12/08/2022
My name is Joan ( Nangalaku ) Growden. I am a Wagaitj /Dak Djerait women from Dak Woolaning Communty and Litchfield National Park here in the NT of Australia.
I was born in 1953 on the Finniss River in the Northern Territory.
I called my tours after my mother Rosie Nangalaku Petherick, an aboriginal women who passed away in 2007. She was of the Emu / Goanna clan group of this regional area.
My mothers main language was Maringar / Marrithiel, and she spoke up to 8 different dialects of the regional area, all inter-related to the families.
My father an European man passed in 2019, he was originaly from Bendigo Victoria came to the NT in 1948 just after the Japanese bombed Darwin. He served in the Australian Army and was based in Rabaul in Paupua New Guinea.
After the war ,my dad ventured up North to Darwin and met my aboriginal mum on the Reynolds River on Well Tree Station.
My parents over the years had eight children and established their home at Woolaning Springs, known as Mc Callums Creek.
This is their story, and how a white man saved a living culture by marrying my mother a bush tribal women and discovered how 22 clan group were connected to Litchfield National Park and the region.
My tour is called " A Culture Revealed " based on factual evidence and record of my father's research that he worked on for most of his life living at Woolaning and in the area
This is my story,and telling it how it is in my lifetime sharing cultural knowledge and history of Litchfield National Park and the surrounding area.
Follow me on this Face Book Page and you will have an insight of the Indigenous People who are connected to country through their cultural sacred sites of the waterfalls and also the sacred rock art paintings in the Park.
I am privileged and honoured that the elders past and present have trusted me to share their cultural knowledge in story telling. I have been given their authority to speak on their behalf to talk about their country.
My father helped record the evidence through the interpretation of each clan group motives painted in sacred caves of the Rock Art that connects people to country.
"A Culture Revealed " is about revealing the truth of historical events that took place in the Dream Time of ancient of days to the present era.
