In Bruce Chatwin’s book, The Songlines, he explores the Koori (Australian Aboriginal) belief that as young men go walkabout, the words they chant ‘sing their world into existence’. The tribal songs learned on their mother’s laps and the other more sacred songs taught by their fathers in the semi-circles of Corroboree are chanted and hummed as the initiates walk their songlines. With the words they sing come images, new ancient landscapes of their mind’s eye: the dream becoming the reality, the word made world.
