ALAN McFETRIDGE

Dead Reckoning

Mariners use Dead Reckoning when lost. Starting with the last known point, a judgement is made on the current position, and then a new course is plotted.

The term has an interesting overlap with Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua: ‘I walk backwards into the future with my eyes fixed on my past’ a whakataukī or ‘proverb’ speaks to Māori perspectives of time, where the past, the present and the future are viewed as intertwined, and life as a continuous cosmic process. Within this continuous cosmic movement, time has no restrictions – it is both past and present. The past is central to and shapes both present and future identity. From this perspective, the individual carries their past into the future. The strength of carrying one’s past into the future is that ancestors are ever present, existing both within the spiritual realm and in the physical, alongside the living and within the living.

This triptych is part of a series of photographs that explores concepts of Dead Reckoning with Māori perspectives on the challenge of the Climate Crisis. For 6 months, I returned to a cliff to look out and sense this expanse of water, air and human pollution in the Ocean's acidification and Air’s haze.  I began to embody this perspective to imagine the past of the place I stood, an entire continent with an ecological philosophy that maintained plants, animals and critical infrastructures such as fresh water and clean air with cool fires for 50,000 years without a history dominated by stories of war or conflict but guided by heavy consequences for breaking laws of nature.

Boondi, now called Bondi, means ‘the noise made by sea waves’. According to the David R Horton map, Boondi most likely originated from the Dharug Language group. Boondi is more than a navigation tool; it tells us what we might expect about this coastal area.

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All images © Alan McFetridge