A Child of the Dreamtime

On the east coast of Australia, about five hundred miles north of Sydney, there is a delightful green valley called the Burringbar Valley. To the west, Mount Chowan towers majestically over the valley. Burringbar Creek has its source in the mountains a little to the south of Mount Chowan, collects several tributaries, including Ophir Glen Creek, flows through the town of Burringbar, is joined by its major tributary, Crabbe’s Creek, and flows on to the Pacific Ocean, which can be seen from almost any hilltop in and around the Burringbar Valley.

Ever since the Dreamtime, the Burringbar Valley was inhabited by Aborigines. In the Dreamtime, humans enjoyed close and blessed communion with the gods. At some point, however, humans lost their innocence and the Dreamtime was no more.

European settlement of the Burringbar Valley and of the neighboring Tweed, Brunswick, Richmond and Clarence Valleys began in the 1830’s. The Aborigines who inhabited these valleys were of the Bandjalang tribe. Well before the close of the nineteenth century, the Bandjalang were displaced by the European settlers and herded into segregated communities, including some in the Lismore area. The Bandjalang lived under conditions of great poverty in their segregated communities and had no civil rights.

In the middle of the twentieth century, people of many nationalities lived in the Burringbar Valley. There were English, Scots, Irish, Netherlanders, Belgians, Germans, French, lots of Italians, lots of Greeks, Macedonians, Serbians, Croatians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and others. North of the Burringbar Range, in the Tweed Valley, there were also Indians, Pakistanis and Chinese. A Chinese family owned and operated one of the major grocery stores in Murwillumbah. This four-syllable Bandjalang place name is stressed on the second syllable.

Prejudice against people of Mediterranean origin was widespread and intense. Mediterraneans were contemptuously called "meds" and other inflammatory ethnic names including "dagos", "wogs" and "wops". Indians and Pakistanis, whatever their religion, were contemptuously called "Hindus."

The Anglo-Saxons chose to ignore the fact that their own ancestors were barbarians who worshipped Woden and Thor. The Anglo-Saxons looked down on and despised meds. Every Sunday, however, they went to church and worshipped a med. In the Burringbar Valley and in the neighboring valleys, brawls between Anglo-Saxons and Mediterraneans were commonplace. Sometimes when Mediterraneans went into a pub, some uncultured Anglo-Saxons would begin calling them inflammatory ethnic names and a brawl would break out. Other times, Mediterraneans would speak their native language in a pub. Many uncultured Anglo-Saxons resented the beautiful sound of certain languages of the Mediterranean region, especially the supremely beautiful sound of Italian. Therefore, when Mediterraneans spoke their native language in a pub, the result was often a brawl. Many a pub was destroyed in these ethnic brawls.

The Burringbar Valley and the neighboring valleys were rural. Yet, there was a lot of culture. Burringbar, like every village, had a school of arts, which was a theater, cinema, dance hall and banquet hall combined. Every town with a population of five thousand or more had a philharmonic society, a symphony orchestra and a public library as well as a school of arts. In towns of this size the streets were always crowded and lively.

The western end of the Burringbar Valley, because of its higher elevation, is called Upper Burringbar. It is composed of two main gullies. The more southerly of these is called Ophir Glen. Residents of Ophir Glen refer to the other gully as, simply, "the other gully." In Ophir Glen, three miles from the town of Burringbar, there is a farm called the Greenhedge farm. Through the Greenhedge farm flows Greenhedge Creek. It is a tributary of Ophir Glen Creek which, in turn, is a tributary of Burringbar Creek.