spoke of people removing rock from a culturally-significant spots.

“Unfortunately, the shapes are right for retaining walls and stone buildings but they have been here for as long as the site has been used,” Larry said.

Pink sandstone at a site near Quaranup near Albany had been removed despite signage warning of fines and cultural sensitivity. The signs had been removed soon after they had been erected.

A big piece of pink sandstone had been removed along with other objects.

The pink sandstone was not found in the Quaranup area but Noongars had brought it there from the Stirling Range.

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 25 November 2021.