I rang Alana who was coordinating the planned GBCMA project and told her about my dream. Without hesitation, she said to me, “Dreams are important communication.”

I was so happy to hear her say this, with it came a sense of relief that land management projects can be threaded with deeper understanding.

We had a chat about stalling the project until next winter, the winter of 2026, and she put things into place to make that happen.

Had we gone ahead and planted in the winter of 2025, it would have been too dry - the Land, of course was right. We had barely any rain last winter, for the entire year we had less that half of our usual rainfall.

We also had big grief time last winter, with close friends and family deciding to head to the heavenly skies. And tending seeds and seedlings without rain at that time would have no doubt compounded the grief.

This winter has been a beautiful wet winter and the regeneration project has happened, at a perfect time. The dams are stretching back out into the connected waterways that they rightfully are. The restoration of the remnant waterway that runs through our property here in Violet Town has been planned into the regeneration project as well.

We had the absolute blessing of having the right hands put the plants exactly where they wanted to be with the awesome Woka Walla crew, an indigenous land management enterprise owned and operated by the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation (YYNAC) as a part of the grant project.

For two days they carefully planted and protected 120 trees, and bespoke seeded wattles amongst them.

Dry sunny winter days matched the planting.

Then it rained, good soaking rains to water the seeds and the seedlings in.

Between rains a big flock of a hundred or so Cockatoos landed and got to work weeding by feasting on the invasive onion grass. As if they knew something special was happening here and wanted to join forces. They’re still here, working away.

One big, beautiful conversation. Stretching between Land, Sky, animals and people who care.

Literally a dream come true.

🌿🪶

April Harvey carries a thread of intergenerational relationship—a history of shared lives and experiences with horses that weave into the tapestry of her life’s work and devotion.

An internationally renowned horsewoman, April has found her home in Balmattum on Taungurung Country, near the Strathbogie Ranges. Here, she devotes her life to uplifting the potential of the horse-human relationship.

In this Full Moon Conversation, we explore the spectrum of power and sensitivity that horses embody. We dive into our ancient experience of reciprocal co-regulation and co-communication, and look at how April serves to empower this shared journey.

Video used in this conversation is by Richard Baron / Carrier Signals view the complete video of April Harvey’s, Australian Brumby Challenge

April Harvey is an internationally renowned horsewoman, equine educator, and the founder of Natural Rhythm Equine. April’s life work focuses on helping horses and humans build a safer, deeply attuned, and spiritually integrated connection.

Known for her profound ability to act as a mediator between wildness and structure, April gained widespread acclaim at Equitana’s Australian Brumby Challenge, where she earned a perfect 100/100 score in the freestyle final alongside a Kosciuszko stallion bought in from the wild just five months earlier. Beyond competition, April’s work transcends standard dominant training methods, offering a gentle yet powerful framework of mutual safety, nervous system co-regulation, and ancient horse-human communication.

A lot of people I talk to are being drawn back to previous skills or forgotten passions that are quietly blooming in a new way.

I’m so interested in this shift. It seems to be a calling, moving us from deep in our bones.

For me it’s a skill I visited briefly in my youth then denied as I chose a life of adventure and tending much needed karmic reversals instead.

Making and painting with clay and ochre was inspired again recently by my good friend Sam Bell

What fun we had learning how to carefully harvest the clay here and prepare it for creating. It put me on a path that’s been patiently waiting for a long time.

Since then I’ve been painting with the yellow-red ochres from the saltwater cliffs of my birth homelands the waters of Naarm, and also a small piece of beautiful grey-blue ochre gathered at Lone Rock, Utah last year.

Paints that never harden in an artificial way.

Paints that just a teaspoon of water will revive.

Paints that I have spoken to before even collecting. Asking permission, listening to the Land.

The Utah ochre spoke to me before I had even seen it. “Look around there’s ochre here”. My feet in the water I turned around to see a stream of beautiful blue ochre. I ask if it was okay for me to take a piece home. “Yes” was the reply, and we’re still talking.

Paints that offer the kind of medicine that accompanies the kinship of preparation, grinding the pigment into fine powder with a rounded stone.

I won’t use mechanical grinders. Instead, embracing an opportunity to return to something far more sensuous, where more than human conversation can visit within this liminal, rhythmic space.

I’ve also returned to skills once honed in my previous hometown of Dookie and the Dookie Arts community group I was involved with there.

Including the busy whirl of assisting our local community arts group here in Violet Town, where my husband’s wreaking wonderful creative havoc with a play.

But life has let me know, in no uncertain terms to slow down, with my lower back giving out. All good direction as far as I’m concerned.

So It’s back to a gentler pace to heal and repair. Back to nature’s pigments and clay. Back to the natural grindstone.

With love

Thanks to the powerful voices of Dr Mary Graham and Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, I recently learned that ‘The Great Dividing Range’ — a collective of mountains that spans 3,500 km from the Grampians in Western Victoria to the north-eastern tip of the Continent in far north Queensland — is understood through First Nations Lore and story as the body of a great Rainbow Serpent. It’s not a great divider at all; it is a Creation Being, a living ancestral presence, and a great connector of Country.

Puckapunyal, Taungurung Country, sits against the ridges of this great collective of mountains, and is a part of these Rainbow Serpent Ranges, 75km as the crow flies from home.

Puckapunyal is also a military base where they test bombs, and we’ve been feeling and hearing them quite a lot lately.

This new moon we gathered in person and online, connecting people from across the country, with plenty of laughs, honest talk and a guided, healing journey for Puckapunyal.

In the spirit of community service, and with the courage of the big cats — August, Leo and a distant, simultaneous solar eclipse — we took our spirit-selves to that place and sat with the Spirit of the Land that is Puckapunyal, offering a resonance of peace and caring attention, and allowing that to move through the ranges and waters of Puckapunyal.

This guided meditation is, in Shamanic terms, a journey. Where we walk with our spirit-selves to other places, and, occasionally times.

In this journey, we put into action one of the gifts we are blessed with as humans: the ability to carry peace within our bodies, our presence, our minds and our spirits. We offered the visceral presence of humble peace and apology to the Land, to the Spirit of the Great Rainbow Serpent Range.

Sometimes healing is bigger than us.

This is guided journey below can be visited at any time. With gratitude to those who support this work..

Become a supporter here

Serana (White Feather)

Violet Town | Services

Yorta Yorta - Taungurung Country ~ with deep respect to Elders past, present and future.

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The August New Moon of 2026 includes a total solar eclipse, drawing a line of shadow across Greenland, Iceland and Northern Spain.

Another invisible line leaves the centre of Earth, travels through the centre of our Sun, and points into deep space, toward the stars of Leo the Lion.

Interestingly, in North and South America, stars in the constellation of Leo are seen as The Great Panther (Ojibwe / Anishinaabe), The Mountain Lion (Navajo / Diné) and The Puma (Inca). All big cats.

Here within the Kulin Nation Country of Victoria, August is Guling, Orchid Season

There were no cats on this continent until the arrival of European colonisation. And we can’t see the Leo constellation. It’s here, but it’s in our skies during the day.

We can see the bright red giant star Marpeankurrk (known in Western astronomy as Arcturus) that appears low on the northwestern horizon soon after sunset at this time.

In Victoria, we hear gurrborra (koalas) bellowing at night as the males call for a mate. Guling (orchids) are flowering, muyan (silver wattles) are blooming, and the ae-noke (caterpillars) of common brown butterflies are feeding on grasses after dark.

(Indigenous names are from the Woi wurrung language of the Kulin Nation in Victoria)

The New Moon is important to me. New Moon Ceremony was taught to me by Eagleheart when I apprenticed with him.

I hold New Moon Ceremony as a continuation of relationship with the ceremony itself, a ceremony that I’m blessed to have been mentored in.

It’s a community gathering, it’s also an ancient design for good health.

A talking circle, and an opportunity for healing.

This month we will be walking through the inner landscapes to a place near here that could do with some healing. Puckapunyal.

Join us at home 🌺 White Feather Healing Centre, 6.30pm Thursday 13th August

Or online ⚡️

JOIN HERE

In this conversation, Mark explains how these prior experiences provided skills honed as an athlete, such as maintaining an altered state and translating energy, as part of an intelligent plan to stabilize the nervous system and prepare him for deeper trance and healing work later in life.

By focusing his personal passions and surrounding himself with community that supports him, he is grounded, happy, and fully present within his spiritual work..

..assisting people to uncover cycles of soul growth, points of trauma, and patterns causing energetic misalignment. And helping clients identify their responsibility in their current state; and align with their highest potential.

Happy Full Moon..

..may it illuminate pathways to an inspired future.

Every now and then there’s a call to action.

That moves through the liminal space of deep change, uncertainty and potential.

That points toward peace and pierces the chaos.

What if all we need do is breathe.

And print, like money,

an encoded restructured peace into every breath.

That the wind carries and gifts to many.

That seeps through the waters of our being.

Soothing deliberately savaged nervous systems, embedded with chaos.

Every now and then there’s a call to action.

The action of stillness.

That observes the weather of who we are today.

What if all we need do is breathe.

And allow our body a moment of stillness.

Of capacity to be a vessle that holds the resonance of visceral peace.

Marking the air that moves through us, with symbol and story and the universal, invisible architecture of peace.

Imprinting our wiring and the wind with the truth of it’s potential.

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This share is for those who support my work. Your support is not only sustaining for me, it is a threshold that creates a safe space for honest talk and sharing.

New moon gatherings are a cyclic opportunity to speak freely about the month that has been and be heard, not advised. It’s an opportunity to explore themes and weave together a deeper presence with life.

This new moon, my son Zac and I visited my daughter Storm, who lives in the beautiful Gunditjmara Country of South West Victoria. I held the New Moon Gathering online and below is a recording for you.

Please note: The personal shares have been edited out to preserve the safety of honest talk within these gatherings.

This New Moon was met with the seasonal migration of Gurawul (Whale) to the shores of these Lands. We explored the long-standing First Nations tradition of their ancient, seasonal Ceremony with these Ancestral beings and read a page of the beautiful book, Gurawul the Whale by Max Dulumunmun Harrison

I shared a childho…

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Q. Why are so many people feeling a persistent emptiness?

A. Because there is a return to Reality that’s exponential, and it includes the collapse of a world order that’s simply unsustainable. Exponential is equal: it is also a shift into rapid growth.

Reality is restoring its integrity and it’s hard to know where you stand = unless you feel what’s under your feet and know that your mind includes all that you can see and hear.

Your mind is that big.

A bird tracking the sky can finish a sentence and confirm an understanding.

The texture of the wind as it passes; sweeping, carrying, sharing your story.

This old language is being read again and its exponential growth is exciting and stabilising intelligence; deep in soil, in stone, in body, bone and water. And all that glistens from Country as it speaks.

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New Moon

This July New Moon I’ll be having some family time with both of my beautiful children on the southern coastal lands of the Eastern Maar Nation.

It’s exciting times: Gurawul is in the waters, ancestral beings moving: birthing and creating 🐋 establishing and continuing relational connections as their families and communities travel this ancient path.

From his beautiful book, Gurawul the Whale, Yuin Elder Uncle Max Dulumunmun Harrison: (Magabala books)

“With the rising of Grandmother Moon

and the setting of Grandmother Moon

and with the rising of Grandfather Sun

and the setting of Grandfather Sun

Those two Spiritual Ancestors help us, guide us,

to understand the movement of Gurawul the whale.

(Uncle Max’s works before the Whale Ceremony when both the moon and sun can be seen in the sky)

That day is today, July 9th.

And this piece is a little writing ceremony with Gurawul 🐋 for safe journeys.

And in the spirit of flow, I’m going to assume that at around 10am on the day of the New Moon, Tuesday 14th July, I’ll be somewhere near the waters of the Southern Ocean with my grown up kids. So I’ll cast a line for the new moon gathering from this deep and ancestral place.

And I’ll be brave and have a go at a Substack live. I hope you can join me for this New Moon coastal chat and talking circle. The link to join is below..

Please note this is a private event to promote safety within conversation. Consider becoming a member to join. You’re welcome 🔆

love, Serana

Join the live 14th July 10am

This full moon I caught up with Kirsten Larsen who recognised a deeper seam of work calling her.

Having traversed a career in environment, climate and food policy and systems change within government and academia, and co-establishing a regenerative farm and community, Kirsten shared some of the experiences and insights that guided, and led her to the work she's doing now as a Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapist.

Real and relatable, Kirsten describes the pathway to her becoming a healing practitioner and the personal shift it has taken to achieve the level of sensitivity and trust required to hold this path.

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For more information on Kirsten’s work: https://cal.com/bcst-kirsten

And some things just need to be held. Spirit-led and accesible.

The feeling in the gut leads the way. And for a while now, the entirely ‘set price’ system has been sitting a bit heavy in my gut - and now, I trust what it’s been trying to say.

And so, I’m excited to be introducing donation-based (remote, online) Ancestral Alignments

I have found that online sessions are just as effective as in-person. We still catch up before the healing, we chat, online and establish a connection and the threads of what needs tending.

For a remote session I invite you to make yourself comfortable in your own way, in your own home, while I access the same information that I would if you were in the house here at the White Feather HC.

We catch up afterward, and the ‘report back’ is recorded and shared to keep.

It is held as a healing ceremony from here.

And you pay what works for you, what feels right to you.

So if this is something you’re keen to explore, or you know someone who might appreciate the opportunity, let them know!

If you’re interested, but would like to find out more, book a free introductory call with me, or send me an email serana.whitefeather@gmail.com or book your donation-based Ancestral Alignment < here

If you’d prefer to visit for an in-person, experience here at Violet Town, Victoria, you’re most welcome. We’re a kilometer from town and across the road from the beautiful Shadforth Nature Reserve.

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It’s pretty obvious really when you’re supposed to be doing something. I got the hint, bought some knitting needles and three balls of wool and went home to sit, knit and charge enough battery in me to make it happen.

The knitting helped.

Depression is a visitor who pops in occasionally and there’s been a lot of grief lately. I don’t push depression out the door anymore; that doesn’t work anyway, only backfires. So I rest. Deeply. It’s a deep rest. And I’m lucky that I have the time to now. I can tell some stories about when I didn’t, but that’s for another time.

So we had a small and wonderful group of friends and family who showed up. We ate together and sat by the fire, under the stars, speaking into the fire what we needed to get off our chest. Listening to the fire, like a grandmother, ancient and true. I wasn’t sure what the guided meditation would be right up to the moment that I picked up my drum. But this is what came through. Perhaps inspired by the recent exploration of the Mind that I presented as a workshop not so long ago. Earth Mind, Spirit Mind (August edition if you’re interested).

I hope you enjoy x

Serana

We are moved by the dance of light and dark within the bigger cycles of earth’s turning.

It’s winter here in the southern hemisphere, a time for our spirits to rest, to surrender and move within the deep rumbling dreams that life is bringing through. The changing of form, and a quiet tending to new beginnings that are stirring — readying for action with the return of light that is just around the corner.

We will be lighting a fire this Sunday night, to sit with the new moon and gather our thoughts, our feelings. A safe and quiet space to speak these things into the fire who hears, transforms and offers warmth.

These gatherings nurture restoration of spirit and relationship within ancient cycles and turnings. Speaking with the elements as healing kin. Sharing our story, our journey with the fire of life. Not advised, but heard and held by those around us, fire and the night sky.

And share the medicine of a healing journey that I will guide.

Bring a plate to share, start time 7pm, Sunday 14th June.

White Feather Healing

The guided journey will be recorded for people who support this walk. Thank you.

🔥🔥🔥

become a supporting member

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As I began developing this workshop, I thought it would be about intuition.

Then the word disappeared.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember it.

Instead, another word arrived.

Inspiration.

And with it came a question:

What if inspiration is a form of intelligence?

Not something we manufacture, but something we participate in.

Something born of relationship.

Over the last few months, a body of work has been quietly growing around this question. It has taken me into deep time, into the story of air and breath, into the intelligence of the body, and into the remarkable ways living systems communicate, adapt and organise themselves.

The result is the first workshop in a new series:

Earth Mind, Spirit Mind – and the nature of thought

Together we’ll explore the relationship between body and Earth, breath and air, practical mind and spirit mind, and the living intelligence that emerges through relationship.

This is not about adopting a belief system.

It is an invitation to become curious.

To listen.

To remember.

📅 Tuesday 9 June
🕖 7pm AEST
📍 Online

If you’d like to join us, registration details can be found here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/whitefeatherhealingcentre/2136148

I’d be honoured to have you join me for this first gathering.

🌏 🍃

Serana Hunt-Hughes
White Feather Healing

This full moon feels different.

It is different. Its light is further away. There are vast movements at play, stretching the stamina of our spirits and hearts.

The distance of this Elder’s light is humbling and deep; and it’s in these moments, as we stand alone, that can we read what our Sky is saying and feel it, deep in our bones.

We are being given space. Elder moon watching, stepping back to see how we stand. Giving space for life to rearrange and estrange if need be in order for us to find our own strength. To strengthen our voice and choice.

The moon is distant and blue. What is it longing for you? What threads have you been hanging onto that feel strained, frayed or betrayed? Let the pull of this distance help you to release what you never thought you could. Let it take them into the vast cosmic cycles to be recycled and renewed.

Take the time to unwind, to stand with your soul and reclaim it’s knowing, even amongst the chaos and wildnesses.

These movements are a conversation, a relationship with Elders of the sky that have watched over us and our ancestors across deep time. They know.

There are big movements at play and our genuine self is restoring, at the perfect moment.

And there is tiredness, a deep grief that our bodies can no longer hold onto. These vast and expansive movements open the doors within our bodies that hold our hidden grief. Openings you cannot deny. A release of grief that can join the great turning and contribute to this dynamic movement of truth and strength that reflects in the movement of the rivers and the waters around us.

Kin.

Move towards the circles that support, that hold you and see you in your raw and honest state. Human, more than human, the Land beneath your feet. Apologies accepted. Relationships reconnected. Conversation was always vaster than we can see.

“A very great vision is needed, and the people who have it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.” Crazy Horse

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Reminding

EARTH MIND, SPIRIT MIND

An online workshop where together we reclaim the depths of our souls intelligence. Practical, radical remembering 🍃🪶

Join Here

Tuesday 9th June, 7pm - 9.30pm AEST

Serana | White Feather Healing

hello@seranahealing.com | 0408180695

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“It’s okay,” he said, “I’m a spirit now, I’m fractals that can be present for everyone in the exact way that each person needs me. We can speak to each other. You sat under a tree, quietly drawing while I was painting, our spirits were talking to each other then too.”

This is not an altered state, it’s a restored one.

Where thoughts are delivered on the movement of Air. Where Ancestors and those who are willing to guide us can reach us and speak to us.

Where Earth’s body is the source of intelligence, and her sky connects us to a vast cosmic intelligence we are built into and belong within. Yet for many of us, this vibrant Living Language was broken and forgotten generations ago.

An unfurling of remembering is beckoning. It’s moving and rumbling like great boulders shifting within us. Finding their right place and moving us in unusual ways.

If you’re passionate about restoring perception beyond the thinking mind and the stability that sensing, as a trusted form of communication can bring, I invite you to join me for this inaugural Earth Mind, Spirit Mind workshop

When: Tuesday 9th June, 7pm - 8.30pm AEST

How: Online (link sent with ticket)

For more information click on the link below

Serana x

EARTH MIND, SPIRIT MIND WORKSHOP

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I won’t be holding a new moon gathering this month as I’ll be at Uluru. So instead, here is a little video gift for you. A beautiful teaching that I was lucky to have been blessed with around 25 years ago from a spiritual sister, Soluntra King.

This simple Spirit - Earth connection is something that I use often, and some of you may be familiar with it.

For those who are supporting members here is a brief video that expands a little on this simple, but powerful practice of becoming aware of the Spirit intelligence and Earth Intelligence that flows through you.

If you would like to move a little closer, in community and conversations that aims to rewild this Living Language together, consider becoming a supporting member and access this content and more.

Much love from Arrente Country, Mparntwe (Alice Springs)

Serana x

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I have been in Mparntwe, (Alice Springs) holding Ancestral Alignment healings at my beautiful sister and nephew’s home. In my lifetime I have been lucky enough to live and work in the Red Centre of Australia. As a Cameleer, Horsewoman and tour guide in and around Alice Springs when I was a young woman in the 1990’s.

When I landed in Alice Springs, Mparntwe, I noticed that the Spirit of this place, which is usually so vibrant, was disconcertingly quiet. An absence blended within a powerful time of sorrow. Everyone was quiet, everything was still.

Driving into town from the airport I was shocked by the changed landscape. Not that long ago, Alice was a fairly dusty town, with spaciously dotted delicate desert plants nestled in red sand and the winding Todd Rivers sand breathing through.

But now, the gravel pathways are taken over, the edges of the Todd holding tight against the Buffel grass’ choking domination. Nature strips, once red dirt, are now a hue of lime green Buffel grass. Every nook between stone, this grass is boldly grounded, pushing out the native plants; and with them, the birds, lizards and animals too.

The local government used Buffel grass to keep the dust down around the airport. The local pastoralists seeded it on their million or so acre properties to feed their cattle. And it’s taken over. Rapidly pulling a grassy blanket over the desert. Spreading vast distances at an alarming rate and turning this delicate desert landscape into a monoculture. And the Red Centre is no longer red. Where once you could walk, now you can’t. The morning birdsong that I once heard has changed.

An ancient ecosystem that sang threads of connection to creation times, has been quietly silenced. In so many ways. When native plants disappear, it is not only habitat that is lost, but memory, movement, medicine and the living conversation between people and place.

Another layer of domination. A symptom of disconnect. It feels like the Spirit of this place is beneath the surface. Not gone, but muffled. The old pathways of relationship to Country feel harder to hear beneath the density of the Buffel grass. And yet the land still remembers. It glimmers where it can through the mica drenched stone.

I wonder how the Spirit of this land will express when it awakes. There are deep rumblings out here. Unusual earthquakes out near Uluru. Powerful movements beneath the surface as it sleeps. Like a Caterpillar wrapped in a new cocoon, this is Yiperinyi, Caterpillar Dreaming Country.

And the pastoralists lobby powerfully to keep the Buffel that feeds their fortune while it chokes the Country. Pathways are hard to find and riddled with snakes. Like a sign that quietly asserts: ‘people not allowed’.

There are rare places around Alice Springs where you can see the red dirt and the natural ecosystems, but they’re further out. There seems to be no more spinifex country around town. There are local action groups who are organising Buffel Busting days along the Todd River. Every Wednesday afternoon, people meet along the Todd to dig some of it out. Especially around the wildflowers and smothered native plants, giving them space for their seeds to land.

Hope glimmers in town as people take the time to weed the Buffel out of their own gardens, and the Couch grass that has also spread out of people’s lawns and well into the desert. Reseeding and replanting the native plants. Putting that intelligence back into the soil. Perhaps there will be a new blooming of relationship.

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A short story

I wrote a short story when I was working on a cattle station in Central Australia. It describes the landscape now engulfed. Written 30 years ago. Experienced before mobile phones and social media were there to document everything. When remoteness was deep and pure. When a lot went unseen and hidden from sight.

With deep gratitude for those who support my work; read the story below..

I wrote this story when the experience of working on a cattle station in the desert country of Central Australia in the early 1990’s was still visceral. Reflecting on a deep relationship with this land that moved an ancient poetic language from my bones. Seemingly pulled through by the very land itself.

A relationship with place that was hand in hand with the homeless knowing of working and living on land owned by generational colonial cruelty, still writhing in the remoteness.

This story reveals the old and outdated necessity of hiding sensitivity. A sensitivity that is now pouring into life, like a river that has broken its banks, and there is no stopping it.

Warning: This story contains accounts of animal cruelty.

Belonging

by Serana (Whitefeather)

She stopped breathing when her horse was cantering. She let her lungs relax and the movement of the horse’s beat and rhythm caused the air in and out. At the same time, on the same beats they breathed as they cantered.

The space around them was beautiful. Central desert distance stretched out all around with lonely rocky outcrops scattered between them and a horizon of thin blue ranges. The air was clear and she felt that she could draw the whole sky into her breath, one great river of breath.

The leather saddle creaked comfortably as the stock horse, with the silken skill of a delicate weaver, moved and rounded great clumps of prickly Spinifex. Kicking up sprays of deep red sand with her hardened, unshod hooves. Marks that would remain until the next rain, marks that could stay for years. Rattles and chinks and gentle grinding on the bridles bit, soft beats of rhythmic cantering feet and the purring of her nostrils, sounds that stretched out through the silence. The sweetness of these simple, luxurious sounds became a great power.

She focused on the job at hand, looked around and checked the clouds ahead. A crooked corkwood came and went. She knew was new enough here, but it felt like she had never been anywhere else.

She glanced down at the horse’s muddy neck. Old mane turned up and back, up and back, releasing the sweet scent of her sweat and dust into the air. She stood up in the stirrups to shift her weight off the mares back. Perfectly balanced and comfortable. Big old rocks piled up like some giant had put them there, then left for millenia, were appearing and crowding around them, pushing them into an enclosed valley. It felt like no one knew her or even of her. A thin tremble moved down her spine, void of time.

She had been pointed in the direction of a dam. “About ten kilometres that way and wait”. Instinctively she noticed which way the flick of the hand had motioned and set her eyes in that direction on a distant cloud. Levelled out and lazy on the horizon. That way. Clouds close to the sky’s limit tended to stay still long enough to be a decent landmark. She figured her job must be to guide the furiously mustered mob of cattle into the dam paddock. But she didn’t ask. The older men in particular had little like for words. Without question or hesitation she moved the tired mare into a gentle jog that way.

She gave her horse a pat, who was startled to remember that someone was riding her, and for a brief, frightened moment a faint, ancient memory felt for claws in her hide. The pain that the mare braced for never arrived. She was alone. She had forgotten that she was not with her herd and that confused her. A worried ache in her stomach grew as she fretted for her herd and her yearling foal. She tilted her head, looked back at the woman riding her and relaxed, somehow. She took a deep breath and sighed.

How could that patch of air have been so cool? Worry weaved about her for a bit, then a sick stab of panic penetrated her gut when she realised the cloud was gone, hidden by the great rocks that surrounded them. She stopped the horse and hoped they hadn’t completely changed direction. Silence was tinged by a distant, pitched hum of motorbikes. She cursed herself for not paying attention. A thousand thoughts of being lost and why and what to do screamed, like temperamental headmasters in her head then disappeared. She listened for the direction of the bikes. Their sound occasionally breaking through.

A thread of cool, precise air and the perfect sound of her horse’s hardened, unshod hooves on stone moved her to the top of a small hill. Was that the cloud? It had to be. She scoured the land at the base of the hill ahead and caught sight of slight, spidery tracks in the distance, moving through the scrubby Mulga. All tracks lead to water. She breathed relief, soaked up the view of ancient Country stretching to every horizon. No fences, no powerlines, no roads. She set her eyes on the dusty tracks and moved the mare down the hill and into the scrub.

The Mulga Trees were chewed off, plenty of evidence of cattle and a change of atmosphere. Something caught her eye in the vivid blue space above. A Wedge-tailed Eagle, following her, watching them. The mare picked up pace a little, raised her lowered head and flicked her ears. She could smell the water and was given a loose rein to lead the way.

She had been directed away and was glad for that. She longed to just move with her horse, alone and without such a task. The mare would be turned loose at the end of the day, left to find her way. And for her, she would be camped out with the men before the hundred kilometer drive back to the homestead once this patch of mustering was done. A nine month full time task to cover the whole property. The old man still had Stockhorses running wild on his property, and every now and then he gave the order to saddle one of them up, pointing out the one he liked from a small mustered herd. It was no easy task, But a reminder at least, to the horse that the freedom of practically fenceless paddocks wasn’t exclusive to life. Or perhaps it was an aspect of the old man’s life that he had the right to keep alive, at least for as long as he was.

She took a breath and let the sweet sounds of the Zebra Finches and Budgerigars into her heart as the mare led the way. The sound of these birds, who had adapted the nearby dam as a waterhole in the desert, bought a peace and clarity with them that penetrated her chest. The horse had accepted the loose rein and relaxed. This horse, who earlier that day had been pulled from the herd that ran wild in this million acre paddock. Before, often, when the reins were loosened she had tried to run away. A momentum that was turned toward the cattle to work them into the swelling herd.

Her worry eased. Water was comfort, water was home and horses came here to drink. They moved into a clearing of puffed up dust, dead trees and the dam. The Eagle settled on a sparse branch further away.

She let the mare drink then tied her to a lifeless Mulga Tree. The mare became annoyed, ears laid back and bitter, nostrils curled and nasty. She moved away to give the mare some space, and found another tree. Folding herself into the shade of the tree’s skinny, bare limbs. The silence was loud now, uneasy, and a sinister wind crawled through the dust.

The last time she’d sat down like this was before dawn. There was always a sense of pride when she woke to see the first light, shifting the old fire back into life. Sipping black tea and studying the enormous and unusually shimmering morning star. Tiny, delicate calls from an unknown bird had perforated the silence perfectly and with magic.

A tiny buzz of a Cessna, the station’s mustering plane pierced the silence. Quickly becoming unnaturally bold, loud and visible. She watched it move along the distant rocky ridge turning up and back, rounding trees and scouting hidden hills. Flushing out stray and cunning cattle, then pushing them dangerously back into the forming herd, skipping by trees and barely missing them. ‘Like a noisy cattle dog in the sky’, she thought to herself.

She kept the plane visible in the corner of her eye and imagined the older brother, the pilot, turning and lurching with the plane, harboring the passion of a small boy in command of the perfect toy. She knew that he loved this life, he loved this work. His large face exuding a glow that his dusty beard and the low lying brim of his peaked cap couldn’t hide and he had the settled spirit of a person who belonged, protected by heritage.

A ute drove in and as the youngest son stepped out he looked at her and bellowed the word “tourist”. Her stomach knotted.

“Little prick,” she muttered to herself as she fought a tremendous wretch in her chest that made her want to wring his spoilt neck. She could cast him a glare, but it wouldn’t stick, he’d just get a thrill from the effect. “That kid’s protected by the fact that all of this is his,” she thought. “Fat. useless and content. No fear, no need or desire to care. All of this his.”

She tried to unravel her unease by searching her mind for some point of strength. But her mind didn’t help. Great bursts of the day’s memories protruded her view like reality. She could see the calf looking up at her, eyes white, legs wide and trembling. His whole body shaking with the shock of the sight of this colossal horse moving towards him. The youngest brother tied the calves legs and put him in the back of the ute with the others. An image she would never be comfortable with. The youngest brother had caught a glimpse of her reaction, and he tucked that away for later.

She heard them coming then, she dusted herself off, untied the mare and together they walked side by side into the thick scrub to wait where the cattle wouldn’t see them. Both looking out in anticipation. She studied the mare’s honest looking brown face, glancing out and waiting for something. The mare let her rub the sweat off her face, which she enjoyed thoroughly.

As the motorbikes appeared she looked out and watched them rearing up, spraying red sand and spinning out in the chase. Brilliantly ridden with a concerted effort to prove that motorbikes were better than horses, and only tourists rode them apparently. And bikes didn’t tire. They were proud of that. Her horse did tire though and so did the cattle, changing pace together. Invincible on top of unstoppable machines they had no care for that.

The noise was becoming louder, the roar of a bike moving closer swung her into the saddle, the mare keyed up and ready to match the herd perfectly, pursuing the task with an aggressive passion they moved out into the clearing. The mare shied from the old man as he approached and she spun around in quick and dangerous circles. The old man cut out his bike to settle the mare. “You stay in front of the scrub. I’ll move out this way”, he said waving his hand out in front of him.

She nodded and moved the mare, sideways toward the scrub, jogging impatiently and throwing her head. She wondered how this mare could possible have so much energy after such a long day and hard going. But she was glad of her enthusiasm because at least now she didn’t have to push a tired horse.

The cattle moved in. A few at first that quickly grew into a fat herd of several hundred. This part of the job was easy, the cattle were tired and thirsty. Getting into the dam paddock was their only intention.

Earlier, small, manic, scattered herds were pushed together from great spaces apart. Requiring a well coordinated spectrum of people on motorbikes, in cars, on horses and a low-flying plane to find them and push them together. They would rest tonight in the dam paddock then be yarded into huge portable yards that had taken the workers a day to set up. Young cattle were branded, castrated and dehorned. Young steers and unwanted cows and bulls pushed up into huge waiting road trains to be taken away and sold for meat.

The last of the cattle were in, but there was still the sound of another four-wheeler, its persistent horn blowing. The ute carrying the calves moved up to the gate and the cook stepped swifty out and shifted his large hat. “Had it”, he said to her as she got off the horse to manage the gate. He untied the calves and put them in, bounding into the herd, bawling into a monster of noise to try to find their mother. Every cow was calling for their calves and comfortable companions.

They all moved over to the ute and leaned up against it, contemplating the hundred kilometer drive back to the homestead in a few days. “Go to the horse yards and unsaddle the mare”, the old man said to her without looking. He was watching the motorbike coming up to the yards, “we’ll pick you up on the way through.”

She nodded and swung up into the saddle. She caught a glimpse of the loudly encroaching four-wheeler and her stomach turned. That little prick was ramming an old cow, staggering, too tired to keep her own tongue in her head, ramming her in the legs. She couldn’t walk. She stood there as he moved back and rammed her again. Sickened, she looked back at the old man, expecting him to walk over and roll this kid. “Leave her”, the old man vaguely shouted as the old cow dropped dead. The cook spat and the eagle looked pleased.

And she knew as she walked the mare past the old cow that there was no belonging. She offered the old cow a quiet apology as she passed, choked by rage and tears.

A distant blue range shifted slightly. The hooves of the mare seemed to be moving the ground, pulling the view in great slabs under them. She wanted to dissolve into forgetting the day and move deeper into this stillness, forever and invisible. She longed to take this horse and this saddle that weren’t hers and keep riding. Her spirit belonged here, she felt no difference between herself and the pure essence of the land that watched everything and recorded. And as she rode she felt pieces of her soul stick like tentacles, and thin webs of herself unravelled and chose to stay.

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In the words of Benson Saulo, Wemba Wemba and Gunditjmara man, it is my ‘disciplined non-conformist action.’ I am moved into action by engaging ancestral help and assistance with people, in a process that aims to normalise our beyond human family and community of support and solution. Bringing it through into life for people who are at a point of change and are craving a way forward that includes a more expansive point of view. A balancing hand to our logic-centric design to life, a hand that helps to deepen our understanding and expand our relationship with solution. It is not ours alone. It’s collaborative, with Nature and that includes communication and guidance with Ancestors. It always has. But for the sake of safety we’ve looked away because we’ve been convinced to reduce our thinking, our perception to a hollowed out version of what it should be.

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Serana | White Feather Healing

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Yorta Yorta Country ~ with respect to Elders past, present and future.

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