Sunrise
by Jenny Neil
One symbol that seems to recur through my life is that of the rays of a sunrise. As a child, I was educated by my aunt and uncle to watch the sunrise from all sorts of places. Their mountain shack squeezed between two mountains, they would take us very early in the morning to sit on a rock to watch the sun rising, until it went over the top. They never instructed us, they just sat on a rock and watched. I had a strong feeling in my body that the rays were all around me.
I experienced this feeling at other places they took me, such as early morning at camp on the Limpopo River. This symbol has stayed with me all my life. I always try to find the sun’s rays wherever I am. I felt the symbol very strongly in the Northern Territory and always feel it on our women’s land that we’ve called ‘Herland’. I watch it from a roofless yurt on the top of a mountain each morning when I stay on ‘Herland’.