iDIDJ Australia Didgeridoo Cultural Hub

I apologize in advance if this is common knowledge to some, however I feel compelled ask this question because it has been lurking in the back of my mind for a long time.

I'm assuming that everyone on this forum has some baseline knowledge of the famous Australian Aboriginal practice/tradition/spiritual journey(?) of the "walkabout."

Interestingly enough, I have never seen anything mentioned about the "walkabout" in reference to Yolngu cultural traditions or practices. Perhaps this term is rather flexible, opposed to being a rigidly defined practice applicable to all Australian Aboriginal cultures?

Most mentions of the walkabout that I have come across have been in relation to tribes from the Central or Western Desert regions. Possibly some in reference to Kimberley tribes, but I can't recall.

I felt this question had to be raised, considering that I could not find an answer for it.

Knowledgeable ones of the ididj forum, please enlighten me!

-Simon

Hi Simon,

I haven't heard about Yolngu going on walkabout really, I'm not even sure if the term is applicable to Australian Aboriginal peoples in general, it might be something that whitefellas invented.

Guan

That's funny because the main actor in the movie "Walkabout" is Yolngu : David Gulpilil...

hello there,

I have no clue where the thing comes from. However I do remember of someone telling the story of David Bl*n*s* being sick of all the humbugs in Beswick and taking off somewhere, basicly to get away of the humbug but also, they said, to be away for a while, alone in the bush, etc, etc... he grabbed his things and left...
it's all gossip, I know, but taking it the other way round, I wouldn't be surprised if the concept of going on walkabout, if it actually exists at all, had to do with the need of individuals for going away every so often to "cleanse the spirit" from all the strains of the intense social relationships in such closed environments...

I suddenly remembered about this too... hmmnn... curiously, many coincidences with the story! and beautiful project, I believe... You have to check the "Mermaid" story, I'm sorry I can't link it directly:

http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/dustEchoesFlash.htm

see yas!

I'm sorry, i forgot to say that...

...besides that, I never heard anything that could lead me to think about "walkabout" being a traditional activity of either yolngu or bininj or other people in the NT...

Hi Francis,

The movie "Walkabout" is just that, a movie. Gulpilil starring in it does not give validation to the concept of walkabout, he was merely an actor acting out a script written and directed by whitefellas.

Guan

Hi Marcos,

One could say that Yolngu were constantly on walkabout traditionally. They were semi-nomadic hunter gatherers, to use an anthropological term, which is a stark contrast to today where they have been forced to live in artificial settlements created by governments and missions.

So traditionally, there wasn't a need to go on walkabout in NE Arnhem Land to get away from it all. In modern times, getting away from it all might mean a day or two going out hunting or fishing, and funny as it may sound, camping in the bush or by the beach.

There's a sentiment that 'walkabout' might be part of a boy's initiation process. In NE Arnhem Land, I know that isn't the case, but maybe in the Central and Western Deserts this concept might hold where the initiate leaves the main hunting/foraging/family group and goes on a journey with an elder to show him the country and its waterholes and sacred landscape. Peter Lister would be better able to comment on that.

Guan

Hi there !

Of course it's a movie, Guan, and Gulpilil "only" an actor in it just pointing out the funny fact that he's Yolngu and that seemed to fit in the topic

As for the Yolngu semi-nomadic way of life, from what I know most of all Aboriginal tribes used to live this kind of life.
Changing settlement's site in function of the season's gifts and harshness.
And this in a well established cycle making them move back to the same camp each year (hence the term semi-nomadic).
Though to my mind, this cannot be considered as "Going on Walkabout" as the group is moving together.
"Going on Walkabout" emphacises the idea of going alone in the bush, without the other members of the clan to help.
To "cleanse the spirit" as Marcuz said, on a spiritual level, but also to be able to survive in the wild by recognising and using each "gift" of Nature on a practical level (hunting and gathering)... and surely for many other reasons.

Hi Francis,

Sorry about that, I misinterpreted "funny", my bad.

Yeah, I don't really know if walkabout really existed in traditional Aboriginal society. Going alone on walkabout can be dangerous... for an initiate, it would mean not knowing the country well and perhaps perishing as a result, especially in the hot and dry desert regions of Central Australia. It can also be dangerous for other reasons... encountering enemies and strangers from other clans/tribes which could mean certain death. Unity in numbers is what made family groups strong, and a leader in traditional times almost always had a reputation as a warrior.

I found this in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry on walkabout:



Apparently the term walkabout was coined in 1908 and there's also an attribution to Chatwin, see the other thread on The Songlines. Which reminds me... walkabout also refers to, or was derived from, the practice of Aboriginal men who worked in the cattle industry in the early days. Sometimes they would just leave the cattle station for no apparent reason and go on walkabout, but this apparent lack of reason as we now understand it had to do with ceremonial obligations. Rather than explain to the white cattle station owners about ceremony and secret men's business, a simpler way of telling bosses, I would imagine, would be to say that one was going on walkabout. Or looking at it from the white perspective, it could be a simplistic or even derogatory term for Aboriginal cattlemen going away for ceremony, walkabout at once conveying an irrational simplistic nature of Aboriginal workers.

'Walkabout' is a bit like 'Dreamtime' and 'corroboree', they are words that are commonly associated with Aboriginal people and have been in use for a long time, but their meanings aren't very precise and are European interpretations of Indigenous concepts and practices. There's even the Walkabout Magazine which was a popular Australian publication in previous decades.

Guan

hey!

totally aware of the traditional ways of leaving of aboriginal people in the Top End before they were pushed to live in communities...

but what I was actually meaning, and before reading your last comment, is that the concept of walkabout, whether it being traditional or made up by us whitefellas, does make some sense specially today, considering the living conditions and social circumstances of many overcrowded communities where people have been somehow forced to settle. And faced like such, it indeed is a very western concept, "to go away for a couple of days to not see the annoying neighbour or the overprotecting parent", etc... what I meant is that the concept "walkabout" might even perhaps have been recently created by aboriginal people from the inconveniences generated by their somehow westernised new lives and all the distractions invading traditional life... I remember an old man, famous in this forum and famous for his patience, spearing the wheel of his troopie one night he was waken up and humbugged by not few drunk ones... I pressume he did so to not spear somebody, and I'd say that night he wished he was somewhere else quite, ha, ha!!

but taken from the educational or spiritual side, it also is a quite extended practice to go on an initiatic travel, to learn from a new context or to regain some lost consciousness from it... from long time ago, I'd say, and in different cultures... people with the economic possibilities were sent by their families to be taught by a particular master, away of them... coming to my mind now the book/film "The name of the rose", by Umberto Eco... or initiatic travels like that at "Siddharta", by Herman Hesse... just two examples that flew thru my mind, but there's plenty of them...

the fact of travelling on foot, of trekking, of walking, etc, is a practice used by many to gain certain consciousness of one self, of context, of time and weather, as precisely tells Chatwin at the very end of the Songlines (at least at the edition I read, long ago, I don't have it now), relating it with different cultures around the world, if I'm not wrong...

the "cattle station/leaving to attend ceremony" explanation you gave makes a lot of sense too... but I still find the term quite a curious one... Walk About... any clues of the etymology of the word?

by the way, did any one of you have a look at the link I included before, Dust Echoes on ABC? in the Mermaid story, they use the term walkabout, but that doesn't actually mean anything... I know the stories were recorded previously from elders in Beswick, and this particular one comes from a younger source, but I couldn't tell if the source used the term literally or the story was interpretated by whoever transcripted it to be written in the website. However, I found it quite curious that the story is somehow very similar to the "official story" about D.B., but with a happier ending, and it's also a Myailli story...