For thousands of years there was a sylvan temple on the banks of the river near where I was born. I have never seen the temple because most of it was destroyed before I was born, but I know what it looked like because it was described and sketched by an early ethnologist travelling in the area.
It had a mile long avenue of trees carved with serpents, forked lightning, meteors and various hieroglyphs, leading to an earth-walled circular space where a giant human figure, also made of earth, reclined.
You might imagine from the temple that I was born in Greece, or Egypt, or perhaps India, but the fact is I was born and grew up near the Macquarie River in central west NSW.
The sylvan temple, as described by the ethnologist, John Henderson, was the largest and most important sacred site for the Wiradjuri people along the river. Like all temples, it was used for protecting and conveying secret spiritual knowledge to the initiated and people came from hundreds of miles to be part of rituals and ceremonies.
It was as important as the Acropolis or the temple of Horus, but it no longer exists. Worse, perhaps, the temple was forgotten, or deliberately not spoken of.
So complete was the erasure that I didn't even know the temple had ever existed until a few years ago when I was researching my hometown. I had spent my entire childhood in the area, roaming the hills and looking for treasures and adventures, but no one had mentioned this extraordinary place.
In the midst of my research at the Mitchell Library, I opened a dusty old book I had ordered from the stacks, not expecting much. I was overwhelmed to discover Henderson's detailed description of a temple and his meticulous drawings of carvings on each tree.
By now I recognised the temple as a Bora ground, an initiation site for young men but in design and function it was a temple. This beautiful and powerful place had existed so near my home, yet no one had even spoken of it.
Years later while I was living in Paris, I saw an Aboriginal painting in the Musée du Quai Branly. It was called Le Temps du Rêve, The Time of the Dreaming. The