Herb Wharton – July 3 2016

NAIDOC Week – July 3-10 2016

This year’s theme is ‘Songlines’. Dreaming tracks, or Songlines, crisscross Australia and connect Aboriginal language groups who share them and are responsible for their different parts. Recorded in traditional songs, stories, dance and art, Songlines are intricate maps of land, sea and country and describe travel and trade routes, the location of waterholes and the presence of food. In many cases, Songlines on the earth are mirrored by sky Songlines, which allowed people to navigate vast distances of this continent and its waters. Some information on sky Songlines can be found at Sky Stories Project – Indigenous Perspectives Resource Kit.

Herb is an internationally recognised poet and novelist. A Murri man, Herb’s maternal grandmother was Kooma and he was born in Yumba, an Aboriginal camp in the south-western Queensland town of Cunnamulla. A reluctant school-goer, Herb’s parents nevertheless made sure that all 11 of their children learnt to read and write. Herb began his working life as a drover while in his teens and did not begin his writing career until he was around 50. Herb’s other published works include the novel, Unbranded, two collections of short stories, Cattle Camp and Where Ya’ Been, Mate? and a novel for young adults, Yumba Days. Herb has travelled throughout Australia, Europe and Japan and won a residency at the Australia Council studio at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. Awarded the Centenary of Federation Medal 2003 for service to Australian society and literature, he received the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature in 2012. Herb is a member of the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach. He has gathered oral histories for the University of Queensland and is an advocate for Aboriginal writing, storytelling and cultural understanding. Having moved to Brisbane for a few years to further his writing, Herb has returned to Cunnamulla and bought the shack where he wrote his first words and is now a full-time writer.

Kings with Empty Pockets, Keeaira Press, 2003; ISBN 9780958188340
Imba (Listen): Tell You a Story,  H. Wharton, 2003; ISBN 9780958188333
Always scribbling down stories and poems on scraps of paper, which he never threw away, Herb eventually decided to get serious and wrote a letter to his mate Stan Coster, a songwriter for Slim Dusty, who had asked him to explain his views on politics and life. From that, he decided to write “five poems that told the history of the world”. The poems were about the drovers, the station owners who thought they had settled the land, and the Aboriginal Dreaming tracks that preceded them by thousands of years. With help from another friend, in 1990 he entered some of his poems in the David Unaipon Award for unpublished Indigenous writers. His work was highly commended, and the University of Queensland Press commissioned him to write a novel. His second volume of poetry is Imba (Listen): Tell You a Story. In each of his books of poetry, a glossary is included to assist readers understand all the Murri language words (Murrayisms) he uses throughout his writing.