2017 House Programs The Season | Page 4

PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTE NATHAN MAYNARD Playwright Since the 1830s, Nathan’s family have been known as the Maynards and have developed a strong connection with the Furnuex Islands. Nathan has 17 years’ experience as a dancer in schools and communities. In 2012 Nathan performed in Shadow Dreams, a collaboration of Terrapin Puppet Theatre and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, and in 2013 and 2014 was a participant in the Tasmania Performs Artists Residency program at Tarraleah. With the support of Tasmania Performs, Nathan secured an Arts Tasmania Aboriginal Arts Fellowship for a year-long career development program focused on the development of this play. My name is Nathan Maynard, my father is Darrell Maynard and my grandparents were Benjamin Tasman Maynard and Stella Mansell, who were born on Cape Barron and Flinders islands in Bass Strait. Twenty years on, Big Dog Island may be my physical home during the Season, but it’s forever my spiritual home. My family belongs to a community known as the muttonbird people. We harvest the muttonbird’s nest on the Bass Strait islands. It’s a cultural practice we call the birding, and every year we go birding for The Season. When I’m birding, I know that’s exactly where I’m meant to be, amongst my people and the birds. I come from a proud birding family. We’ve harvested muttonbirds every year since the beginning of time. Before I laid my eyes on Big Dog Island, I had already seen it a thousand times in my head. I knew what it looked like and felt like from all the yarns I had been told from my father, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. There is no other place that I feel so strongly connected to my land, culture, history, people… my old people… I feel them with me. Birds that we are eternally grateful for and hold in our hearts so dearly. The muttonbird takes the longest migration of any animal in the world… past New Zealand, Japan up to Alaska and back home to our islands to breed in the same burrow every year… a migration of 30,000 kilometres. They are simply amazing and resilient as hell. Just like the people they are forever connected too… I knew to expect past birders’ names carved and written on the walls of the cookhouse shed. The parallels between the birds and us mob don’t stop there. Many of us migrate back to the same shed year after year. Many find our life-long partners on the island… many are conceived or conceive on the island… or at least get some practice in. I knew what to expect when I first thrust my arm down a dark muttonbird’s nesting hole, on a snake and spider-infested Island. We grow up on the island and lose our baby feathers… and like the birds, our yearly journey starts and finishes on the island. All those yarns were the first part of my journey. My Initiation finished when I first pulled a bird out of that hole and my training had begun. —NATHAN MAYNARD I knew to expect the strong smell of the birds, smashing my nostrils when I first jumped off the tinny and onto the Island.