In the rain forests of East Gippsland.
The first people valued feathers from birds and assigned them symbolic and ceremonial importance. Old bushmen also valued these - wearing a "gift" in their bush hat for bush dances and, then, when they left for war.
It was a different time - when practical clothing were made at home, where three changes was thought profligate. Pride of place in a home was around a piano, and in the cool drawing rooms that housed that wonderful piece of furniture, sat small reminders of the land - carved emu eggs, perhaps a book of bush poems, vases of dried native flowers and a display of feathers - sometimes still attached to formal hats, of both men and women, placed well out of reach of inquisitive children and only worn on formal occassions - a trip to the races, a bush dance, a baptism, wedding or funeral.
Not every feather is a gift. Instead a gift is a happenstance. It is a feather left on a path by a bird - an emu, a bush turkey, a rosella, a cockatoo or, most rare of all, a lyrebird. A feather taken from a dead bird can never be a gift.
A gift gains value and import according to how many times it is given. From friend to friend. From parent to child. The story of a gift and its re-giving is often told. A gift can not be bought nor sold.
Images of a lyrebird feather left as a gift on a path high on an escarpment in a misty casuarina forest, this week.
Peter Quinton
Palerang
January 2015
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