SONGLINES THROUGH THE PILBARA

ALL OVER AUSTRALIA, ANCIENT PATHWAYS criss-cross the earth. I imagine them shining like quicksilver in the moonlight, twisting and turning between landmarks as they lead travellers from A to B. Yet these routes that have been walked for millennia can’t be seen. There’s no map to unfold. Instead, Aboriginal people share the keys to wayfinding primarily through song. Poetically, these tracks are called songlines.

“Songlines are like historical events captured in a few different ways, through storytelling, rock art, songs and dance, and in the landmarks themselves,” says Clinton Walker, a Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi man who calls Western Australia’s sun-baked Pilbara home. “Aboriginal people use songlines as a means of navigation, following all the landmarks they sing about. You may not have been there, but the songs give you enough information to find your way. Our people learn hundreds of songs.”

Walker tells me this as we walk together along a red dirt track just out of Karratha, 1500 kilometres north of Perth, to what he describes as the birthplace of the songlines. The undulating tumbles