Burran, a season for restraint

In this week of Lent, a week of raging grassfires and scorching heat, I’ve learnt afresh that we can still learn from Indigenous knowledge of seasons and country. According to euro-Australian lore this is now Autumn. Really? No, not here, it isn’t. It is actually the season of Burran; and if we understood this we would be better prepared and more adjusted in spirit and mind to where we live, and to what the seasons or time of year really are telling us. These seasons carry lessons practical and spiritual. Burran is hot and dry, a time of breeding for Kangaroos and Wallabies, when hunting was forbidden. For those of us following the seasons of the Christian church, and currently walking the path of Lent, doesn’t it seem fitting that the fighting Kangaroos are telling us not to eat meat or fish, to avoid the fat of the land and instead to live off fruit and seeds and tubers of plants which had finished their flowering cycle; yes, to consume just the basics. To avoid excess. What a light that casts on Lent!

It’s also interesting to me that this season is marked by the flowering of the Weetjellan or Acacia Implexa. I’ve learnt this tree, widely found across the Eastern seaboard, sent a signal through its flowers that the season of Burran had arrived, and that fires should not be lit unless well away from bush land. This week’s grassfires in NSW reaffirm, in a scary way, that old and local lesson. 

And when it hit 39 degrees in Burwood on Monday I stayed close to the cold water in the fridge, just like the Wangal people knew that in this season you stay close to a water source! Stay close to the source; again, how appropriate for the Lenten journey…

But to me the herald of the season of Burran, the flowering of the Weetjellan, or Acacia Implexa also teaches another Lenten lesson here in Burwood and Croydon in Sydney. This tree was part of the ecology of the Sydney turpentine-Ironbark forests. Sadly, where I live these forests are long gone. Swept away by unbridled development over 200 years. In fact, there is only 0.5% of this type of forest left in the Sydney Basin. 

With this knowledge in mind I went across to Newington Nature Reserve - nearby where some of the members of our church family live - down by Sydney Olympic park on the Parramatta River, to spend some time with this remnant forest. It was beautiful. Those last remaining stands of trees are a witness, not only to what is beautiful and good: country and creation, but they also stand as a witness to what has been lost under a deluge of ‘civilisation’ which has largely silenced true knowledge of place, and of course, the people who were placed here. It is a reminder as good as any that Lent is a time for sober reckoning and repentance, as well as fasting. Done rightly, it is also a preparation for new life, for resurrection. That’s why I’ll be planting a Weetjellan, the Acacia Implexa where we live, here on the shale soils of this part of the Sydney Basin. This is my Lenten act: to accept knowledge born from the wisdom of the Dhawaral, Wangal and other First Nations peoples, still present, in this season of Lent, this season of Burran, to strengthen my belief that truth will rise, on the other side of death and destruction, ready to speak wisdom to new generations who might yet listen, whether from an ancient book and practice, or from a wisdom spoken from time immemorial and witnessed in collective restraint and the flowering of a common tree.