Sunbury artist uses Aboriginal history of Jackson’s Creek as inspiration for work

SUNBURY painter Helen Cannon is hoping her most recent works will shine a light on the importance of Jackson’s Creek to Australia’s indigenous history.

Sunbury artist Helen Cannon has painted artworks on the Sunbury indigenous rings at Jackson's Creek. Exhibition will be in Box Hill for two weeks in October.

SUNBURY painter Helen Cannon is hoping her most recent works will shine a light on the importance of Jackson’s Creek to Australia’s indigenous history.

Sunbury is home to five prehistoric Aboriginal earth rings – or bora rings – on the hills west of Jackson’s Creek.

The site is believed to have been a ceremonial place of initiation for Aborigines and is more than 1000 years old.
Cannon only learnt about their existence three years ago, which began a fascination in discovering more about their meaning.

“It’s not really my history to tell – I’m not indigenous so I’m not trying to tell the history,” the artist said.

“What I’m trying to do is acknowledge the importance of the site in Australian history.”

Cannon attended a tree planting at the site in June, with people invited to plant seedlings and learn more about the important site at the back of Salesian College.

The rings were first investigated and described in the early 1970s when archeologist Dr David Frankel undertook a test excavation on one of the rings to determine its origin.

Wurundjeri Council’s Uncle Dave Wandin told the Leader his people believed the rings, close in proximity and between 10m and 25m in diameter, had ritual roles in male life, female life and possibly in marriage.

While Cannon has painted the land sites without people in them, each painting is accompanied with a map – the artist’s way of connecting indigenous history with European settlement.

“There are truck trees and rocks in the paintings – that’s how Aboriginals knew where to go,” she said.

“Then white men came and mapped everything, so all my paintings have maps.

“It’s a reflection that now we go forward together – this history is part of our history.”

The exhibition opens on October 1 at 7pm at Chapel On Station Gallery in Station St, Box Hill.

On October 11 the gallery will host a Devonshire afternoon tea at 4.30pm, with talk by the artist about the display.

*The exhibition will run until October 14.