Why the Flannel flower?

The Flannel flower signifies a message in the Dreaming story told by D'harawal knowledge holders Frances Bodkin and Gawaian Bodkin-Andrews, that there are times when we must listen to the voices of the young (TALARA'TINGI: How the Flannel Flower Came to Be, 2001). Just as with other Dreamtime stories that tell how life is sustained through natural cycles of change, so there are versions of this story told by other peoples in other countries.

The flower in the animation came from the Waraburra Nura Indigenous plant garden at the University of Technology Sydney. I made the animation using the stop-motion method. This involves changing elements and photographing each change frame by frame, and then compiling the sequence of pictures to make a movie.

The flower and its seeds move clockwise spiral to reflect the Antarctic circumpolar current reaching northward to connect to Australia and other lands in the Southern hemisphere and beyond. I set the animation to sounds that I recorded, of birds singing in the garden outside the room where I was working in Sydney. The idea was to connect Australia to the icy continent, and the cycles of change and transformation that are known from both Indigenous Dreaming stories and from Western science.