How mutton birding helped this queer Aboriginal man connect with his identity

How mutton birding helped this queer Aboriginal man connect with his identity Flicking through the pages of an old album, Alix Maynard points out a photo from before he transitioned to male. "This one here is my pop teaching me how to pluck a bird, which takes a lot more effort than it looks," he says. "And there's a photo of me holding my plucked bird." Alix is a proud Palawa man, born and raised in Launceston, in northern Lutruwita/Tasmania. But he said coming out as transgender wasn't easy, especially living in regional Australia. "With my family, none of us had met any other trans people, on my mum's side at least; my dad's side had heard of it," Alix says. "My grandparents on both sides, they have such a fixed mindset of how the world should be. "I'd say the hardest part would be hearing those talks from my family." When things got tough, Alix would let his mind drift off to his idea of paradise, a place called Big Dog Island, also known as Great Dog Island. "The water, it's like the nice, clear, aqua; nice white sand," he says. "You could lay down on the grass, anywhere on the island and look at the Milky Way for hours. "Or go on a boat and you could just sit there and fish." Big Dog Island is a 354-hectare land mass in the Bass Strait near Flinders Island and is one of only a few places where mutton birds burrow. Mutton birds, also known as short-tailed shearwater, are caught and harvested for food, oil and even their feathers. Alix describes how he would search for a burrow, trudging through the low-lying bush and scrub. Upon its discovery he would lie on the ground, and push his arm deep into the open hole, until his ear was touching the earth. The unlucky few do reach in to find the coldness of a snake rather than a warm bundle of feathers. "Usually, the holes are longer than your arm," Alix said. "We pretty much put our arm down a hole that looks like it's not a snake hole. "Trying to reach for a neck, a limb, anything of the bird and then hopefully pull it out." Loading...Once Alix gets the bird out of the burrow, its neck is broken, and it's taken to the processing shed where it's plucked, cleaned and cooled before being packed up for market. "You can put them on the pan; you can put them in a stew," he said. "But the best way to eat them in my opinion is in a curry; curried mutton birds." Tasmanian Aboriginal people have hunted and eaten mutton birds for more than 10,000 years. For Alix, it's a cherished family and cultural tradition. "It tells me where I've come from and what my ancestors did," he says. "You can learn about your ancestors and your history. "But to have a defined place to know you came from this culture, tribe, I'd say that's pretty special, to know exactly what tribe you came from." Now Alix has embraced his gender identity, he wants to take on new roles within this ancient tradition. Loading..."I really want to go out to the rookery myself," he said. "I did a bit as a kid, but that was more of the men showing me what to do. "The rookery is more of a man job I would say, a masculine job." Coming out as a queer, Aboriginal man hasn't been easy, Alix says. "Coming out in general, it's never easy, you've always got a weight on your shoulders. You never stop coming out." But he thinks it's all been worth it, especially after gaining acceptance from his parents, in particular his mum. "After a while she noticed I was more happy being myself and expressing myself the way I was," he says. While that has been a big step, Alix is still waiting for his grandparents to come to terms with the fact that he is transgender. "I'm just waiting for the day for it to just click for them and for them to go, 'That's Alix, that's not my granddaughter, that's my grandson'," he says.