Aunty Carol’s new ‘child’ at home in Kwoorabup Park

Patricia Gill, Denmark Bulletin

Gnudju Menang Elder Aunty Carol Pettersen felt like a proud parent at the opening of the Genestreaming Journey Sculpture at Kwoorabup Park on March 8.

She and artist and fellow project founder Ben Beeton were, at last, after eight years, endowing the sculpture to the people of Denmark.

Overall, the project involves nine sites across the South West blending traditional indigenous knowledge and western science to tell the story of the region’s ecology and evolution.

The Kwoorabup Park sculpture is part of a trail in the region and expanding national trail.

The 3-D model of an evolutionary tree comprises two sculptures that work as one.

The outside of the sculpture – songlines sculpture features the work of indigenous artists of the region.

The inside – genestreams sculpture – is a phylogenetic tree of selected regional species, which speaks of the ecology, geology and deep time history of the region.

This has involved scientific illustrators and artists plus photography and ecodyeing.

At the start of the Genestreams of Gonwanda Link project, Aunty Carol was mourning the loss of the conversation about songlines and these had seemed to be disappearing and had become understood as mythical.

This was not in the mythical sense as a ‘high power’, but mythical as a make believe.

This was despite Aunty Carol and her people knowing that the songlines were real.

After some meetings with Ben and perusing Dr Noel Nannup’s map of songlines, Aboriginal Journey Ways Map, the project was underway.

Early in the project, Ben had asked Aunty Carol how she knew what the songlines were about.

A ‘songline’ describes the features and directions of travel that were part of a song to be sung and memorised for the traveller to know their way to a destination.

Some are referred to as ‘dreaming pathways’ because of the tracks forged by Creator Spirits during the Dreaming.

“It was about the land singing,” Aunty Carol said.

“When I hear my family singing, that really strikes me.”

In discussion with Ben, Aunty Carol spoke about reference points like the mountains, rivers, and flora and the fauna.

Her plant totem, tallerack, Eucalyptus pleurocarpa, was endemic from Denmark to Israelite Bay.

“Once that’s no longer there, I know that I’m outside of my country,” she said.

Over 15 years Ben has worked on 35 artist-in-residency projects in partnership with conservation and ecotourism organisations.

These have focused on the ecology, geology and the deep time history of natural systems.

He has developed a gene streaming toolkit for modelling the ‘tree of life’ which he now uses for the Gene Streaming Journey public art initiative.

Biologists use this graphic tool to portray evolutionary relationships among plants, animals and all other forms of life.

Ben said the Tree of Life was not peripheral to daily life, although in many cultures it had become so.

Gene streaming allowed humans to be seen as just one life on this planet.

A gene pool was a snapshot of a species in time but if that gene pool was put on top of the next gene pool, then the next generation, then the next, the result was a gene stream flowing through time.

“And it’s not just a story that finishes here; it’s going to continue on for billions of years as it’s been travelling through space and time for billions of years,” Ben said.

“And that’s what this sculpture is really about.”

This article appeared in the Denmark Bulletin, 20 March 2025.