“The words from Call to Country translate from woiwurrung to English as ‘come together as one, in the healing of our hearts’. The purpose of the Call to Country is to call everyone to ceremony – the spirit of our Ancestors, Elders, everyone, so that we can begin ceremony.” 

– Chenile Chandler 

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The Dandenong Ranges have always been a place of ever-changing beauty and inspiration. Light, colour, form and perspective have shaped the way that people have engaged with and experienced this unique area.

For thousands of years Wurundjeri woiwurrung people lived on and travelled across this Country. They were part of this Country in the same way that Country was part of them. Wurundjeri woiwurrung people’s relationship with Country is linked to their Culture, and while connections to both were threatened by the invasion of European settlers and colonisation, this link has never been lost.  

Around the time European arrivals were beginning to discover the beauty and wonder of the Dandenong Ranges through the early works of artists like Eugene von Guérard, who was active in the area in the late 1850s, Wurundjeri woiwurrung people were being driven off their Country and separated from family and Culture. From the European perspective, the area was an untouched, unexplored, new and exotic environment, while for Wurundjeri woiwurrung people, European activities were leading to the destruction of their carefully nurtured and well-maintained Country. 

For many First Nations people and new settlers, seeing the landscape of the Dandenong Ranges inspired a strong desire to protect and preserve the natural environment. The relationship between ways of seeing the landscape, and how it has been interpreted, captured and preserved, has evolved over time. The Wurundjeri woiwurrung people describe the way the twilight radiates from the ridgeline at Kalorama as thurruk.

A prominent feature in artworks created by the Australian Impressionists and later the Tonalists was the use of light and shadow to capture the changing hues and atmosphere of the Dandenong Ranges. Wurundjeri woiwurrung ngurungaeta (headman) William Barak used his artwork to reinforce his and his people’s connection to Country and Culture, while other creatives, like landscape designer Edna Walling, physically changed the landscape to create a home among the hills. 

Daniel Rutter Long

Dandenong Ranges, 1881

oil on board

30.8 x 46.3 cm

Image courtesy of Deutscher and Hackett