In The Bush, Matthew Priestley reflects on growing up at a time when incarceration was a new rite of passage for Aboriginal boys, a new way of taking kids away, and a yarn inspired by his own teenage years unfolds across the Dreamings of Gomeroi Country.

To check out the film Hurt click here to go to Coequal's Patreon page.

To check out Big Hart's website click here

Detailed Music Credits
"Chrysalis" by Simon McCorry, "Another One" by Mirko Sosai, "Omen" by Richard Johnson, "Old Postcards" by The Last Days of our Past, "Quirky Play" by Marco Pesci, "Porch Blues" by Kevin MacLeod, "John as well" by Mirko Sosai, "Hurt Guitar Track 8" by Damian Mason, "Charmaine" by Philip Okerstrom, "Dof Dof" by Philip Okerstrom, "Didgeridoo Long Loop" by Tera Mangala, "Guitar bits and bobs" by Philip Okerstrom, "Sneaky" by Philip Okerstrom, "Guts and Bourbon" by Kevin MacLeod, "deranged-terrifying-modern-hor" by Matthew Creid, "Tranquility Base" by Chill Factor, "Wonder and Intrigue" by Erick McNerney, "Spirit Land" by Tristan Barton, "Didgeridoo Ambient 2" by Pascal Tatipata, "What Dreams May Come" by Tristan Barton

This podcast was made with funding from Create NSW.

A podcast from Matthew Priestley supported by Third Space Ventures and Coequal.

To contact Coequal and find out more, check out our Patreon page, click here


This episode contains references to child removal, racism, incarceration, alcohol misuse and violence.

🪶 STRUCTURE AND CONTENT BREAKDOWN
Opening: The Dreamings We Hold
Speaker: Matthew PriestleyMatthew shares a story about Dreaming itself. Fire, wind, rain, water, animals and people all hold different dreams and responsibilities.Dreamings are not owned. They are held in trust.🌀 Themes: Dreaming as relationship · Responsibility · Interconnection · Knowledge held in trust

Growing Up Between Sydney and Moree
 Matthew reflects on being born into a generation shaped by migration, activism and changing government policies.His father works on the Sydney wharves. Family move between Balmain and Moree before eventually returning home.🏙️ Themes: Displacement and return · Family networks · Aboriginal migration · Survival and workRedfern,

Relocation and Assimilation
Examines government housing policies and the movement of Aboriginal families into Sydney suburbs.Contrasts official language of opportunity and integration with the experiences remembered by Aboriginal families.📜 Themes: Assimilation · Government policy · Urban Aboriginal history · Contradiction between policy and lived experience

Grandmothers, Missions and Stanley Village
Matthew describes growing up surrounded by grandmothers, aunties, uncles and Elders.Church, family visits, fishing trips and everyday life become vehicles for cultural learning.🏡 Themes:
Kinship · Intergenerational knowledge · Everyday cultural education · Community

Learning Outside the Classroom
Matthew reflects on school, wagging, and feeling disconnected from formal education while learning from family and community. Contrasts institutional learning with knowledge gained through lived experience.📚 Themes:
Different ways of learning · School and culture · Informal education · Identity

Aboriginal Youth and the Criminal Justice System
Examines the growing overrepresentation of Aboriginal young people in policing, courts and detention during the 1970s and 1980s.Explores how incarceration increasingly becomes a common experience for Aboriginal youth.⚖️ Themes: Systemic discrimination · Criminalisation · Child removal by new means · Structural inequality

Matthew's Teenage Years
Matthew reflects on crime, peer pressure and the expectations placed on young people.Describes becoming caught between family knowledge and the pull of another world.🔥 Themes:
Adolescence · Belonging · Peer influence · Risk and consequence

A Fictional Story
Introduces Alfie and Cammo, two young boys from Moree. After a series of poor choices, Alfie is taken into the bush by his Uncles and left alone with Country.🌾 Themes:
Rite of passage · Consequence · Country as teacher · Storytelling

Hurt: Story Becomes Film
Reveals that Alfie's story formed the basis of the award-winning community film Hurt, created by young people in Moree. Explores how storytelling became a way of sharing cultural knowledge and lived experience.🎬 Themes: Community arts · Storytelling as cultural practice · Youth voice · Creative expression

Matthew's Real Story
Matthew explains that the story of Alfie was inspired by his own experience as a teenager.After getting into trouble, his father and uncles took him into the bush and left him alone. Matthew reflects on confusion, hunger, fear and the lessons that emerged from the experience.🌿 Themes:
Rite of passage · Learning through experience · Family responsibility · Country as teacher

Storytelling and Continuation
Matthew reflects on becoming a storyteller through the guidance of his father and Elders.He describes storytelling as a modern continuation of song and dance—a way for Dreamings and cultural knowledge to keep moving through new forms.💬 Themes: Cultural continuity · Responsibility of storytelling · Old knowledge in new forms · Dreaming in the present

Outro and Forward Look
Young hosts reflect on the relationship between story, memory and lived experience.Preview Episode 5: School.

Coequal's other podcasts

For Real Made Up Stories click here
For A Good Mind To click here
For Agents for Change cllck here

In Part 2: Reserve we move from Dreaming and sky-knowledge to the ground-level realities of segregation, following the creation of reserves and camps while tracing the life of Matthew’s great grandfather Alexander Stanley.

This podcast has been informed by the historical work of Aunty Noelene Briggs, and particularly her books Winanga-li and Burrul Wallaay. To find out more about Aunty Noelene's books click here


Detailed Music Credits
"Just Did" by All Stars, "Soundscape" by Mirko Sosai, "Omen" by Richard Johnson, "Guitarline" by Philip Okerstrom, "John as well" by Mirko Sosai, "Fred" by Fred, "Awkward Comedy" by Luca Francini, "Hurt Track 4" by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Aytonn, "Tranquility Base" by Chill Factor, "Hurt Track 13" by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Ayton, "Hurt Guitar Track 8" by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Ayton, "Proud Return" by See More Music, Blusy G'Tar by Mirco Sosai, "Hurt Track 5 by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Ayton.

This podcast was made with funding from Create NSW.

A podcast from Matthew Priestley supported by Third Space Ventures and Coequal.

To contact Coequal and find out more, check out our Patreon page, click here

Content Description
This episode contains references to segregation, forced child removal, discriminatory laws, and the hardships faced by Aboriginal families living on reserves and in camps.

Wirilla – Episode 2: “Reserve” Duration: 23 minutes
Setting: Moves between star stories, family history, and the lived memories of the Terry Hie Hie reserve and Moree’s early camps.
Narrators/Voices:

• Matthew Priestley – Mehi Murri man (Terry Hie Hie clan, Gomeroi Nation)
• Dante – Gomeroi young person narrator and learner
• Khalani – Gomeroi young person narrator and learner
• Kim – Long-time friend of Matthew, researcher and collaborator
• Phil – Co-creator, occasional narrator

🪶 STRUCTURE AND CONTENT BREAKDOWN Opening: The Lyrebird — Sound and the Birth of Language

• Matthew opens by explaining that sound itself was created by the lyrebird, and that animals generated the first sounds — before wind had “sound.”
• He frames vibration as an original language, akin to mathematics — a structural, patterned intelligence that underpins how we communicate.

🌀 Themes introduced:
Sound as origin · Lyrebird as culture-keeper · Vibration as language · Science and story intertwined.

Opening Story: The Emu in the Sky

• introduces the Gomeroi sky story of the the Emu in the Sky, explaining how the dark spaces between stars form the celestial emu.
• The changing shape of the emu tracks the seasons — when it lies down, when it rises, and when the birds are nesting.
• teaches how the sky is a living calendar, a guide for movement, ceremony, and food gathering.

🌀 Themes introduced:
Celestial knowledge · Seasonal law · Country as teacher · Reading the sky.


Terry Hie Hie: Bora and the Calm Before Segregation

• The hosts discuss Terry Hie Hie as a major meeting and ceremonial site — one of the largest Bora grounds.
• They note the last recorded Bora at Terry Hie Hie in 1883, and how the cultural practices continued even as colonisation imposed new pressures.

🌿 Themes:
Ceremonial life · Continuity amid disruption · Record vs lived practice.

After Myall Creek: Disease, Poison, and Disrupted Songlines

• Traces the cascading impacts of massacres: disease, poisoning, food source depletion, and broken pathways/songlines that undermined traditional life.
• Explains how these pressures foreshadowed more formal systems of segregation and control.

🔥 Themes:
Cultural disruption · Environmental impacts of colonisation · Fragmentation of communal life.

Creation of the Terry Hie Hie Reserve (1895)

• The Aboriginal Protection Board set aside 102 acres for a reserve at Terry Hie Hie in 1895.
• Hosts discuss the split among white settlers — some professed “protection” motives, others openly expressed racist aims (preventing intermarriage, “protecting” the white race).
• The reserve is framed both as an imposed protection and as a tool for segregation.

🏚️ Themes:
Protection as paternalism · Segregation policy · Control of bodies and movement.

Naming, Registration, and Identity Theft

• The episode explains how births were registered by farmers or reserve managers, Aboriginal names were ignored, and white names or property names were imposed (example: “Dave Combadello”).
• This bureaucratic renaming severed cultural ties and created false official identities that complicated family histories.

🪞 Themes:
Bureaucratic erasure · Identity control · Loss of language through paperwork.

Family Story: Alexander Stanley (Matthew’s Great-Grandfather)

• The life of Alexander Stanley is traced: born 1896, worked on cattle stations, later enlisted in WWI using a falsified identity (a common tactic by Aboriginal enlistees).
• His experience illustrates the contradictions of Aboriginal service: fighting for a nation that denied rights at home.
• Alexander’s post-war life — work, relationships (meeting Rachel Munro), and railway work — ties family history into broader patterns of movement and survival.

🪶 Themes:
Personal resilience · Identity negotiation · Indigenous war service.

The Protection Act and Child Removal Practices

• The episode quotes the 1909 Aborigines Protection Act and describes how it allowed indenturing children as apprentices, controlled wages, and restricted movement — measures used to assimilate and exploit Aboriginal children.
• Hosts highlight that promised pocket money was rarely given and that children were effectively trapped in institutions or domestic servitude.

⚖️ Themes:
Legalised family separation · Exploitation under law · Institutional abuse.

Education, Exclusion and the 1899 School Case

• Tells the story of 11 Aboriginal children in Gullarganbone who were briefly admitted to public school (Feb 7–20) before being suspended due to Department pressure.
• By 1902 Aboriginal children were effectively banned from public schooling — an explicit policy of exclusion.
• The episode uses a sarcastic 1899 newspaper extract to show local sentiment and systemic racism.

📚 Themes:
Educational exclusion · Public humiliation · White anxieties about equality.

Life in Moree: Top, Middle and Bottom Camps

• Describes how displaced families set up makeshift camps in Moree: Top Camp (near Pitt family), Middle Camp (near the dump), Bottom Camp (near the cemetery).
• Living conditions: tin shacks, poor sanitation, stigma
• Council resistance to establishing a formal reserve inside the municipality is discussed, showing local hostility to Aboriginal presence.
• Matthew speaks about the importance of listening to old people and ancestors.

🏘️ Themes:
Spatial marginalisation · Community resilience · Municipal racism.

Returned Soldiers, Memorials, and Hypocrisy

• The episode recounts how returned Aboriginal servicemen were excluded from the Moree Soldiers Memorial Hall despite their service.
• Hosts quote the Hall committee’s explicit discriminatory rule banning “full blood or half caste” Aboriginal people from attending.
• This stark irony underlines the hypocrisy of national celebration built on dispossession.

🕯️ Themes:
Recognition denied · National myth vs lived reality · Moral indictment.

Reflection and Closing

• Khalani and Dante react emotionally — perplexed, angered, determined to learn more.
• Credits and thanks close the episode, with a preview: the next breath of Wirilla will focus on Top Camp.

💬 Themes:
Memory as resistance · Intergenerational responsibility · Learning as activism · Continuing the yarn.
Additional Citation: Fuller, R.S, Norris, R. P, Trudgett, M: The astronomy of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi peoples and their neighbours in Australian Aboriginal Studies 2014/2

In Part 1 Gomeroi Country we start at the beginning and then encounter invasion, massacre and colonisation.

This podcast has been informed by the historical work of Aunty Noelene Briggs, and particularly her books Winanga-li and Burrul Wallaay. To find out more about Aunty Noelene's books click here


Detailed Music Credits
"Track 4 (Hurt)" by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Ayton, "Didgee Beat Box Mix" by Philip Okerstrom, "Didgy" by Philip Okerstrom "Quirky Play" by Marco Pesci, "Green Garden" by Score Wizards, "Track 10 (Hurt)" by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Ayton, "Talismanist’s Art" by Tera Mangala, "Omen" by Richard Johnson, "Didgeridoo Long Loop" by Tera Mangala, "Track 3 (Hurt)" by Philip Okerstrom, Damian Mason and Symon Ayton, "Charmaine" by Philip Okerstrom.

This podcast was made with funding from Create NSW.

A podcast from Matthew Priestley supported by Third Space Ventures and Coequal.

To contact Coequal and find out more, check out our Patreon page, click here

Content Description

This episode contains discussions of colonial violence, including detailed references to massacres and systemic dispossession of Aboriginal people
 
Wirilla – Episode 1: “Gomeroi Country” Duration: ~22 minutes
Setting: Recorded on Gomeroi and Dharawal Country, moving between ancient storytelling space and historical narration.
Narrators/Voices:

• Matthew Priestley – Mehi Murri man (Terry Hie Hie clan, Gomeroi Nation)
• Dante – Young Gomeroi man, co-narrator and learner
• Kim – Anglo-Saxon background, long-time friend of Matthew, teacher from Moree
• Phil – Co-creator, occasional narrator

🪶 STRUCTURE AND CONTENT BREAKDOWN Opening Invocation: The Wind

• Speaker: Matthew Priestley
• Matthew opens the episode with a poetic reflection about the wind as the source of life and communication.
• He describes the wind as magic—essential, invisible, and often unacknowledged.
• Key idea: Breath and speech come from the wind, positioning “air” as the first teacher.
• Sets a meditative, spiritual tone—listeners are drawn into Country as a living force.

🌀 Themes introduced:
Connection to Country · Breath as life · Gratitude to unseen forces · Story as wind.
Welcome and Setting

• Speaker: Dante (intro narration)
• Dante welcomes listeners to Wirilla, acknowledging Gomeroi, Dharawal, Elouera, and Wadi Wadi lands.
• Introduces Matthew and the location — the ridge called Wirilla.
• Kim describes standing on the ridge: red gums with “red bellies,” tall and narrow.
• Matthew teaches that these are Yarran trees, sacred and central to story.

🌿 Theme: Naming and language as a way of seeing; reclaiming Aboriginal place-names and meanings.
Creation Story of Baime and the Yarran Tree

• Narrator: Dante
• A Dreaming story unfolds:
  • Baime creates the first humans from red earth on the ridges.
  • After a drought, one man refuses to eat a kangaroo rat, walks away, dies beside a red gum.
  • A Yowie appears, places him inside the hollow tree, which then rises into the sky amid thunder.
  • Two cockatoos follow it upward — their flight creates the Southern Cross.
  • The story marks the origin of death in the world.

🌌 Themes:
Cosmic transformation · Origins of mortality · Sky stories as moral lessons · Animal kinship.
Yarran Do and the Hidden Star

• Speaker: Matthew
• Matthew expands on the story:
  • The lifted tree becomes Yarran Do.
  • Hidden within is Gameeri, “the smallest star in the universe,” invisible to the naked eye.
  • Knowing the story helps you never get lost on Country — signs are everywhere.
• Ends with cockatoos shrieking (“See you later”), blending story and lived moment.

✨ Themes:
Knowledge as orientation · Invisible truths · Story as navigation · Spiritual continuity.
Introductions and Reflections on Identity

• Speakers: Dante, Kim, Matthew
• Dante introduces himself as Gomeroi, living on Dharawal land, learning about his ancestry through this project.
• Kim introduces herself as Anglo-Saxon, long-time collaborator and teacher from Moree.
• Raises the question: “Australians like to think everyone gets a fair go — but is that actually true?”
• This line bridges from ancient story to modern social reflection.

🪞 Themes:
Belonging · Cultural reclamation · The myth of equality in Australia · Intercultural friendship.
Matthew on Pre-colonial Knowledge and Balance

• Speaker: Matthew
• Describes Aboriginal people as living in “subconscious mode” — deeply attuned to Country.
• Speaks of thousands of years of balance: people knowing 30–40 languages by age 11, every star, plant, and animal by kinship.
• Presents a vision of knowledge as living ecology — not ownership but relationship.

🌏 Themes:
Ancient intelligence · Linguistic richness · Embodied learning · Ecology and spirituality united.
The Land Before Colonisation

• Narrators: Dante and Kim (quoting settlers’ accounts)
• Introduces historical documentation:
  • Quotes from Paul Mann (Australian Geographic, 2010) and Peter Cunningham (1827).
  • Descriptions of Moree and the Liverpool Plains — fertile, lush black soil, “a green ocean.”
• Matthew comments on the abundance of the black soil and Aboriginal “preparation” of the land.

🌾 Themes:
Land stewardship · Colonial misunderstanding of Aboriginal agriculture · “Gardened” landscapes.
First Contact and Conflict

• Narrator: Dante
• The Gomeroi meet white settlers — initially peaceful, then resistance arises as land is stolen and damaged.
• Colonial law claimed Aboriginal lives had equal value, but killings were ignored and widespread.
• Introduces the notion of “a war of extermination.”

🔥 Themes:
Invasion · Resistance · Hypocrisy of colonial law · Systemic erasure.
The Myall Creek Massacre

• Narrators: Dante and Kim
• Detailed retelling of the 1838 Myall Creek Massacre:
  • Wirriyarray clan working amicably with settlers are massacred by convicts and stockmen.
  • The aftermath: bodies mutilated, burned.
  • A rare moment of legal accountability: 11 men tried in Sydney.
  • Despite a first acquittal, seven are retried and hanged after a second trial for the murder of a child.
• The story foregrounds justice and injustice intertwined.

⚖️ Themes:
Truth-telling · Justice and complicity · Silenced history · Courage of witnesses.
Aftermath and Silence

• Narrators: Dante, Kim, Phil
• Newspapers react with outrage — not at the massacre, but at the convictions.
• Darkly ironic “newspaper dialogue” shows settlers joking about poisoning Aboriginal people as a “safer technique.”
• The press goes silent after Myall Creek — killings continue unrecorded.
• Matthew reflects on the many massacre sites never documented, remembered only by Elders.

🕯️ Themes:
Cultural amnesia · Settler denial · Oral history as preservation · Grief and endurance.
Colonisation Consolidates: Protection and Control

• Narrators: Matthew, Dante, Phil
• As resistance collapses, Aboriginal people are coerced into station work.
• Gold rush changes power dynamics; landowners rely on Aboriginal labour.
• In 1883, the NSW Aboriginal Protection Board is established — its stated aim benevolent, but its practice restrictive.
• Next episode preview: the Terry Hie Hie reserve.

🏚️ Themes:
Assimilation disguised as help · Survival and adaptation · Policy and control.
Reflection and Credits

• Speakers: Phil, Dante
• Phil asks Dante what he makes of it all.
• Dante, overwhelmed: “I didn’t even know half of that… People should really know about this.”
• Credits follow, acknowledging team, sound, design, and Elders (especially Aunty Noeline Briggs).

💬 Themes:
Learning and reckoning · Intergenerational knowledge transfer · Respect for Elders · Ongoing truth-telling.