William Ricketts Sanctuary

Melissa spent the day with Matt and his family on Monday, so Cheryl and I went up into the Dandenong Mountains, to a sanctuary of Aboriginal culture.

When Christopher Columbus came to America, he saw that there were already people living there; we call them Indians or Native Americans. When people came to Australia, there were already people living there, too! So the people that lived in Australia before it was discovered are called Aboriginies. The place that I went was in the forest, and there were a bunch of beautiful statues that were made to look like the Aboriginal people.

This is the entrance to the trails that went through the sanctuary.

The forest was FULL of gorgeous sculptures; I took a lot of pictures of various ones. A whole bunch of the sculptures depicted one particular man, who came with the name of Pmara Kuttata. I'm guessing that the Aboriginies considered him to be a holy figure. Also, in a lot of the statues, there was a possum. I'm guessing that, as the cat was a sacred animal to the Egyptians, the possum was sacred to the Aboriginies. At any rate, here is Pmara Kuttata with a possum--notice where the possum is coming from.


Here's Pmara Kuttata again--he's watching you!


There must have been around 100 statues. They were all created by a man named William Ricketts, who felt that the Aboriginal people had tapped into something special. He appreciated their unity with nature, and he spent what would have to have been a good chunk of his life (considering how many sculptures there were), honoring those people. In a lot of the statues, there were a few Aboriginal people and a white man among them--I can only assume the white man is depicting Ricketts himself.

Along with statues, there were signs. Here's one of them:

It was beautiful. I have so many wonderful pictures, but I'm choosing to share some of the ones that impacted me the most. There'll be more in the next post.