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Australian Aboriginals

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Tracking master leaves a trail for others

Text and photo: The Australian Newspaper, 24th August 2005

Making his marks: Aboriginal tracker George Musgrave, who recently recorded his knowledge so the art would not die out, takes to the bush near Laura.

Picture showing Mr Musgrave walking between termite mounds: Eddie Safarik

Text: Ian Gerard

George Musgrave is a master of a dying art.

One of Queensland's few remaining black trackers, he has lost count of how many lives he has saved.

His senses are so sharp he can follow a week-old trail through dense scrub at night and is often called on by police to find walkers lost in the wilds of Cape York.

"Every time I find somebody, every time," the Kuku Thaypan elder told The Australian during a visit to his home at Laura in the far north of the state. "You cannot beat the tracking."

Just two weeks ago it took him less than a day to find an off-duty policeman who became lost during a hunting trip near the remote Aboriginal community of Aurukun.

However, at the age of 85, Mr Musgrave is worried that the skills he learnt while growing up on a remote cattle station will not be passed on to future generations. It is the potential loss of his culture that prompted him to take part in a recently completed project to record his knowledge so it will not be forgotten.

"It's important to preserve," he said. "It's nice to have it all done, all the recordings ... we don't want them to be left alone."

Born underneath the homestead at a remote Cape York cattle station, Mr Musgrave was hidden in a mailbag to avoid being forcibly removed from his parents. He never attended school. Instead his father insisted he and his brother learn the art of tracking.

For him the land is crisscrossed with the fading and fresh trails of animals and walkers. He can identify tracks that are up to two months old.

"Everybody says I can smell a track, but I can't smell it, I can see it," he said. "I can see grass tracks, I can see you tread over a leaf, I can tell how old the tracks are and I can tell a woman's track from a man's track and a child's track from the adult."

A former community policeman and musterer, Mr Musgrave is often relied upon by police to find tourists who have wandered off into the bush, misjudging the terrain and climate.

"Nobody knows how to track any more, it's a bad thing," he said. "I track everybody and it's good because if a kid gets lost I can find him."

Elder's track's will be hard to follow

Tony Koch

One of Australia's best-known bush Aborigines, and one of the last of the recognised indigenous trackers, George Musgrave, died yesterday morning.

Mr Musgrave, 85, was born under the homestead of a remote Cape York cattle station, and was hidden in a mailbag to avoid being forcibly removed from his parents at Laura, in Queensland's central Cape.

He never attended school and his father insisted he and his brother learn the art of tracking in their Kuku Thaypan tribe.

In August last year, despite his advancing years, Mr Musgrave was called on to find an off-duty, pig-hunting police officer who had been missing overnight at remote Aurukun community on western Cape York.

Mr Musgrave had him tracked and safely back home within a day.

The respected elder said in a recent media interview that he had 'lost count" of the number of people he had tracked and saved - many of them in recent years being tourists and backpackers who became lost on the rugged Cape.

He also expressed concern that his tracking art would be lost because young people were no longer expected to find their own bush tucker.

"Everybody says I can smell a track, but I can't smell it. I can see it," he said.

"I can see grass tracks. I can see you tread over a leaf; I can tell how old the tracks are and I can tell a woman's track from a man's track and a child's track from an adult."

"Nobody knows how to track any more, and it's a bad thing. I track everybody and it's good because if a kid gets lost, I can find him."

Last year saw the completion of a project where both men recorded for future scholars their Agu Alaya language, a history of heir land, and stories of their lives.

Throughout his life he was a stockman and musterer, and a community policeman. Mr Musgrave was well known to thousands of four-wheel-drive tourists as the guide who led them through the rock art displays around Laura for the past two decades, often accompanied by his lifelong friend and now the only remaining Kuku Thaypan elder, Tommy George.

In May last year both men found themselves in unfamiliar robes when they were awarded honorary doctorates by north Queensland's James Cook University - in recognition of their contribution to academic understanding of their culture, law and country.

The two friends made headlines years ago when they campaigned to protect the world renowned Quinkan rock art near Laura - the same art galleries that they showed to visitors over the years.

They were founders of major fixtures on Cape York including the internationally renowned Laura Festival of traditional Dance and Culture, and the Cape York Land Council.

It was not uncommon for pearlshell pendants, such as this one worn by a tribal elder from Mt Liebig In central Australia, to be found as far south as the Great Australian Bight. This pendant was probably manufactured on Australia's northern coast. Photo: Renew, R.'Making IT'

Extensive trading routes were established with the products of Aboriginal industry being transported right across the country. This map shows the trade routes for pearl and baler shells.
Photo: Renew, R.'Making IT'

Acacia needles plunged into a wart
Photo: Renew, R.'Making IT'

River fish traps like these near Brewarrina, New South Wales, were built using a complex network of rock walls designed to channel fish of varying sizes into specific catchment areas.
Photo: Renew, R.'Making IT'

Australian Aborigines removing bark from a tree to make a shield. The men are carrying a variety of tools. The one on the left has two boomerangs in his belt and is using a stone axe hafted in bent cane and a stone wedge, and his companion carries a throwing stick/club.

Photo: Man before history by John Waechter

Click on the image for a larger view.

Australian Aborigines sharpening and hafting stone axes. Some sites bear traces of deep grooves on rock surfaces which were obviously convenient spots for grinding axe edges into shape

Photo: Man before history by John Waechter

An Australian aborigine holding in his left hand a spear thrower, or woomera, with which he increases his throwing power.

Photo: Man before history by John Waechter

Australian Aborigines gathering freshwater shellfish. A nineteenth century photograph by anthropologist A.C. Haddon

(The site looks to me like a mangrove area in a tidal mudflat.)

Photo: People of the Earth by Brian Fagan

This canoe tree in the Backwater area (yes, that's its name, and it is self descriptive!) of the Northern Tablelands of NSW shows the scar left when bark was removed in order to make a canoe.

Photo taken about 1984.



Photo: Don Hitchcock

Review of how indigenous people managed for water in desert regions of Australia

I A E Bayly

Department of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Vic 3168 (Manuscript received December 1997; accepted May 1998)

Abstract

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