Always
Ground Level
First Nations peoples across this continent have always lived alongside gum trees as equals and partners. These trees are not simply within the landscape. They are Country, and Country speaks through them. Each gum tree tells a story.
Eucalypts mark songlines, ceremony, birthing places and burial sites, and provide medicine, tools, shelter and habitat. Their smoke cleanses, their roots find water, and their blossoms signal when to harvest and when to hunt. The trunks, hollows and modified limbs of gum trees carry the memories of generations – open archives holding knowledge older than any written record.
For the Wurundjeri people, the manna gum is so central to identity that it lives within their name – ‘wurun’ is the tree and ‘djeri’ the grub that makes its home inside it.
The relationships between First Nations peoples and trees are ongoing, maintained and renewed in every generation. The works of art in this room express this deep connection and continuity.
