REVIEW
Fresh and salty rock and rollers Writing in the Sand By Matt Garrick Review by Nic Margan
In 1988, representatives of the Northern Territory’s Northern and Central Indigenous Land Councils handed Bob Hawke the Barunga statement, calling for a Treaty between non-Indigenous and Indigenous Australia. Now it hangs in an obscure corner of Parliament House, its position a fitting symbol – a history of unfinished diplomacy haunting the corners of the nation’s control centre. Almost thirty years earlier, Australia’s Indigenous people fought for and won their right to vote, and almost thirty years later, in 2017, The Uluru Statement From the Heart asserted Indigenous people’s rights in Australia with renewed vigour. In these we see the turning of a cycle, where the constant simmering work of Indigenous Australians reaches a boil. Each time, we’re a little different, but the big questions remain the same. In the same year that Galarrwuy Yunupiŋu presented the Barunga Statement, his brother, Mandawuy Bakamana Yunupiŋu was starting a band. Bakamana, a brilliant school teacher who pioneered the concept of Two Ways education, appears to have less of the politician in him than his brother, and more of the cultural producer, thinker and outright wild rock and roller. Writing in the Sand is an account of his story and the story of Yothu Yindi – a tale simultaneously riotous, hilarious, otherworldly, devastating and brilliantly powerful – and the legacy of their own boiling point, the writing of ‘Treaty’. This is a big story, spanning more than thirty years and a huge number of band members, industry contacts and friends, international and remote Australian settings and several major events in recent Australian history, but author Matt Garrick appears well-placed to 24 | AUTUMN 2022 northerly
tell it. His ongoing relationship with the band and its surrounding community and position as its authorised biographer are a good start, but even better is the staggering number of interviews with which he pieces the book together. Garrick’s style is mostly defined by minimising his own presence – at times the book reads like a conversation between interviewees, an impressive feat of editing, which gives the effect of collective memory spoken clear and coherent. Yet Garrick’s own laconic voice is there enough to show that he, too, is a character caught up in the fabric of this wonderful collaborative cultural identity. ‘These blokes were doing more than just imbibing magic mushrooms and warm beer at a bush block down the road from a forty-foot statue of a boxing crocodile,’ Garrick explains of Yothu Yindi precursor The Swamp Jockeys, and I say tell me more. While indispensable reading for anyone interested in Australian musical history (Yothu Yindi crossed paths with, among others, No Fixed Address, The Warumpi Band, Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly, Neil Finn, INXS’s Andrew Farris, Slim Dusty, and of course Gurrumul) the enduring story of the book is Mandawuy Bakamana Yunupiŋu’s philosophy of balance, wherein Indigenous and non-Indigenous people can come together in one song, electric guitar and Yiḏaki at once. This guy was extremely driven to ensure a better future for his people and their culture, and he had the acuity to see that he could do so by bringing both to the future. His tool was adaptation and through it he showed the enduring value of his culture. One account of a former band member from the early 1990s recalls ‘walking through a Manhattan supermarket deli after a show,
