An Aboriginal bag lady lives on a park bench below the balcony of our 14th floor apartment in the Potts Point section of Sydney.

Living in Potts Point has many advantages for a photographer -- all of Sydney is close by and there are colorful folk and ethnic restaurants all around. There are internet cafes, grocery stores and bottle shops, too, for late night thirsts.

During the week we spent in Sydney, this bag lady somehow became the poignant symbol of where Australia has come from and where is it going today. The semi-nomadic Aborigines inhabited Australia for at least 40,000 years before Captain Cook landed in 1770. These early settlers colonized the whole continent within a few thousand years and, according to Geoffrey Blainey in his book, Triumph of the Nomads, they "probably enjoyed as good a standard of living as the average European in 1800" as far as food, health, warmth and shelter goes."

They subsisted on a wide variety of plants and vegetables, supplementing their diet with fish and turtles and dugong. Dugongs (Dugon dugon), relatives of the Caribbean manatee, are huge placid mammals that live in Australian tropical waters. Dugongs figure prominently in Aboriginal lore and culture.

Aboriginals were (and still are) expert hunters, using nets to catch kangaroos and dugongs, spears to kill emus, and boomerangs to wing birds. The rain forests supplied them with wild berries and many other plants. The beaches provided crabs and shellfish. One clan traded their surplus with another, using the well-developed trade routes along the major river systems in what is known today as Queensland. And all was well.

But the newly arrived colonizers considered the Aborigines a "backward people" because they were hunter-gatherers and not yet agriculturists, which they considered more "advanced".

It didn't take long for the European settlers to displace the Aboriginals and take over their ancestral lands in the name of the Crown. Aboriginal culture centers on a deep spiritual bond with their land. Their beliefs focus on the existence of spirit beings that lived on Earth before the arrival of humans. These spirit beings created all of the features of the natural world and they were, according to Aboriginal tradition, the fore bearers of all living things. They took on different forms but behaved as people do and they left signs to show where they had passed.

These spirits remain as eternal forces that influence all natural events. Wherever a spirit left physical evidence of its activities, such as a tree or a hill for example, these features are considered to be sacred sites. To the Aboriginal way of thinking land does not belong to the individual. The destruction of a sacred site threatens not only the living but also the spirit inhabitants of the land. The breaking of the Aboriginals' link to their land is a distressing and dangerous act for all concerned.

I think of this as I peer down14 floors to the park bench below.

Where does she come from, this bag lady, this person of the past? What ancestral spirit link has been severed in this urban prison of hers? What has happened to her extended family group, to her protective tribal clan? Tradition, rituals and laws link the members of each Aboriginal clan to the land that they occupy as well as to the sacred sites there which serve as places for the spirits to return to when they die. Food and water shortages, natural disasters and even mysterious illnesses are all attributed to affronted ancestral spirits whose burial places have been lost.

So what is this bag lady's totem, I wonder? Her spirit beings and sacred sites, what have become of them? Is her totem now the park bench down there, in the center of the little park where passersby disturb her sleep? Has her ancestral world been reduced to this indecency?

I must know the answers to these compelling questions and so I ponder from high above how to best approach her and talk to this bag lady of mine.

Do I just ride the elevator down and bravely walk the 50 feet over to her park bench and simply say "Hello displaced Aboriginal person, how are you? Who are you? Where are your spirit ancestors and what has happened to your clan, to your family, and all that is supposed to govern every minute of your life?"

Or, instead, do I slither up to her snake-like and grab a shot of her with my trusty Nikon and forget about asking her anything? She isn't likely to talk to me anyway, right? Of course I can always take more shots of her from this lofty perch with a telephoto lens and no one will be the wiser.

No, I can't do that, I must talk with her. I need to know if she is OK and if there is anything that she needs. I want to know where she has come from. It has been quite cold at night and when I take an early morning peek I see bare feet hanging out from beneath her tattered blue blanket and bare arms as well.

So, yes, that's it. I will bring her an apple and see if we can communicate somehow.

So down the elevator I go with apple in hand and I make a silent dash for the park bench. I reach out and place the apple gently down beside her sleeping head. "Perfect!", I think as I walk quickly away. She is sleeping and hasn't seen me. I might not be able to talk to her today but at least I made a contact of sorts and this pleases me.

I glance back at her as I continue walking and -- the apple is gone! It vanished almost as soon as I set it on the bench. She knew I was there. She was quite aware of my presence and she accepted the apple without hesitation. Good, this is a start!

I rush back up to my observation perch. There she is, with undulating movements under the blanket in an eating-an-apple kind of way. You know, like we did as kids when we snuck crackers into bed and ate them under the covers.

I am delighted. The next morning my colleague donates a sweater to the cause and I throw in a pair of heavy socks and several more apples. Down the elevator I go with these treasures. She is there. She is sitting up. I see her face for the first time as I walk towards her in the early morning light. I stop and smile and I give her the bag of treasures with a cheery "Hello, my name is Ellen. I have something for you. And what is your name?"

It is not the most erudite approach but I get a response and an equally bright smile from this person whose name I now know is Mary. Mary thanks me for the gifts. I tell her that she must be cold, sitting her as she does for so many hours of the day and night. She smiles back at me and says without a second thought, "I am waiting for my cab."

The next morning she was gone.