Laksar Burra's Star Talks Win
Top AustralianTourism Award
Welcomed with canapés and champagne, you watch the sun slowly set over Kata Tjuta (the Olgas) and Uluru (Ayers Rock). A lone didgeridoo fills the air as the sky moves the landscape through a breathtaking palette of colours. Then, by candlelight, you dine on the quintessential Australian gourmet barbecue : kangaroo, croc, emu, barramundi, flavoured by Australian bush tucker. After dessert, the candles are blown out. Silence.
We are out under the stars at award winning Sounds of Silence Restaurant in Australia's Red Centre. Even the land breathes in ancient whispers. After a minute, out of the darkness comes a deep English voice welcoming you to the night skies of the Australian desert. He is Laksar Burra, artist, writer, and resident astronomer — our host for the rest of the evening.
Laksar was born and brought up in Edinburgh, Scotland. On completion of an Arts degree and after working for some time in the West End of London, Laksar and his family packed up and moved to New Zealand. They arrived there with two children, a few suitcases and $80. The next few years saw a large variety of jobs, including working on farms, milking cows, being a tunneller, and managing the night shift for the largest woolskin producer in Australasia.
Then in 1987, Laksar and his family moved to Australia where Laksar went back to school to study ceramics. In actual fact, he ended up working with glass — a skill which he was to expand and develop. His wife Arifah, who was teaching English to migrant students at the time, one day was offered a post teaching English to adult Aboriginal people at the Mutitjulu Community in the Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park. It felt right. They moved up to the Centre.
Laksar started working at the Park, and immediately began meeting many of the local Anangu people — who showed a great interest in working in glass. Believing firmly in collaboration as a way of working whereby a greater creative energy comes into play — that can inspire and unite people, in a spiritual sense — Laksar got an idea. He wanted to see if it would be possible to work with Anangu at the conceptual or design stage with the intent of bringing their spiritualities together. His Muslim and Subud beliefs and their Anangu spirituality. The result, a set of striking clear glass panels, elegantly carved in original motifs, is exhibited on red sand. Earth and sky together. There is now a whole body of work that can be seen in the Cultural Centre and in the Sails in the Desert Hotel at Ayers Rock Resorts.
But it was the wonderful night skies of the Red Centre which provided Laksar with an opportunity to develop a totally new interest: astronomy. He was soon giving talks about the night skies, blending myth, scientific fact, and story together.
By the mid 90s, Laksar had formed his own enterprise, Talkabout, to do the star talks and has since trained at least a dozen star talkers. In 1997 he was honored by the Northern Territory Tourism Awards for his Outstanding Contribution to the development of the Red Centre. His book based on his star talks, Spirit of the Night Sky, came out in 1998. Last year he introduced a new product, Spirit of the Red Centre. A beautiful introduction to the Uluru-Kata Tjuta area, it uses mages, traditional art and craft, and stories and currently runs daily at the auditorium in the Ayer’s Rock resort. Last year brought another kudo. Talkabout won the Northern Territory Tourism Council Award — "Brolga" — in the Heritage and Culture category.
The focus of all his presentations is to bring people and cultures together.
"I first came to the centre of Australia because I wanted to make some connection with the Aboriginal people and their culture. During my time working here giving guided tours for visitors at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, while continuing my work as a glass-artist, I have come to realise how much the Centre represents the heart and soul of this great continent.
"The night skies are truly magnificent out here in the Centre, some of the best that you will find anywhere in the world. And it was my own introduction to these clear night skies that opened up a whole new world to me. As I have learnt more about the planets, stars, and constellations, I have become aware of the wealth of stories which relate to the night sky, and of the many similarities between these stories.
"I enjoy telling these to international audiences at 'star talks' each night at Uluru, for Uluru has been a story-telling and meeting-place for aboriginal people for many thousands of years. Now it's an international meeting place. Over the past six years TALKABOUT has probably talked to 250,000 people of all nationalities and from all walks of life.
"The essence of my star talks is embodied in my book. It's my belief and hope that this short guide to the constellations of the Southern sky will convey something of the 'sprit of the night sky' — a universal spirit that brings people closer together as One — a global family that still appreciates the diversity and uniqueness of different cultures.
"Culture for me is when things are alive; it is almost like a sparkle of the moment, showing a movement or expression of the soul. If we can accept who we are and what we are, enjoying the moment, and our expressing of it, we are more likely to be connected with our selves, the great life force (God) and those who are around us. Perhaps we have the opportunity then to touch other people's feelings so they feel good about themselves too.
"I once asked a Dyak in Central Kalimantan how he felt about the Javanese sending a million people a year to Kalimantan on their transmigration scheme. HJe replied that if they retained the best of the Dyak culture and took on the best of the Javanese culture then, looking back from 200 - 300 years in the future, what is really taking place is the emergence of a New Culture."
LAKSAR BURRA GLASS ART PIECE ABOVE
Latifah Taormina and Gaye Thavisin have compiled and edited the above article from letters, articles, stories from Laksar and Arifah Burra and from Laksar's book, Spirit of the Night Sky. SEE INSPIRE'S PUBLISH PUBLISH page in the Writing and Film section of this issue to order this book now!
