Once collected, specimens were given names that pertained to the ‘discoverer’—the genus Banksia is named after Banks—and placed according to a Western taxonomic system. Trevitt as Red Banksia attempts to resist this classification as they extend the stem of their arm overhead. As if to say, this way of recording does not include the medicinal nor edible role of plants, nor the ceremonial neither, Ruben as Red Bottle Brush gives one last holistic shake. The hierarchical framework does not include a plant’s vital resources for shelter, clothing, and tools, in the enmeshed kin-ship of flora. Some plants are passage markers, others, place markers, and all, one way or another, are friends, in our collective role as stewards for tomorrow. Instead, in the Western classification of species, some were named after their appearance, or Western-ascribed usage, like the Sydney Golden Wattle (Acacia Longifolia) named ‘wattle’ as in “to weave” after the ‘wattle and daub’ buildings constructed by settlers using interwoven rods of wattle plastered with mud (daub). The “Dharawal people call [this plant] namaraag. When the flowers appear it means burri burri (whales) are on the move and mullet are ready to be caught. When the trees are heavily in flower, tailor fish are ready to catch. Wattle seeds [in turn] can be prepared and crushed to add to other seeds for flavouring damper.”[2] 

Jill Ogai as Golden Wattle announces seasonal change and jubilation “when the pollinators arrive and when ants feed on nectar.”[3] She shines accordingly, before being cloaked in a black dress, which descends from the rafters and conceals her radiant spirit. A spray of fluffy wattle blossoms in her hair, a bright marker of resilience. “Golden Wattle” addresses the disconnect between being declared an emblem of Australia and Section 127 of the Constitution which, prior to the 1967 Referendum, stated that “in reckoning the numbers of people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.”[4]