Movement I : The Breath of Life

With a duration of around nine minutes, the first movement is a soundscape based on nature.

As the poem suggests, “The Breath of Life” illustrates one long interconnected breath that sustains all living things. All nature shares the one source of life, as if there were an invisible thread connecting us all.
The magic twinkling of the rainstick, like an awakening of the day,
opens Winanga-li symbolising this continuous cycle of life.  

To love Australia is to love nature. Nature in Australia is all encompassing. Insects run wild in the thousands. The sun is often overbearing. Dust flies in your face. Flies crawl over your skin. Birdcalls cry out day and night. Water is a precious commodity. Bush fires are a common threat. Some of the wild animals are life threatening. Mosquitoes, ants, spiders, flies, prickles, wind and sunburn cause frequent irritations to the skin. Wrinkles form prematurely! However we Australians don’t seem to mind all this. These things remind us we are alive. To block out these elements would be to disconnect ourselves from the true essence of life.

When Ann Pattel-Gray wrote the following passage in ‘Through Aboriginal Eyes’, I believe she was not only representing the ways of the Australian Aborigines, but also an attitude most Australians have adopted for their own. Perhaps some would say this comes from just not minding getting dirty!, but I believe there is a stronger meaning in the fact that the average Australian would prefer to lounge on the grass than sit upright in a chair…


“We love the earth and all things of the earth. Aboriginal people come literally to love the soil, and we sit or recline on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power…
In our view the earth is sacred.
It is a living entity in which other living things have origin and destiny.”
 

The Australian landscape is so vast and yet, for the European way of life modern Australians have adopted, it is so limited. Ninety percent of the population lives on the coastal rim and, for the most part, on the East Coast. That leaves a huge mass of untamed, wild land at the heart of the country. These wide-open spaces have effect on the psychology of the Australian residents. They have a sense of freedom that residents of smaller encaged countries do not.

The land and its indigenes are still the most impressive, most distinctive features of Australia. No architecture, no monument, not even the casual and liberal lifestyle many Australians revel in, holds any kind of spark to the grandeur of the land itself. Everything is overshadowed by the pure silence of the interior. The silhouette of Uluru is simply the king of all landmarks. No man-made structure could come close to its awesome presence. One reason Australians are so preoccupied with and hold a deep love for the land is that it is the biggest thing in their lives. They hold a sort of reverence for it, born from a little fear, and a lot of respect.  

The diversity of the Australian landscape is captivating. From rough ocean shores to coral reefs, rainforests to high snowy mountain peaks, dry woodlands to green pastoral lands, sandy deserts to rocky outcrops, misty valleys to dusty red plains, and above it all purple-tinged clouds and endless starry night skies. The sheer magnitude of the landscape makes our pulse race. It is a majestic timeless land. It has both a power and a grace that reminds us just how small and insignificant we really are. And yet it reminds us of our roots, of the basic existence of our lives and in this sense empowers us, bringing us back to the purity of just living. To the love of all nature and of our mother earth. To the breath of life.