SYDNEY’S SONGLINES
It’s about FIVE MINUTES into my Aboriginal heritage tour at Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden when I realize I’ve repeated the phrase “I don’t know” more times than I care to admit. My young guides, Kalkani Choolburra and Mikasa Donald, laugh every time I do. They should probably be offended that my knowledge of Australia’s indigenous culture—their culture—is so paltry. But as they tell me repeatedly, they’re here to educate, not judge. It’s a sentiment I hear from almost all of the Aboriginal tourism operators I speak to while researching this story: Why get mad about the past, they ask, when there is so much that can be done when it comes to informing the future?
Choolburra and Donald are two of 10 indigenous leaders at the Royal Botanic Garden who offer a glimpse into Sydney’s long Aboriginal history and the oldest continuous culture in the world—a fact few visitors have any awareness of. For two hours we wander together along the harbor foreshore, the pair pointing out ancient totems (natural objects, plants, and animals that are inherited by members of a clan as their spiritual emblem) including carvings of whales thought to be tens of thousands of years old—they appear all over Sydney. They then take me into the Cadi Jam Ora: First Encounters, a display garden planted with dozens of species of native flora, some medicinal, most edible. There’s lomandra, which Choolburra describes as “the corner store lemon myrtle, and mountain devil, the latter of which produces an abundance of sweet nectar that Sydney’s traditional landowners, the Cadigal (also spelled Gadigal) people, would suck from the flowers for a natural hit of energy.
