Meeting Jarramali
Jarramali is known as a mala-minya, an expert hunter.
Walking and hunting country all his life, there are few places on country that he doesn’t know how to hunt. Proudly, on his father’s side he belongs to the Kulka, Ross-Kelly family, a tough clan amongst the Kuku Yalanji-Nyungkul rainforest bama, with connections strong for Buru (China camp), Rossville, Kurukuna, Ngarri-Murril (Grasstree) and Nyambil-Nyambil (Mt Romeo). On his Mother’s side, the Meldrum family are a Western Yalanji clan with links through the drier savannahs of Mareeba, Mt Carbine, right up to Laura, Coen, and Kuku Taipan country.
Significant as the world’s oldest tropical rainforest, Jarramali’s Kuku Yalanji country also makes up part of Australia’s World Heritage Wet Tropics Bioregion.
Please note: This video sequence contains hunting scenes that may be distressing for some viewers. Please take care.
One of the first things I really notice is that Jarramali’s feet are hardened. Dusty and pit-marked like a set of used tyres, his soles have felt the texture of many roads, many rainforest pads, many creeks with their slippery mosses and grassy sandy banks.
With salt and pepper hair, a charming close-lipped smile hides the hard life that his heavy set furrowed brow sometimes gives away. With paler than normal bama skin, he stands apart, aloof and at times cocky in a reconciled social defiance. Cruising around shirtless in just rugger shorts, often with a sharp bladed knife tucked into his hand, his stocky chest and armpits ooze a masculine sweat scented with musk and tang. Gracefully following the hunting dogs over the wobbly stone roads of the creeks, his agile thick torso moves ever so quickly like a hunter’s blade through the undergrowth, his heart and body hair feeling through winds, listening for the rustle, a whimper or an unusual telling silence.
