By Samantha Wortelhock
Original Painting and Limited Edition Giclee print size: 740 x 610mm

Land Rights

‘Take that!’

Said the Roo, ‘Instead of my land’

(He wants it returned one day)

‘You do nothing but damage the soil and the plants,

Take that! Then go away.’

And in the distance a grandmother embraces her grandson and tells him about invisible lines.

Songs of laws which cross the land to tell stories to teach us to care for the soil, the animals, the people, our world.

And across the land roads bisect the songs she speaks about.

And her son looks on, lost because these roads blotted them out
And took him away from his mother......

A terrible pain; best forgot.

So the child must listen and take with him the words that his grandmother speaks of the land.

It’s the language of Nature, our greatest provider, a teacher the Roo understands.

And the sheep look down from the heavens, free at last to roam.

They look down to the cow and say, ‘It’s safe, it’s time for you to come home’

The Story Behind The Painting
A kangaroo boxes a cow to reclaim his land. In the near distance an Aboriginal Elder tells her grandson about their land's songlines and to her right the child's father looks on; a generation lost to the sorrows of their people. cutting across the landscape to sacred Uluru is a road: a scar dissecting their songline. In the sky we see the souls of sheep become clouds to rain tears of regret for the damage the hoof does to a land so old. In the same light we see the clouds of dust made by the cow, in contrast to the kangaroo who steps so lightly on this land by hopping with soft paws. I have learned through Damien's love of the land that hooves are intensely destructive to the land. I always wanted to paint a painting called Land Rights since I had attempted one while on a painting trip to Uluru. The scene of a kangaroo boxing a cow with lush grasses on the side of the roo and barren dust cloud and soil erosion on that of the cow. Something was missing however and as I had just completed two commissioned works for Professor Hugh Cairns' book Dark Sparklers about the Aboriginal songlines (paintings approved of by the teller of the stories, a wonderful Elder from the Wardaman people Bill Harney) I had to follow my dream of painting a new collection of works which serve to help us white people understand more about our Aboriginal brothers and sisters. So, in the midground I chose to have a female Elder telling the songlines of her land to the next generation and on the other side the child's father, a generation lost to the sorrows of his people. From his angle he sees the line of the tarmac road dissecting the songlines but in the young boy's mind and with the wisdom of his grandmother he sees beyond the road to the land that is his to honour for his own children.