Dinawan Dyirribang wanders across the dusty, baked crown of the heights of Wahluu. He points out an ancient scar tree – one of his ancestors having long, long ago stripped it of some bark for a basket or perhaps a shield – and an old grinding stone, all the while speaking in his whispery, warm voice about the restless spirits.

He says the spirits are all over the peak of this place known to motorcar racing fans the world over as Mount Panorama. Just as they are about the majestic New South Wales colonial city of Bathurst – Australia’s oldest European inland settlement – that stretches out in a grid on the plains below.

“Bathurst is full of ghosts,” explains the Wiradyuri elder, also known as Uncle Bill Allen, as we drive down one of the main streets of Bathurst. “Aboriginal spirits and settler ghosts are all over the place around here. That’s because so many bad things happened about Bathurst in colonial times.”

Australia’s frontier war killings still conveniently escape official memory | Paul Daley Read more

We pass a bowls club, apparently innocuous enough with its tended greens, benign facade and colourful neons offering food and grog.

“That was originally a military garrison and when the police eventually came in to Bathurst it became their station. A lot of our people died there. We believe they are buried there right under where the greens are today.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The bowling club where Aboriginal elders believe their ancestors died and were buried. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

We turn the corner and drive back through town, passing an overgrown vacant lot where the first hospital once stood. In 1829 the famed Wiradyuri warrior and law man Windradyne spent his final days in the hospital where he was treated for a gangrenous leg wound, the result of an intertribal fight. He died, either in the hospital or – as now seems more likely – after returning to the bush north of the town to be with his people. He is buried at Brucedale, one of Australia’s earliest pastoral properties and, having been in the hands of the Suttors for seven generations, perhaps the oldest continuous family business in this country.

Dinawan is a direct descendant of Windradyne. He knows the intricate details, as if they happened yesterday, of the murder and terror that unfolded on the plains below Wahluu during what even the earliest writers of European/Australian history record as the “Bathurst war” of the 1820s. That was when hostilities between the local Wiradyuri people, the pastoral settlers, their convict stockmen, labourers and the British troops reached such a violent circle of attack and disproportionate reprisal that the colony’s governor, Thomas Brisbane, declared a period of martial law during which hundreds of local Aboriginal people died.



What happened here less than two centuries ago is the blink of an eye in the 60,000-plus years of Indigenous continental occupation. It’s a history still very close at hand, its legacies of dispossession and violence still resonating. The stories of what happened live on in family memory, black and white, handed down through the written and spoken word. The land – country – has its own record too of how the Indigenous peoples, impoverished and weakened to the point of annihilation during the frontier wars, fought back and died, their bones returned to this soil rich enough to murder for.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Bathurst’s history is still very close at hand, its legacies of dispossession and violence still resonating.’ Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

When summoned faithfully memory carries a truth, if not the truth. It can be fallible. It is there to be checked and challenged. But it is amazing how very closely, when it comes to the Bathurst war – like so many others on the Australian frontier – various Indigenous and European records accord.

***

The country all around is drought-stricken and bone dry, dusty and desperate for rain. But Bathurst in late autumn is resplendent in its palette of washed-out gold, green and rust. The light is soft after the crisp mornings give way to gentle days with pristine skies. With its majestic, finely preserved buildings bordering boulevard-like thoroughfares that are divided with towering street lamps, dramatic and ornate, and memorials to its foreign war dead and daring white explorers in its grand public spaces, Bathurst is a wonderland for the history tragic. Proclaimed by governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1815, the town bloomed on the back of the first Australian gold rush of the 1850s.

The city is a monument, staggering for its beauty, captivating in its rustic colonial charm

It stands in all its grandeur not only as a testimony to the virtue of reinvesting the proceeds of a resources boom, but also to the dictum that winners in most wars take all. The very city itself is a monument, staggering for its beauty, captivating in its rustic colonial charm, to what seemed the inevitable triumph of white pioneer exploration, land claim and settlement over Indigenous Australian custodianship.

It began when Macquarie’s deputy surveyor general, George Evans, “discovered” what became the Bathurst plains (following an earlier path through the Blue Mountains trekked by Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth). Percy Gresser, a Bathurst shearer and amateur historian who spent his life documenting the local tribes and collecting their artefacts (hundreds are in the Australia Museum in Sydney), wrote how Evans gave such a formidable report of the plains that Macquarie almost immediately decided to build a road over the mountains.

Evans, according to Gresser, had a peaceful encounter with a group of women and children at Wambool (the winding and meandering waterway that would soon be renamed the Macquarie river) on the outskirts of what became the settlement. Evans gave them fishhooks, twine and a tomahawk. In 1814 William Cox, with a team of 30 convicts and eight British soldiers, built Macquarie’s road, which the governor traversed by carriage in April 1815 before raising the British flag on 7 May.

Dinawan recounts how the Wiradyuri, camped across Wambool at the site of today’s Bathurst showgrounds, watched closely as the flag went up the pole. John Lewin’s 1815 oil painting, The Plains, Bathurst, depicts the earliest days of the settlement replete with the British ensign on the pole (which still stands today, not far from the old police barracks/bowling club). Macquarie’s redcoats are visible. But Indigenous figures are hard to find.

Pressure builds for a national keeping place for Indigenous remains | Paul Daley Read more

Dinawan says, “An old fella gave Macquarie a possum skin coat, a sign of good will and all that stuff, you know? Now a possum skin coat is a lifelong possession – a precious thing – for us. It begins with one skin when you’re young and as you grow up and get bigger, more skins are sewn on with kangaroo and emu sinew. It’s a precious thing. I’m not sure Macquarie understood that ... although we know he eventually took it back to Scotland.”

Precisely two centuries later at Bathurst’s bicentenary Dinawan, who performed the welcome to country, presented another possum skin cloak, this time to the local regional council. Relations between his Bathurst Wiradyuri and Aboriginal community elders group (which has custodianship of the Wahluu and parts of the plains about Bathurst) and the council have not, however, been at their most constructive since.

The name Wahluu has been officially accepted in the NSW Geographical Names register alongside Mount Panorama, the home of the 6km track that hosts Australia’s premier Supercar events, the Bathurst 1000 and the 12 Hour races – a boon for the local economy. While the council supported the joint naming there is no co-signage about the track and the elders group is in conflict with local authorities over plans to expand the racing precinct into what another of the elders, Brian Grant (Mallyan), calls “a motor-racing mecca” including a go-kart track on what the elders insist is a sacred site.

“Aboriginal culture and heritage is being trampled on as they go about their plans for the new go-kart track and amid plans for another car track,” Mallyan says.

“The co-naming does not in itself offer any sort of protection of Indigenous heritage when it comes to Wahluu.”

Mallyan says his group wants Wahluu to either be protected through acceptance of the elders’ application for an official declaration as an Aboriginal Place under the 1974 NSW National Parks and Wildlife Act or via an Indigenous land use agreement with council – an outcome that would require greater consultation on the future development of the mountain. The elders formally met with the council in April to discuss a possible land use agreement and its proposal to hand $1.40 per Bathurst 100 ticket (a four-day adult trackside pass costs about $140) to the local Wiradyuri community.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Looking towards Wahluu, or Mount Panorama, in Bathurst. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

If an Indigenous land use agreement can be reached, the local elders would surrender their native title right to Wahluu, enabling them and council to negotiate a fee, under any agreement, for using the mountain for racing. Proceeds would be held in a trust for Indigenous community initiatives.

“We have not had an adequate response so far,” Mallyan says. “We are not opposed to motor racing on Wahluu. In fact we support it. The question is whether the local authorities can enter into a genuine consultation with the true Indigenous custodians to ensure that future development proceeds in a way that does not desecrate Aboriginal heritage, tradition and culture.”

Wahluu is special for the traditional custodians – a sacred place that includes extant men’s initiation and women’s sites, and possibly burial grounds as denoted by marked trees. The go-kart track was approved in 2015 without objection from the elders group. The elders say they were not initially consulted.

Elder Jillian Bower (Gunhimudha) says of the proposed go-kart track: “It’ll be built on part of a women’s dreaming story. This is a sacred place for us. You can see the scar trees up there. It’s still in use. I wonder would they tear down the [Catholic] cathedral on William Street [Bathurst] for a go-kart track? It’s the same thing for us – a sacred place.”

The elders group insists it became aware of the original development approval only when an amendment was sought to make a larger track than first proposed. The council responded by ordering an Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment of the proposed site, the results of which have yet to be made public.

Map of massacres of Indigenous people reveals untold history of Australia, painted in blood Read more

This delayed the track, to the chagrin of some on the council. The Western Advocate reported one councillor saying it was “disgusting that people think they can hold a council and a town to ransom”. The co-naming of the track also created community friction.

Bathurst regional council’s general manager, David Sherley, says the council undertook “neighbour notification” for the original go-kart application in 2015, including with the Bathurst Local Aboriginal Land Council. He says council consultants undertaking an Aboriginal heritage study advised “given past disturbance ... it would be unlikely that archaeological relics would be located”.

“That is not to say that the site is not of cultural value but rather the assessment process identified that it would be unlikely that the development would impact on relics,” Sherley says.

When the application was made to extend the original go-kart track development, council commissioned an Aboriginal cultural heritage assessment on the proposed site and the “mount precinct generally”. A number of registered Aboriginal parties including Bathurst Wiradyuri and Aboriginal community elders were consulted.

It is a classic sibling rivalry story, something like our Cain and Abel Dinawan Dyirribang

Sherley says the assessment includes critical “independent anthropological assessment and ethnographic survey of the Mount Panorama precinct to identify and assesses cultural, mythological and spiritual values”. He says there will be another “public exhibition process” regarding the modification of the approved go-kart track.

He confirms that council has discussed a possible land use agreement or memorandum of understanding with the elders group and is investigating the options, requirements and ramifications of both.

“Council is awaiting final completion of cultural heritage and anthropological investigations currently being undertaken ... that might also inform any future land use agreement process,” he says.

Wahluu – meaning “young man’s initiation site” – is a critical element of local Indigenous foundation mythology.

“It is a classic sibling rivalry story, something like our Cain and Abel,” Dinawan explains. “Wahluu was a young Wiradyuri warrior killed by his older brother Ganhabula in a fight over a young woman. He fell and bled into the ground. God was so angry he made a volcano erupt and cover Wahluu’s body. You can see from above his body with ... him lying sideways on the ground is the geographical shape of the mountain today.

“It’s a morality tale, about lust, jealousy and the evil of killing.”

Yet so much killing would unfold on the plains around the mountain that holds this critical creation story for the Wiradyuri.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bathurst’s majestic, finely preserved buildings border boulevard-like thoroughfares. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

***

Gresser’s manuscript for his unpublished book, The Aborigines of the Bathurst District, is in the collection of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies in Canberra. In a lined Roslyn exercise book he wrote a detailed narrative of the Bathurst war, its contributing factors and its protagonists. In his neat, round longhand Gresser pulled together his decades’ of research based on interviews with dozens of people, including settler families and Wiradyuri elders, and his mining of primary resources. It is compelling and illuminating. (Much of his research was published, posthumously, in another co-written book, Windradyne of the Wiradyuri. Martial Law at Bathurst in 1924.)

Gresser points out that the first fatality of black/white violence around Bathurst was a member of Macquarie’s 1815 party who was killed after wandering, probably drunk, into one of the Indigenous camps where he unwittingly or defiantly committed a breach of one or more rigid laws or customs. He was never heard from again.

Gresser states early in his manuscript that which is obvious today but which was not a widely held view at the time he wrote – that the coming of the Europeans was without doubt the beginning of the end for the local Wiradyuri.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The courthouse at Bathurst, which opened in 1880. The town bloomed on the back of the first Australian gold rush of the 1850s. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

After the proclamation of the settlement, more and more free settlers and beneficiaries of government land grants crossed the mountain on Cox’s road to establish farms around Bathurst. Soon there was no grazing land left close to town. The Macquarie River was overfished and traditional hunting grounds were being used to run stock. In a pattern that grew steadily across the continent, traditional food sources became scarce and the resentful Aboriginal people speared and sometimes ate stock. Shepherds who tried to stop them were murdered and, in a self-perpetuating cycle of retribution, reprisal parties and soldiers hunted down and massacred Indigenous groups and individuals, including the elderly, women and children, regardless of their direct involvement.

The homestead buildings and stockyards were sometimes knocked up indiscriminately, often on land regarded by the tribes as sacred.

Gresser noted that the Millah Murrah homestead, north of Bathurst, was built on a sacred site where elaborately carved trees had been chopped down and transformed into stockyard railings. Millah Murrah and its surrounds was often the stage for violence (including massacres and poisonings) involving the tribes and the shepherds and stockmen.

In 1822 George Suttor, a firm ally of William Bligh, took up a grant from governor Thomas Brisbane, north of Bathurst at the junction of Winburndale and Clear Creeks. Clear Creek, where it extended through other pastoral holdings, became the site of at least one other infamous massacre involving other settler families. The Suttors settled not too far from Millah Murrah as the magpie flies. George arrived with his eldest son, William, 400 sheep, some bullocks and a dray and a few horses. Brucedale was born.

Poisoned dampers had been purposefully left exposed in shepherds’ huts in order to tempt the blacks to steal and eat William Henry Jr

Before he went back to Sydney, leaving 17-year-old William in charge of the grazing operation, he offered the boy some advice: befriend the Wiradyuri, be kind to them, treat them humanely, respect their connection to the land and learn their language. He did all of this, setting the tone for warm relations with the Wiradyuri that would be bequeathed through the next five Suttor generations to the current proprietor, David.

William’s own son, William Henry Jr, would later recount the intricacies of the relationships that developed between his father and the Wiradyuri, not least the warrior Windradyne, during the 1820s war.

“The blacks were troublesome at Bathurst ... the cause very frequently was their ill treatment by the whites,” William Henry Jr wrote in his 1887 book, Australian Stories Retold. “Poisoned dampers had been purposefully left exposed in shepherds’ huts in order to tempt the blacks to steal and eat. They did eat and died in horrible agony. No wonder reprisals took place. Our hut was one day surrounded by a large party of blacks, fully equipped for war, under the leadership of their great fierce chief and warrior, named by the whites ‘Saturday’ (because they mostly saw him on Saturdays; he was Windradyne).

“There was no means of resistance so my father, then a lad of 18 years, met them fearlessly at the door. He spoke to them in their own language in such a manner as not to let them suppose he anticipated any evil from them. They stood there, sullen, silent, motionless. My father’s cheerful courage and friendly tone disarmed animosity. They consulted in an undertone and departed as suddenly and as noiselessly as they came. The next thing known of them is that they killed (was it not just retribution) all the men at a settler place [Millah Murrah] some miles distant, the very place where it was rumoured the poisoned bread had been laid for them. This place is called ‘murdering hut’ to this day. After this business ... the extermination of the tribe was decreed and almost completely carried out. They never molested man or beast of my father’s, he had proved himself their friend on previous occasions, but if at this time he had shown mistrust or hostility they certainly would have killed him.”

Today the elders say Windradyne acted to enforce Wiradyuri law because the local Aboriginal people had never ceded sovereignty to the British and his people were being murdered.

To understand why the warlike Windradyne went to Brucedale on the night in 1824 to which William Henry Jr refers, and angrily confronted his father, William Sr, before going off and killing everyone at Millah Murrah, you need to understand what happened at a place called the potato patch in Kelso, today a suburb of Bathurst.

This was the moment – the spark that ignited the fire for Windradyne Dinawan Dyirribang

***

The sun is setting as Dinawan and I stop on the side of the road. He points across a ploughed field towards the river.

“That’s where it happened,” he says. “It was the moment – the spark that ignited the fire for Windradyne. The final straw maybe.”

It’s getting darker as he continues talking about what Windradyne did next and how the restless spirits still linger by the old potato patch today.

William Henry Jr explained: “A foreigner named Antonio had cultivated a patch of land on the Macquarie River, opposite Bathurst. Among other things he grew some potatoes. One day, as a large number of the black tribe ... came by, Antonio, moved by a spirit of good nature, gave some of tubers to these people. Next day, they having appreciated the gift, appeared at the potato patch and commenced to help themselves. This was not to Antonio’s liking, who roused the people of the settlement on his behalf. They rushed down and attacked the blacks, some of whom were killed and others maimed. After this the blacks commenced general depredations, killing solitary shepherds, destroying large numbers of sheep, and they actually got possession of seven stands of arms and some ammunition. In the course of a short time, hostile contests having taken place, several Aborigines as well as Europeans were killed.”

Windradyne was at the potato patch. Among those killed was Windradyne’s wife.

Thereafter, according to William Henry Jr, “Windradyne became the implacable enemy of the whites and occasioned them all the harm he possibly could.”

His first stop was Brucedale.

I go there with Dinawan.

***

David Suttor greets us at the back door of his beautifully preserved farmhouse.

He’s a wiry bloke, farm-fit and sinewy, his hands earthy and his face tanned from years working the land.

He takes us to the front of the house where we sit under the deep verandah that overlooks a verdant lawn and an incline that leads down past the old Hawthorn hedge (once the border of the market garden) and eventually to a row of tall, unkempt pear trees – perhaps the oldest of their type in Australia.

History is heavy about this table where these direct descendants of Windradyne and George Suttor sit and yarn.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dinawan Dyirribang, left, a direct descendant of Windradyne, and David Suttor, who is a direct descendant of George Suttor, who established Brucedale in 1822. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Suttor passes the Wiradyuri elder a couple of stone artefacts that he’s recently found on Brucedale.

They talk about the events of 1824 and that night when Windradyne and his men, painted up and carrying their weapons, appeared out of the darkness.

Suttor explains the story as he knows it.

“What I’ve heard is that Windradyne was armed for battle with his warriors. They had their shields, their spears and they were all painted up and they turned up – I thought it was at night-time because it was dark and William met them at the door. And Windradyne was very agitated and William was fearing for his life because he could see that Windradyne was in an agitated state. But he was able to communicate with him and talk the thing down. So Windradyne left from here and went to Millah Murrah ... where they murdered everyone on that farm. And that was because of what they’d done to the Aboriginal people there. They’d built the house on a borah [sacred] site so there was no empathy towards what was already there and they had probably done other things as well, so it was a retribution killing.”

Had Windradyne come to kill William?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A stone artefacts found on Brucedale. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

“I don’t think so. I don’t think that was ever the intention. Because otherwise he would’ve [killed him]. William wouldn’t have been able to talk him down. They were friends. Lucky for us – otherwise we wouldn’t be talking today. He was on the warpath but William had told him that they were friends and he hadn’t partaken in any of that sort of behaviour [massacring or poisoning] so William, I would imagine, would’ve been supportive of Windradyne in what he was doing – but you can’t actually go out and do it ... Emotionally it would’ve been: ‘I hate what’s happening to your people.’ It would’ve been a terrible thing if you were trying to make friends with the local people and they were being murdered and poisoned.”

Dinawan has a slightly different version.

“Yeah he [Windradyne] did turn up in war paint and all that sort of stuff with his warriors. But the story that has been passed on down to my family is that he turned up here also with some rifles that they’d captured off the soldiers, and they brought the rifles here to ask William to show them how to use them. The [British] 2nd Somerset regiment which was the regiment used in this battle, they were one of the first regiments to use a breach-loading rifle at the time so it was a lot quicker and easier to load. They’d captured some of these weapons off the soldiers when they killed them, and he [Windradyne] was pretty disappointed that William wouldn’t show him how to use them,” Dinawan says.

“I suppose if you look at it back at that time you could understand why William didn’t do it, because he would’ve been singled out by the white fellas as being a traitor and all this sort of stuff for teaching the Aboriginal people ... how to use weapons against them. Windradyne would’ve gone away pretty disappointed because Windradyne found out later that a lot of his own people had been traitors and siding with the British and telling them ... what the Wiradyuri were doing, what Windradyne’s plans were ... Windradyne was trying to get some way to make it an equal footing in the war because they were still just fighting with spears.”

What clearly emerges from the family histories of both men – and so much of the early non-professional colonial history – is that Brucedale was, in the ensuing period of martial law from August to December 1824, a neutral place, even a safe haven, for Wiradyuri.

“That’s why they brought him here to be buried [in 1829],” says Dinawan.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The site where Windradyne is buried on Brucedale. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

Hundreds of Indigenous people died in the district during martial law. I’ve read countless stories – including by Gresser, WH Suttor, early historians of NSW such as WG Rusden and Godfrey Mundy – of soldiers and posses indiscriminately poisoning and shooting Aboriginal people on sight for no other reason than their skin colour.

Many Aboriginal people worked on Brucedale in dignified circumstances for generations after martial law ended. Wiradyuri and others from further afield would camp there. Aboriginal people from all over Australia still visit Brucedale today to attend the grave of Windradyne who ceased guerrilla raids on settlers and red coats in late 1824 when he emerged from hiding with about 140 of his warriors and walked to Parramatta to make peace with Brisbane in order to save those of his people who’d managed to survive the purges. Brisbane had previously been offering a land grant of 500 acres in return for Windradyne’s capture. From then until his death Windradyne wandered the central west, going as far as Lake George, and continued his association with Brucedale.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A plaque to Windradyne on Brucedale. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

There are varying accounts of his death. According to some he died in the hospital. But by others he removed the bandages from his leg and went to Brucedale. The grave where he was buried with his possum skin cloak and his weapons is on a ridge of the property. Another grave, that of Windradyne’s cousin, is nearby.

David Suttor and Dinawan have ensured the site’s historical and Indigenous heritage significance has been officially recognised by having it placed under a voluntary conservation order. It is also listed on the state heritage register, while the National Parks and Wildlife Service has fenced off the graves to protect them from livestock, and provided storyboards about Windradyne.

“Where Windradyne is buried – it is not just him buried there so it is obviously a significant site to the Wiradyuri of the area, and, so you think, ‘Well, we might’ve had the land title given to us by the crown and everything like that but you know, we weren’t the first people here,’” David Suttor says.

“There are good stories as well – ours isn’t the only one. But if there were more of them there might’ve been a much better outcome for the whole of Australia.”

If we are to recognise heroes, where are the stories of Aboriginal courage? | Tony Birch Read more

We go to the grave where, in 1954, David Suttor’s grandmother dedicated a plaque (it bears an incorrect death year) to Windradyne. It reads:

THE RESTING PLACE OF WINDRADYNE, ALIAS ‘SATURDAY’

LAST CHIEF OF THE ABORIGINALS

FIRST A TERROR, BUT LATER A FRIEND TO THE SETTLERS.

DIED OF WOUNDS RECEIVED IN A TRIBAL ENCOUNTER, 1835

‘A TRUE PATRIOT’

***

I can’t hide my pleasure at driving around the twisting racing circuit (albeit at legal snail-pace compared with the supercars) on Wahluu/Mount Panorama.

“You know the question is whether Aboriginal culture and heritage can live with motor racing. How do you find a compromise, the right formula that is workable for both cultures? I think it can be done. It’s a matter of communication,” Dinawan says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The statue of the surveyor George Evans with an Aboriginal man crouching at his feet in Bathurst. Photograph: Carly Earl/The Guardian

“We don’t want to stop the racing. This is a Wiradyuri initiation place – and it is also an initiation place for young men from different tribes – Ford, Holden and others – who come here to prove themselves on the mountain. We understand and embrace that.”

Back in town we stop at King’s Parade, one of the courtly parks that showcase Bathurst’s many monuments and memorials.

I’m drawn to the Boer war memorial and the story it harbours about Lieutenant Peter Handcock. He was executed in South Africa in 1902 for allegedly murdering Boer prisoners. His name is conspicuous at the bottom of the memorial after it was reinstated in 1964 (its lettering obviously newer than the other names). Handcock’s name was supposedly removed before Lord Horatio Kitchener – commander of British troops in the Boer war – personally unveiled the memorial in January 1910. Handcock and Harry “Breaker” Morant, also executed, claimed in their defence to be acting under Kitchener’s orders.

Dinawan, meanwhile, asks me to follow him to the 1913 memorial to the surveyor George Evans. He nods at the monument, smiles and says: “Tell me what you reckon about that.”

The sculpted Evans, the sturdy explorer, stands surveying the terrain before him. An Aboriginal man, also looking into the distance, crouches at his feet.