IN THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE ANCESTORS

On the beaches of remote Western Australia, where the sea is the same colour as the sky, the next generation of Aboriginal gameledes (custodians) have reclaimed their heritage and are using tourism to showcase their customs and knowledge to travellers in meaningful ways

- EMMA THOMSON

Bundy’s ageing but upright body moves swift as a pen across the smooth sand, his feet marking his presence on the landscape as an author does on a page. The tide is out as we

wade into the mangroves fringing the shore, searching their tangled roots for a glimpse of a claw. He’s dressed in a salt-stained shirt and shorts, but still forages for mud crabs the old way — with a wattle-tree spear. He bends low and listens. Then, quick as a heron, he jabs into the darkness and withdraws the branch with a snapping crustacean attached to the tip. He rustles up a twiglet fire and flings on the crab. “The land tells us our dreaming [lineage], tells us where we belong,” he says. “I am a gamalede [custodian], so I look after our stories.”

We stand side by side in silence on Cape Leveque — part of Western Australia’s Dampier Peninsula, a crab claw-shaped region pinching the Indian Ocean in the Kimberley — looking out at this ancient land where the sea is the same colour as the sky and not a single building protrudes above the treeline. This is a place where stories aren’t flat creations confined to ink on paper, but rather a time-travelling life force linking past and present held by trees, rocks, animals and Aboriginal people who believe the world was created in the Dreamtime by snake, emu, eagle and kangaroo spirits.

“Of course, I’m still practising and learning my language and customs,” Bundy adds. It’s a record-scratch moment. How can he still be learning, I wonder?