(I am pronouncing Wuruma as WUH-ruh-muh.)
The Wuruma Wheel applies to the seasons occurring on the NSW Central Coast.
It is not the same as the Southern Wheel. (For Southern Wheel click label at end of article.)
The Wuruma season, the windy season of two months, begins on or about the 1st of August. It is windy and dry and ends around the end of September.
This year (2009) the windy season ended in late October after a couple of extra cold fronts came through Sydney and the region around it which includes the NSW Central Coast.
Pelicans seem to be the only birds in the sky when the wind is at its strongest. In the wind before a storm they are still circling high when all the other birds have disappeared to wait it out and they are usually still in the sky in the teeth of all the biggest gales. So they are the bird I associate with the Wuruma windy season.
After the last cold front in October, I got out my small collection of pelican feathers and collected some gum leaves and needles from the casuarina tree. I smoked (smudged) myself outside with the leaves in a bowl and stared at the pelican flight feathers and thought about them alone up in the sky in the teeth of the big winds.
For how my Wuruma festivals have evolved, see Wuruma Beltane 2009
Wheel & festivals
Wuruma Wheel of the Year
Wuruma Wheel festivals
Flora & fauna
Casuarina cunninghamiana
Australian Pelican (Pelecanus conspicillatus)
