Plains of Promise: Identity, Religion and Culture

I just got back from a 14 day trip in Thailand. The four days after arrival were spent in Bangkok. This is what there is to do there: Walk around Khao San Road morning, noon and night; the markets are alive with lots of vibrant colours from the cloth designs. Five years ago Sunset Street was much quieter; it is very busy these days and there are more stalls they even continue around the block. What there is to see in the way of temples: The reclining Buddha about 15-20 metres long made of gold, the Buddha is lying down on his side; the Emerald Buddha, the Grande Palace and Arun Wat – a temple. I bought a silk painting of a really exotic bird in the jungle, the colours a really spectacular.

My favourite Hindu god has always been Hanuman the monkey god and Ganesha the Elephant god. There are two local beers one is called Chang which is Thai for Elephant, the other is Singha beer. There is a Singapore beer called Tiger beer. The way I see it is that ancient cultures relate a lot of their environment, animals and other nature to their spiritual religious culture. As the Aborigines have worshipped various spirits for centuries the Hindu’s worship their animal gods. These gods are very sacred to their culture as the land has been to the Aborigines, hence they have sacred sites. It has been a great fault of Westerninity not to respect these sites. In Plains of Promise I think the similarity between the Chinese and the Aborigines is that they both worship spirits and they communicate to each other through the land because their knowledge of plants is what both cultures have in common. As the Chinese have for centuries had a very good knowledge of plants and herbs for medicinal purposes so have the Aborigines. The Chinese were able to understand the Aborigines and communicate with them because they both used plants for curing the ill and preventing diseases. If you refer to (p138) the narrator speaks in the third person to describe Pilot’s thoughts: “He preferred to live in the bush with the Aboriginal people, whose culture of traditional ownership he had no difficulty in understanding…He was always eager to understand the local language, since it gave him access to the medicinal properties of plants. And he was able to gain information for the application of cures, and operations”. The Chinese also came to Australia to practice medicine. There is a sad tone as I sense the author is very upset that the white missionaries and Government have never able to see the Aboriginal culture from this view point.