Even though Helen Russ Ph.D comes from a family that has been settled in the central west since 1850, she considers herself as a new Australian.
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Growing up on a property in Warren, Helen remembers running around the property as kids do, but she also remembers feeling the presence of the Aboriginal families that preceded her in the background.
"This land had been inhabited by Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years and we have been there for about 200," she said.
"Of course it is imbued with Aboriginal presence, but we have had no language or model to understand."
To help not only spread her story, but in a way create a physical manifestation of her own experiences and journey of discovery, Helen has released a book titled 'Across the Creek - Land energy experiences in the home paddock.'
The catalyst for the story wasn't a sudden epiphany of some sort, it was a result of years of meditation and the gradual realisation that the women who once lived on the land were still with her.
"I began meditating about 20 years ago and at the time I was living between San Francisco and Ireland," she said.
"It was really subtle because it wasn't until someone mentioned to me about a certain presence that came in a meditation practice and asked 'whose that?'"
"When I answered that it was the women from home it was then I realised that they'd been with me my whole life but had never consciously recognised them before."
Helen said that the women are a group of four or five that lived about 300 metres from her home and in 2012 on her return to Australia, a friend and herself visited the site.
"We went across the creek and we were standing on the dry creek bed, there was nothing there, no physical landmarks or anything, and the women were smiling," she said.
This moment allowed Helen to realise that for years she'd been travelling around the world looking for what was right here at home.
"It's an absolutely completely different relationship with land than what I had experienced when growing up," she said.
Helen believes that the current production ethos of farming, pushing it harder and harder for more produce with bigger machinery and more stock, crops and chemicals, is creating a hard layer that prevents the subtle energies of the land from being available.
"I now have a completely different relationship with land than I used to have," she said.
Helen said that she has written the book because the women want their story told.
"The women have pushed me gently over the past 20 years at least," she said.
The book is available from https://helenruss.com/product/across-the-creek/
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
