This map is from Lindsay Black’s “Burial trees” published in 1941. The area in red roughly marks where the TinTs are concentrated overlapping the “burial” & “ceremonial” zones. While the TinTs can be considered both, its clear early explorers, settlers, surveyors, missionaries, amateur anthropologists etc showed little interest in CMTs unless they were carved. Lindsay Black, A.W.Howitt, R.H.Mathews and others never documented ringtrees, twisters or TinTs. From what I’ve read, Mr Black was more interested in artefacts such as ‘Cylcons’ (Cylindro-conical stones) & grave markers both of which were found here. Kamilaroi man & Indigenous Services Librarian Ronald Briggs, who has been involved with all the ‘A’ agencies – ALIA, ATSILIRN, ACHAA, AIATSIS etc has this to say “During the early 1900s a few white men became passionate about documenting and collecting the relics of what they believed to be a dying race. Men like Robert Etheridge, Edmund Milne, Lindsay Black and Clifton Cappie Towle trekked all over rural NSW photographing and describing whatever they could find that related to Aboriginal material culture.”
Some of these men documented cultural ceremonies such as ‘Bora’ while others had a slightly weird obsession with the sex & kinship rules (aka Moiety/ Phratry classes for marriage). Black’s map above is just a rough estimate of course – the Cylcon handed in to the store here for safe keeping a century ago is well out of its ‘supposed’ range. As is the grave marker from the sandhills west of Gingie village Im minding for Allan Tighe.
Robert Etheridge did document carved spirals as you can see in this diagram below but these were engraved into the trunks. The twisters here involve the rotation of the entire trunk over time … lots of time.
Only one member of the local Indig. community in Walgett/ Lightning ridge (Allan Tighe) recalls been told about TinTs but now they are available on the internet for all to marvel at. Unlike the carved trees of Collymongle (Collarenebri) the TinTs can’t be cut down & shipped off to museums as was done last century. We’ve gone from the extremes of cultural appropriation to the depths of cultural amnesia in 75 years. I like wood carvings & stone engravings, ochre handprints on rock & xray/dot/modern paintings as well as traditional dancing. However none of these art forms come close to the skill involved in the making of an enduring TinT or time required over generations to create a Ringtree & Twister.
My friend, Rebel Black THE Rebel Black | Human Agronomist | Bespoke Adventures sent me an interesting article by CHARLES EISENSTEIN titled ‘ World-renewal and the Indigenous’. He quotes Jay Naidoo, a very influential South African ex-politician.
In the name of sustainability, powerful “Foundations” inherit the mantle of empire. They turn living cultures into museums, elders into photo opportunities, and rituals into decorative prayers for conferences.
They host gatherings with Indigenous leaders dressed in regalia, a choreography of symbolic inclusion that conceals systemic exclusion.
It is the old colonial theatre restaged under the lights of “philanthropy.”
Ive googled more of what Jay Naidoo says below
“For decades, the “business of poverty” was the real estate of northern NGOs. Then inequality became their new moral currency.
Now, we witness the most insidious shift yet: the commodification of Indigenous wisdom, repackaged, curated, and monetized by the same oligarchic lineages that once profited from colonial extraction.
This is not partnership; it is charismatic capture and extraction.
The same forces that once dictated the terms of development now dictate the language of regeneration. The same capital that mined our lands now mines our culture.
And the same power that silenced us now claims to “give us voice.”
This is the new colonialism, not of territory, but of the mind and spirit. It replaces domination with dependency, and solidarity with spectacle.”
No danger of being overwhelmed by ‘colonial extracting’ NGO’s here due to the near total failure of academia to grasp the fact that Messrs Etheridge, Howitt, Mathews & Black et al may not have known all there was to know about cultural trees in Nth West NSW. TinTs, ring trees, twisters, or any ‘mod’ except scarred & carved trees don’t crack a mention in the observations of these men may be why they are still unprotected today?
The blokes who wrote “Plants of Western NSW” (1992) – G.M.Cunningham, W.E.Mulham, P.L.Milthorpe & J.H.Leigh – worked either for the CSIRO or the NSW Dept. of Soil Conservation. They knew plenty about the botany in this third of the state (western division) but little of the ethnobotany. The Aboriginal uses of the plants were sometimes mentioned by Cunningham et al quoting from J.H.Maiden “The useful native plants of Australia (Inc. Tasmania)” published in 1889. Historically speaking europeans didn’t care about Indig. cultural beliefs as long as they didn’t interfere with the great colonial land grab. Removing the natives from their country, forcing them into the missions & converting them to Christianity progressed into removing their children as well … and we all know how that turned out.
Spiritually speaking, Aboriginal people in this part of the state came from and went back to the sky world via the trees. Which trees with what ‘mods’ depended on the tribal group/ country you came from. Below are some reflections from Katie Langloh Parker in The Euahlayi Tribe – A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia
There are variations in the funeral rites of nearly every tribe. Even in our district the dead were sometimes placed in hollow trees. I know of skeletons in trees on the edge of the ridge on which the home station was built. These are said to be for the most part the bodies of worthless women or babies. In the coastal districts there are platforms in trees on which dead bodies were laid. In some places corpses are tied up in a sitting posture. The graves in some parts of Australia are marked by carved trees; only a few painted upright posts marked them on the Narran.
Gamilaroi/ Ularoi women & traditional knowledge keepers, Rhonda Ashby & Priscilla Reid-Loynes had this to say in our paper (Silcock JL et al. (2024) Australian Journal of Botany 72, BT23053. doi:10.1071/BT23053) “Traditionally when a birth takes place on country the baby is given a tree as a gift and that provides a child’s connection and responsibility of looking after that tree throughout life.” Gamilaroi Elder & respected ‘lore’ custodian Allan Tighe said “I herd (sic) from this area from the old people planted new tree when someone important was born in tribes and in dead parts of tree’s when some person pass on.” Below is a wilga scar that may have been both modified & painted here at the old well near the homestead. I was told by a Walgett Elder some years ago it probably marked the birthplace of an important person as wilga trees were rarely scarred.
These trees below are from our Warrambool paddock – just when you think you’ve found all there is right? Across the Big warrambool to the east of the dead bumble TinT camp + Priscilla’s belah branch ring women’s place – is another previously occupied area with a mature wilga TinT & 4 ringtrees of different species. This satellite camp has underground water I suspect, hence all the rings and is located in a sand depression with many Ironwood. Acacia excelsa, from old slowly decaying fallen trees to saplings is typically associated with underground water here. There are other CMTs incl. a total debarked central trunk on a bimblebox with 4 big old epicormics shoots. I think the bark was removed for a body wrap & the person was commemorated with the Wilga TinT. There is also a much modified box with a very high coolamon that has stone axe cut burls all up the trunk like a secret language.
Im still slowly filling in the gaps along the Ginghet thanks to Joy Dare from “Ingalala”. I don’t know why women land owners are more interested in observing/ preserving CMTs but its lucky someone is looking out for them. Ingalala is home to the biggest coolabah I’ve ever seen as well as plenty of TinTs & connected coolabah shelters. There are TinTs within the creek bed itself but only those that grow in coolabahs & blackbox obviously. Out on the rarely flooded flood plains is where Im finding the clusters, some TinTs only 20 meters apart. The weilwun like their TinTs in pairs or forming an avenue to important camps. The TinT below with Wilga & Mallee rice-flower (Pimelea microcephala) guests living in an aged BFC is one of the few doubles I’ve found along the Ginghet. There is an old coolabah twister & a possum tree nearby as well – these CMTs may look old & shabby to you, but I think they’re divine …
