Walk this way
“THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN us mob and your average tour guide,” explains Uncle Hank Horton, “is we open ourselves up, bare bones and all.” He’s seated among Elders, guides and guests around a long table enjoying morning tea at the Aboriginal Elders Council of Tasmania in Launceston, where wukalina (Mt William) Walk begins and ends. “We don’t skirt the true history,” he adds. “You’ll learn about what it means to be Aboriginal and why being on Country is so important to us. We like to say that our tour is not a tour, it’s more a journey.”
The walls of this 1927 building are adorned with framed shell necklaces and quilts that speak of the music, muttonbirding, shell collecting, cultural foods and returned service people of truwana (Cape Barren Island). Rows of monochrome portraits of Elders past and present, by photographer Ricky Maynard, overlook a yarning circle – where speaking and listening from the heart is practised.
Hank, an Aboriginal community member, is lead guide on the Walk. Beside him palawa woman Sharon Holbrook, who prepares food for every trip, introduces herself as “Stolen Gen”. Her grandson Jacob Holbrook, a palawa and Wiradjuri man connected to northern Tasmania and northern New South Wales, has guided the Walk since its 2017 inception and is support crew for the journey leaving today. Also joining us are: Carleeta Rose Helen Thomas, a pakana woman of north-eastern lutruwita (Tasmania) who’s been with the Walk since she was 17; and cultural knowledge holder Jam Graham-Blair, a Trawlwoolway and Plangermaireener pakana from lutruwita, who is a conservation ecology student at the University of Tasmania.
