The Sunrise Ceremonies are very special.

This begins before there is any light at all when the sky is jet black. When the sun rises into the sky this is the yellow circle.  This turns the sky red. This is why the Aboriginal flag is half red, half black with a yellow circle in the middle.

At sunrise, I meditate and ask the Spirit for understanding and direction for my life and the lives of those around me. My entire body tingles with energy and I cry sometimes because it feels so nice. 

I know this is an ancient ceremony that has been around as long as man has inhabited this earth.  I feel so connected to this power and it helps me to stay healthy and to feel a connection to the great spirit, the source of all things in the entire universe

 

The aboriginal tribes are connected with their local landscape in a way that perhaps no other race of recent times is. The landscape is almost an externalisation of the individual’s inner world. Each tribe had a traditional area of the land which was theirs alone, and it was believed that in the Dreamtime the ancestors shaped the flat landscape into its present features. Each feature was in some way an act of the ancestors, and therefore the tribe. Like many tribal peoples, the Australian native people were deeply dependent upon their beliefs, the landscape and their inner life for their identity and strength. This makes them vulnerable to anything which disrupts their beliefs, although, apart from such vulnerability, they have a greater psychic sense of wholeness and identity with their tribe and environment than is common in Western individuals.

Uncle Tom Kelly's totem is the Waarraday - Wood Duck

Images by Mezza - Mosaics outside Bellingen court House