ABSTRACT
On Gumbaynggirr Country (mid-north coast New South Wales, Australia), an act of violence against the sacredness of life and Country resulted in Wirriiga, the Two Sisters, making the sea. When the waters rose, the people made their way back to their homeland by following a gut-string bridge made by Dunggiirr, the Koala Brothers. While the people were on the bridge, mischievous Baalijin, the eastern quoll, threatened to chop it down and made waves that nearly washed them off. Baalijin challenges complacency and forces change, and on that understanding in this article we consider what it means to be living this present time of instability and changes wrought by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19);ours is a perspective grounded in story and Gumbaynggirr Law/Lore. We write as Yandaarra, a research collective guided by the Old Fellas (ancestors) and led by Aunty Shaa Smith, storyholder for Gumbaynggirr Country, and her daughter Neeyan Smith, a young Gumbaynggirr woman. Learning from a Gumbaynggirr-led understanding of COVID-19—as one manifestation of Baalijin and relationships fallen out of balance—re-situates the pandemic in wider and longer histories of colonisation and destructive patterns of existence and broken agreements. Those learnings prompt us to call for Juungambala—work involved in setting things right as a way to heal. Let Baalijin and COVID-19 be the wake-up call that forces the change that Country (and we) need. © 2020 Institute of Australian Geographers