I dream I'm driving the Toyota down towards the Kunamata crossroads, Witjiti beside me and the other senior men in the back. He calls out, "Stop, Stop!. Back up, back up." I reverse back through a small depression in the ground along side a couple of trees close to the road that are rounder and a deeper green that all the others and with much denser foliage.

"See that line," I look to the west and then east perpendicular to the road and see that there is a slight depression, a swale running diagonally across the road where it dips to come back up again. The swale starts on higher ground out of sight on the western side and runs across the road continuing until it disappears in the grass and trees to the east. (People interested in permaculture will know the term 'swale' very well. It is a way to slow the passage of surface water through the landscape thereby rehydrating the country.)

"Those two brothers, that Wanampi came through here, see?" All through the conversation, he uses the terms, Two Brothers, the human form of the dreaming ancestors interchangeably with Wanampi, the same dreaming ancestor but now in the form with which he travels across country, also referred to as water snake. It is a poetic sensibility that comes into play here, too subtle for science to grasp. Earlier on I mentioned rebooting my brain into a mythic or narrative way of processing information. It is bigger and more encompassing than the one I use in the city, the one best for numbers, data and linear rational thinking, but about as useful as a stopwatch and hammer and nailbag full of nails out here.

In the dream I have the image of what Murray was talking about as we drove from Fregon to Nyapari. Do you remember, dear reader, I told you how Murray talked to me in one ear about the place names, geography, hydrology and passage of surface water during flood time, while Witjiti told me stories about the two women and the two brothers as Wanampi travelling across the country in the other ear. We had stopped during the drive to point out the positions of tjukala, rock holes, across the landscape.

"That one over there is a big one," you can get kapi (water) out with a bill can. At another time he might say, "That one you have to use a jam tin, billy can wont fit in. It never dries up." And he goes on to explain how the porous rock directs the underground water flow across the landscape and can be accessed where the rock has been opened up to form a crack.

I understand that this country is not what some think of as desert at all. Just underneath the surface is plenty of water and you can access it if you know the way the two sisters and the Wanampi travelled across the country. The story is your map.

In my dream, I feel the earth viscerally, the cracks full of kapi that have opened up to the surface as rockholes. I can feel it in my body, I'm part of the earth and that Wanampi is there too, in my guts, moving slowly in the same direction as the swale.

In a moment I am woken up by my own crying. I feel really good but filled to the brim and over flowing. The same thing happened when we were shooting "Two Brothers Walking" at the Laura Dance festival in Far North Queensland. It had been a long trip and I was tired from filming on the run. I came out of the tent for breakfast that first day and the ladies were laughing at me, in a sweet way, and said I had been crying in my sleep through the night.

I didn't remember then but now I know it is from feeling the deep connection, no not deep connection, but actually feeling a part of country, continuous with it. My body, country, same. We may all be made of stardust but it is the earth that has borne us. Earth is our mother and to her we will return. Scientific fact! But our spirit has altogether a different story.

Later on I call some of my good friends, senior men and check to see that it is OK to talk about this in a public way. In a conversations that goes for a couple of hours they say, "Palya, yes, it's OK." For some time afterwards, I have to choke down tears, not like crying from your eyes, but from your belly each time I talk about it. I really can't say what it is, but I am grateful.

Tags: APY Lands, Pitjantjatjara