The Gully
the creek chatters with small rocks
as it slithers along decanted
from a swamp succulent
as ten thousand soaking sponges
fringed with ferns lichens mosses
sedges with silver dew
the rustle of a lyre bird
singing the land back to healing
mimics a birdsong-world
and conceals a secret
a mountain secret
there was a time in The Gully
when the lyrebird was silent
and the wind mimicked a deep howl
and the earth grieved and raged
for its evicted people
its ravaged concreted land
today the lyre bird’s song rolls back
a many layered history
the Gundungurra and Darug people
lead us out of a amnesic fog
with a remember story –
a redemptive pathway into now
by Colleen Keating
*The Gully, An Aboriginal Place in Katoomba. In the 50’s made into the Catalina Race track.
My poem The Gully is written on the history of an area in Katoomba which was a meeting ground for three Aborigine tribes before colonisation and after Warragamba Dam was build when their movement was blocked many settled there on what was then the outskirts of the Katoomba town . A Fun park was developed, a lake even a Catalina Plane was floated on the lake there and people were moved off from their homes for a Race track which was built disturbing the head water of the Katoomba Fall that feeds the Jamison Valley .
Now fortunately it has been returned to the and is very sacred to walk around and see and read the history including remains of the track and where signs like Capstan Bend once hang.
The story is documented in a book called
Sacred Waters
The story of the Blue Mountains Gully Aboriginal People
by
Dianne Johnson
