Bala-dhu Gunhi Bangalbuwurayi. I am Mother Earth, home to girawuu and biladurang dreaming. I am founded on granite and sculpted by melting ice and volcanic lava that created the Wambool Bila that runs through me like blood through the veins of my Wiradyuri mayiny. Over time the landscape has changed, but my people have continued to live, love, thrive with me, as one.

  The Wambool Bila is a place of sustenance. It is abundant with large trout, the river blackfish and the silver perch, but the bila is more than a source of food. Its galing is the giver of life that brings people to its banks. Galing cleanses spirits and bodies, and the overhanging trees along its banks are used for shelter from the elements, to sleep.

   The rise and fall of galing over seasons mirror the rainfall of this place of birthing, of living and ceremony. I am the place of reflection, of serenity and tranquillity, where the sounds of silence allow those who listen to remember or imagine the time of the Ancestors – gudyiin – walking this place, often coming together for sharing, for celebration and corroborees, and for sorry business.

   The Wiradyuri have been part of me for millennia, hunting and gathering and feasting on native animals – the wambuwuny, the dinawan, the budhanbang, among many other species that nourish and sustain them. All the while respecting their totems, ensuring no living creature will ever die out.

   While the life of the Wiradyuri is not without its challenges, it is one to be admired and respected for its longevity and its value system: yindyamarra, marrumbang, ngumbadal and winhangagigilanha. Values that focus on responsibility and accountability to miyagan, kindness, love, unity, caring, where ngumambinya means each member of the Clan can trust others for help. But that trust will be tested in times ahead.

   News from other tribes travels across the land through word of mouth, and warnings abound of the white ghost interlopers, the people of the white-skinned tribe, making their home in what I am known as to them: the new country. The white ghosts see me as useful for their own ways, willing to change Wiradyuri culture forever, disrespecting ngurambang, its Ancestors, its creatures, its kin.

   But I am Wiradyuri ngurambang, and Wiradyuri people will never give me up, give up on me, for we are one. We have our own lores, even if the white ghosts do not recognise them. And Wiradyuri will never give up on the freedoms they have always known here.

   The white-skinned tribe will follow Wiradyuri tracks across the ranges; they will build pathways that will act like an acceptable entry to our homeland, and while they may initially be welcomed as friends, they will behave like the invaders they are.

   Whispers that come with the winds also say the white ghosts are bringing with them weapons, sickness, and a language that defines us in ways we know nothing of: savagery, cannibalism, worthlessness. They are bringing their own countrymen, convicts bound in chains, to be whipped at will, often considered the worst of society, some driven to a life of hardship simply because they needed to eat. The inhumanity demonstrated against these men and women will be shown towards the Wiradyuri too.

   The white ghosts will create a way of life that keeps Wiradyuri separate from them, but worse, separate from each other. And when they mix their blood with ours through the rape of our yinaa-galang and girls, the Wiradyuri will not have the language to express the grief of such violations, or the anger that will build within them.

   Such violations will not go unpunished. Nor will their imposition upon and theft of Wiradyuri land, of our cultural ways and our own humanity.

   Wiradyuri culture is yindyamarra and winhangagigilanha, respect and caring for each other. But our culture has no meaning to them, and I have witnessed the tragedy and trauma befall the Gadigal, Bidjigal and Dharawal mayiny already. The white ghosts have arrived without invitation and are travelling without yindyamarra for those who have lived here forever; they will cross Gandangarra ngurambang and find their way here, there is no question about that – but when?

   There have been many ghosts who have attempted to come over Katta-toon-bah, the place of ‘shining falling water’. The ngurambang of the Darug, the Dharawal, the Darkinyung and Gandangarra have been encroached upon, and their warriors have resisted, and that intrusive pressure will be upon me too, soon.

   The white ghosts have been trying for many moons, since the big canoes arrived into Kamay and carried a leader they called James Cook. He was challenged by the Gweagal, mayiny of Dharawal ngurambang, but he did not leave. And his canoes kept coming and brought with them more white ghosts and new, bigger animals, first leaving them at Wuganmagulya.

   The white ghosts will travel over land on the backs of other creatures, sitting upright with an air of authority, as if their way of being is better than that of the custodians of ngurambang here. They will call themselves explorers and will be worshipped by their own for finding places that have long been known by Wiradyuri and other tribes. Even to get to the place they will name Bathurst, they will need the guidance of those from this land. But the footprints of the First Peoples will not be acknowledged.

   Their arrival will bring curiosity and the white ghosts will think the Wiradyuri a novelty at first. They’ll come with yarraman and belongings that will be new and strange to the Wiradyuri, who at first may be afraid. Possum skin cloaks and other adornments will be traded for weapons and white ghost tools. And the newcomers will try to act like guests, even offering gifts in exchange for knowledge, for guidance across the land. They will attempt some level of ghostlike-friendship, and in return the Wiradyuri will treat them with yindyamarra, as is the Wiradyuri way. They will generously share food and knowledge in exchange for white-ghost ways of doing new things.

   But will that extension of friendship last? Will it be reciprocated? Or will it be exploited and abused? Will the white ghosts dismiss Wiradyuri as naïve, or consider them of lower intelligence to themselves? Will they create a hierarchy where Wiradyuri will find no place of power, their desire for control over their own lives ignored?

   Will the white ghosts disrupt and destroy the life Wiradyuri have known since the beginning of time, since Baayami created the waterholes, the animals, the songlines.

   My questions are born from fears their beasts will turn me inside out, digging at my heart as if I am replaceable, irrelevant, unnecessary in their new world order. I fear they will, as they have done elsewhere, create their own boundaries, fencing me off from my people, and stripping me bare, until eventually I have no more to give; no nourishment, no sustenance, no life. I fear they will manipulate me to a point that the Wiradyuri way of life will become unrecognisable, and the impact of loss will cause a spiral of depression among the mayiny.

   I believe that when the white ghosts find the Wiradyuri to be protective of all they love, they will learn in the most brutal way from the people of this ngurambang – from the Blue Mountains in the east, to the western slopes in the south, to the grassy plains in the north and west – that they will fight for what is rightfully theirs.

   And even though the white ghosts will arrive with firesticks they will point and shoot, poison they will lace food with, disease they will spread, and a hatred born from nothing other than greed and ignorance, they will learn that the mayiny of Wiradyuri ngurambang are resilient and strong, and though they may be displaced and disempowered, they will never give up their ngurambang, ever.

   The journey of the white ghosts to conquer me for their own purposes will be devastating, but when the warrior Windradyne commands, ‘Dirrayawadha!’, his people will rise up.