Flight of the Kingfisher: A Journey Among the Kukatja Aborigines

by Monica Furlong

The Kukatja live closely and unselfconsciously in a natural environment, believing that the land does not belong to them but that they belong to the land. Monica Furlong stayed among the Aboriginal community of Wirrumanu ('the flight of the king-fisher') ant Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, surrounded by he mesmerising, timeless red sands.

Genres: Australia, Travel, Nonfiction, Biography

178 pages, Paperback

First published March 3, 1997

About the author

Monica Furlong was a British author, journalist, and activist, regarded as one of the Church of England's most influential and creative laypersons of the post-war period.
Her work often focused on religion and spirituality, with notable biographies of figures such as John Bunyan, Thomas Merton, Thérèse of Lisieux, and Alan Watts. She also explored subjects like the spiritual life of aboriginals, medieval women mystics, and the Church of England. Furlong was also known for her children’s novels, including the Wise Child series, which consists of Wise Child, Juniper, and Colman.
Furlong began her writing career in 1956 as a feature writer for Truth magazine and later worked as a religious correspondent for The Spectator and Daily Mail. She became an advocate for religious reform, particularly supporting women’s rights within the Church of England. In her first book, With Love to the Church (1965), she championed an inclusive Church. She continued to support the ordination of women in the 1980s and pushed for the appointment of women to senior Church positions.
Her autobiography, Bird of Paradise (1995), provides insights into her life and career. Furlong’s controversial experiences with LSD were shared in Travelling In (1971), which was banned from Church of Scotland bookshops. Throughout her career, Furlong wrote extensively on spirituality, reform, and religious figures, becoming a well-respected voice in both religious and literary circles.

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was unfortunately paired with two other quite slow reads for me. While only a thin volume, it has a quite small font and dense line spacing, meaning that its 178 pages are easily comparable to 250 page book of larger type. It was published in 1996.

The content was excellent, and very detailed, and while there were some in-depth aspects that interested me less than other areas, there is little doubt the author did a great job of immersing herself in the community and learning much more about Aboriginal culture than most who make the attempt.

Monica Furlong was a British author and journalist (she passed away 2003) who had shown interest in the Aboriginal people, and was invited to Balgo or Balgo Missionary near the border of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, where it has access to both the Great Sandy Desert and the Tanami Desert. The Aboriginals who live there are the Kukatja (or Gugadja) people.

Luurnpa, the Kingfisher, is the totemic ancestor of the Kukatja people. The Aboriginal name for Balgo is Wirrumanu. Wirrumanu is the name of the track made by the luurnpa in the Dreaming when he led the people from waterhole to waterhole.

I am still sitting on the fence when it comes to the missionaries. I acknowledge they do a huge amount of good for the Aboriginal communities, who really have few other people standing up for them in a country which has an appalling record of dealing with their indigenous people. However I see little benefit to the Aboriginals who are converted to follow a religion so foreign to their culture. I concede though, on balance, that they do far more good than they do harm.

This quote (P134) stood out to me:

The anthropologist TGH Strehlow, by no means uncritical of missionary endeavours in Australia, nevertheless made the startling claim, that 'the missions were the only agency that held up the complete physical annihilation of the Aboriginal race in this country from the beginnings of white settlement till the time when more enlightened Government policies were instituted in Australia.' Despite Christian bigotry and narrowmindedness, repression and ignorance, there was also a sense of human dignity and worth, and a devotion and love, however misguided at times.

3.5 stars, rounded down.

[CJ Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gave me some context for understanding Aborginal life - of which I have basically no context. So that was good.

[Dennis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book seemed a bit condescending and over-forgiving of the aborigines and their situation but then again this is understandable because a culture so different from the Western culture the writer would be more accustomed to frequently results in this kind of reaction - a kind of over-awed justification of whatever faults she might witness. You can see this in the way she longs for some of the Aboriginal groups to stay locked in the past, like some museum piece, without considering whether the Aborigines want to go back. Most of her information seemed to come from the missionaries, not from thje Aborigines themselves. The aborigines don't have a regard for clock time ? They don't have jobs so why would they need watches? When you're long-term unemployed (as I have been) you tell time by the television and the calendar only matters when you're waiting for your government check. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Nothing can undo the harm that was done in Australia but I would have liked to see her spiritual journey include the spiritual harm of the poverty cycle - but she could have visited any housing estate back in Britain if that was her purpose and I doubt it interested her much because it's much more exotic to witness in another land.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

This slim book is the story of Ms. Furlong's stay among the Kukatja Aborigines at Balgo, Western Australia for several months in the early 1990's. While she writes with great sympathy about the plight of the Aborigines and their treatment by Australia, the story is more about the visit affected her personal attitudes to silence, time, and death.

[Janet Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled a bit with this book. Parts of it were interesting, others I found rather boring. It appears a slim book, but certainly took some reading! What came out the most was the appalling treatment of the Aborigines by the whites.

[Juliet Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to admit I took a while to get into this book. I didn't find the author's early descriptions of her travels in Australia to be particularly engaging. However once she settled into her stay in the Aboriginal community of Wirrimanu ('the flight of the kingfisher') in Balgo in the Great Sandy Desert, I was much more drawn into the book.

Once you get past those early chapters this is a wonderful book. Furlong is deeply interested in the lives and customs of the Aboriginal people. She outlines the troubled history of the relations between the Aborigines and the white settlers, looking in detail at the history of some of the missionary groups. many missionaries have been responsible for undermining Aboriginal culture although they in most cases tended carefully to people's physical needs. However, we are introduced to missionaries who have been able to not only respect the Aboriginal beliefs but to draw parallels with those beliefs and the missionaries' own Christian beliefs as well as with pre-Christian beliefs from western countries. I loved the insights into The Dreaming and how stories are not only part of the landscape but part of some inescapable eternal now.

The book looks in detail at the Aboriginal relationship with the land, how they can find sustenance in a desert that the the first white settlers seemed totally barren. Furlong also looks in detail at the art of the Aborigines, how they originally used natural pigments to paint almost solely sacred art which strictly speaking they felt couldn't be shared to how the introduction of acrylics freed artists up to paint more commercial paintings that weren't so sacred (though of course the introduction of payment for paintings probably had something to do with this). We are also introduced to some of the words from Kukatja, one of the Aboriginal languages. Furlong analyses some of the words to give interesting insights into the community's concerns and priorities - there are a lot of words relating to ill health and pain, and the natural world is very carefully described in the vocabulary.

Overall this is a fascinating book, for anyone interested in spirituality and our relationship with the natural world.

[Otrillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this account of Monica Furlong's time spent among an aboriginal Australian community. Her humility and respect for their culture shines through along with the shame and regret for the way this ancient society was almost destroyed forever by western colonisation and their misguided policy of 'civilising'. She is frustrated that she can only scratch the surface in understanding them but provides a tantalising glimpse of a people whose consciousness and relationship to the world around them is vastly different and ultimately more humane than our own. I was very sad to discover that Monica passed away some years ago.