"It’s springtime, when you’re coming out of the bush hills, where the caves are coving me and I go to the plains, that would be where the green grass is. Where I’d burned off the season before. When springtime comes, green grass will attract animals firstly to breed and also to find plenty to eat. And now the hunting begins. You go into open plains, you got to walk for miles, right to where the animals are. Well, burn the grass, and they won’t stay near any charcoal. Now they will congregate where the grass hasn’t been burnt. How easy to find the food!

Now the animals are breeding. And the waterholes and full of fish and fish eggs. Water reeds grow dense and attract birds which nest around the waterholes. These were prime pickings.

The clans would come together every November. They would come out of the foothills to the plains for spring, waterholes being full. The swamps were full of birds; animals were breeding for spring, grass and flowers, and medicines were everywhere. Once the surplus of food and the easy pickings were taken from spring, they would then head for the hills, which meant they all gathered at Mungabareena."

"Over the summer period, the Aboriginals ranged the entire ranges. They were everywhere, moving and gathering and sleeping and hunting, fires and laughter; all there, dancing in ceremonies. They were like the fleas on a dog’s back!

I think the Bogong moth hunting was a spiritual pilgrimage for these clans to go and renew their strength in the mountains. The mountains hold a great deal of fascination. The power of the mountains is immense. That power would draw Aborigines every year. I was summer. It was cooler than down on the plains."

"Now those Aboriginals dancing in the mountains and moving over these mountains must have woken the spirit. By autumn, the spirit was rising, and they recognised the spirit as being in the midst of the valleys. As the mist in the mountains started to rise, here was the waking of the spirit. Leave the mountain. As soon as they say all that mist rising in the valleys. Now it is time to leave.

Now was the time to start leaving camp and heading off the mountains. They’d move off the mountains in small groups, and to the river. Here it was a warmer autumn period. Here was the river itself, no longer a river, but a string of waterholes. Fish! Plentiful! Less water, get a lot of fish! Turtles. Fish. River mud oysters. All the native animals coming off the plain. All the waterholes were dry, and the animals were coming where the water was plentiful."

"Now they were getting ready for the winter freeze. Then the storms would arrive on the plains and started to move to the hills.

For when the spirit rose from the land, its body was so huge it blocked out the run and froze the ground. And it laid there, white, on the mountains as the snow.

But for the Aboriginals, snow never came from the sky, it came from within the mountain spirit, and it rose from within the mountain. It covered a blanket of white, over the mountain, and you couldn’t stay or you’d be frozen by the spirit’s breath.

Now the Aboriginals would leave the river and start to burn the landscapes in patches, with the purpose of doing two things. First to induce the winter feed for the animals. To make them congregate in the areas where the grass was green.”