Umbarra, the Black Duck, is the totem of the Yuin Nation and his origin story starts in Wallaga Lake, just like Mr Fosters who described his childhood as mostly roaming around the coastal lake's edge.

Mr Foster also spent time with family in Sydney as a boy and as a young man he lived in Melbourne where he studied acting, directing, and film production at the Swinburne University of Technology.

Living away from home brought a number of important life lessons and although the experience was enriching, he felt called to return back to his ancestral lands in Wallaga Lake.

As a saltwater man, the waters provided huge bounty including fish, octopus, oysters, mussels, and cockles. These foods sustained his people for thousands of years and continue to do so.

Much of the seafood that characterises the area is cooked on the fire. The fire is a symbol of the sunshine's rays, whom the Yuin people refer to as "grandfather sun".

"Fire to us is life, because it sustained us, kept us warm, and cooked our food, plus it kept the land healthy. Every time we lit our fires, the land came back healthier," he said.

The beauty of a place however can never been taken away from it's contextual history.

The same can be said for Wallaga Lake, which has a plentiful history but also a more recent history where it's peoples were dispossessed and taken from their lands.

Mr Foster grew up in the 1980s and was no stranger to the racial division and segregation of that time.

"It was good I suppose, but lot has changed since then. There was a lot of racism back in them days but now people are better because there's a bit more understanding about us Yuin people," he said.

He also experienced the world as a direct descendant of the Stolen Generation.

His father, Mervyn Penrith, was taken from Wallaga Lake when he was about two or three years old and taken up to Bomaderry Aboriginal Children's Home located near Nowra.

His father attempted to get back to his lands as "he knew he came from the mountain here" on three separate occasions before he was taken north to Kinchela Boys Home near Kempsey.

When he was around 16, he was taken out to a dairy farm to work.

"The farmer was a real racist fella, so they sort of got into a scuffle from there and then he ran away again.

"He caught trains down into Sydney, jumped onto another down to Nowra, then made his way back down and he eventually got home".

The intergenerational trauma and racism would be enough to break anyone, but Mr Foster said it has made him the deeply reverent cultural man is he today.

"It made me want to teach and show them, the ignorant people, the 'ignorosity' as I like to call it, show them the beauty and diversity in a lot of our culture.

"They try and paint us all with that one brush, but we're all different mobs. We all have the same lore, the lores of the land, but us mob here are different to those up in the Northern Territory for example," he said.

"When I was younger it affected me heaps, I didn't like the way we were treated.

"Looking at a white man's perspective, I didn't really like them because of all that racism, so I thought if you were like that with us there was no point of us trying to be friendly.

"As I got older I realised the importance of keeping that culture strong and teaching people about our culture.

"Holding onto that anger just hurts your spirit. Our spirit has got to be stronger than that," he said.

Returning back to Wallaga Lake after his studies, Mr Foster started doing tours with Umbarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre and found it a way to build up his own spirit and the spirit of his people.

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The other way he did that was through dance. In the mid-90s, Mr Foster and his nephew formed a dance group called the Gulaga Dancers.

He could see a lot of young people getting involved in crime or getting sent to youth detention centres as result of that trauma and wanted to help those young people get back to culture.

"Each generation that comes through we teach them the importance of dance and why it's got to continue".

Gulaga (Mount Dromedary) and Biamanga (Mumbulla) Mountains are both significant cultural sites for the Yuin people. They are teaching sites and where a lot of initiation occurs for young women and young men.

Biamanga is especially important for young Aboriginal men and where a lot of initiation ceremonies occur. A lot of the lores were taught to the men by Biamanga during those ceremonies.

Mr Foster said that he also works with a lot of the youth by taking them out camping to teach them lore and to reconnect with their totems and spirit.

"If your spirit is broken then mentally you're not thinking properly.

"We teach them these three things that we live by and that's their mental, physical, and spiritual.

"Once we can balance out those three things we can live a happier and better life because you know who you are. If one of them is out of balance, we get sick," he said.

Mr Foster's more recent achievements include his involvement in directing and acting in films, including directing award winning film Yuwinj Dhari Bulwal ~ Yuin Country Explored.

He has now turned his attention towards his writing and has authored a number of children's stories featuring dreaming stories of Wallaga Lake.

Although COVID restrictions pushed back his book launch event, he intends to soon release the books to local bookstores and distributors.

"They're local stories about the animals and each of those stories have a moral behind them and teaches our young ones respect.

"A lot of the stories relate to Lore, looking after and respecting, and keeping everything in balance," he said.