The dust storm and dogs dreaming

It has seemed like a really emotional few weeks, not just for me because I have been weighing up decisions, but also for the community with the joy of holidays and the sadness of funerals and yet another death. 

There was a huge dust storm here last week.  Massive, I mean first the horizon disappeared and then the sky. There was just a red haze that filled everything.  My house, my hair, the rec hall, the office, the dogs, everything was covered in red sand by the end of the storm.  Some of my friends sat with me in my house until it passed.  Apparently for the people here winds storms are the bringers of change.  The women, in hushed whispers told me that they predicted a bad change, but there was something in the wind that excited me.  Maybe change was going to be good. 

  

Borrowed someone else’s image here, because my photo just looks like red haze… but this was seriously what we could see! 

The vet came this week for the first time in months and months.  For some of the sick dogs here this may have been the bad omen brought by the wind.  I had to get a sick dog put down, one that I have been feeding since I got here.  There was something about her, something really gentle.  I was sitting in the sand holding her head while they euthanased her, crying when it was over.  The community were so beautiful, some of the women just quietly holding my hand, sitting with me. It is Dog Dreaming land here, where dogs are the keepers of dreams and true spirits of the land, so for people here dogs are really important.

 

I think I cried for the dog, but also for endings.  For lots of different reasons I have decided to end my time in Finke and come back to Melbourne.  I can’t wait to see everyone, to be around the people that I love, use my brain in a different way again. I know that this experience has changed me so much, and I wonder what it will be like to be back.  There are so many reasons that I am excited about my next chapter, but also so many things that I will miss when I am gone. I think I’ve unconsciously started making lists in my head.

I am going to miss:

• not being able to wear thongs and shorts to work (or even thongs and tracksuit pants- super stylish I know!)
• not being able to press the mute button during meetings (remote teleconferences are so much easier to giggle through)
• not being able to drive insanely everyday with a V8 4WD through the sand (not that this was strictly allowed)
• not being able to ask for the translation for rude words
• not having ten dogs follow me on my daily walk
• not seeing 1000 million stars every night, and the most incredible sunsets in the world.

  

My V8 super car (I don’t usually drive with people on the roof!) 

Ok maybe I am getting a bit carried away with the list writing! (I have another list too about the things I can’t wait to do again, like have a fresh coffee, have 5 uninterrupted minutes to myself, not drive a car that smells like dead kangaroo…) hmmm… I went on a beautiful bushtrip the other day (I am definitely going to miss the weekly pilgrimage out somewhere in the desert).  We went to a place called The Rock of Ages, which is a huge rock in the middle of the dry Finke Riverbed an hour out of Finke.  It is school holidays here so the kids seem to have tripled their energy.  They went hunting for animals and playing in the riverbed while we made damper and cooked up kangaroo tails and sweet potato on the fire. The sky was the bluest it could possibly be, and I climbed to the top of the rock to look out over the desert and watch some camels ambling over the rocks in the distance.  I honestly felt like I was in the opening scene from the Lion King (I may have even broken into song).  I am going to miss this space.  Sometimes it feels like I have taken the deepest most peaceful breath ever, although on the way home after getting bogged about 20 times and having the kids put frogs down my top while I was driving, I think all of the relaxing deep breathing was subsumed! 

 

  

Cooking in the riverbed… 

A few days ago I went on another magical trip with some of the women to collect more wood for carving.  They dug for the best part of the day and I played in the riverbed with the kids, played with the fire and made sand angels by lying on our tummies in the sand and flapping our arms (although the kids laughed at mine because it had a few extra features!). We all sung in the troupe on the way home while the sun set over the riverbed, making the red rocks glow like fire embers. Without words the women made small hand gestures to me to indicate which way I should steer the troupe. They know this land like the back of their hand.  I hope that where ever I go I will feel as connected to the land as the people do here.  There is something so peaceful and constant about it.

 

  

I’ll miss the open air movie nights… 

  

Not quite sure how I’ll feel next time I get my own seat in a cinema! 

I am definitely going to miss the people here. There are so many wonderful, creative, resilient and strong people in Finke. One of the young women said to me here the other day after what must have been one of the hardest days of her life, “my feelings are crying.”  We just sat in the sand with her pain for a while. There was something so brave and honest about it.  So many people here so bravely tackle their emotions head on. I want to take this with me too.

I think rather than writing a list of all of the things I miss I am going to start thinking about all of the beautiful parts of life that I have captured here, that I want to take with me anywhere I go.  I ate an ant this morning.  I didn’t really think anything of it. There are so many bugs here and it had already died attempting to cross the treacherous honey laden piece of toast.  I giggled to myself afterwards as I chewed on my toast. I don’t think I would have eaten an ant before this… life is unexpected and so am I!

 

I am off to Vietnam next week for a couple of weeks to hang out with the lovely Bri and Michael, for loads of swimming, snorkelling, kayaking and a cycling trip (although I think I just want to stay in the water all of the time to make up for seven months in the Desert).  At least I hope I am off to Vietnam, I feel slightly dubious about my visa which says that me and 29 other people, wha have been named and birthdates provided are allowed into Vietnam. “I number 8.”  Fingers-crossed it will work!  I’ll try and post some last photos of Finke this week, I’ll have to take heaps in the next few days so I can remember everything.

I can’t wait to see people back in Melbourne!

Shan xo

  

I like this one because it is usually me pulling the silly face!

Sorry camping…

I spent yesterday sitting out in Sorry camp with some of the women. Every time someone dies here all of their relatives move out of their over-crowded houses into tents and camp outside of the community for months at a time.  Unfortunately because deaths here are too common, and because in this complex kinship system almost everyone is related the community spend so much time in Sorry camps.  I don’t know that I have ever experienced such a raw expression of grief as people howled at the death of one of their loved ones.  One of the elders told me that here you can’t let someone’s spirit go unacknowledged.  I like the idea of it, I think so many people spend time stuffing grief into pockets, hiding it until it rears its head again.  Although the immediate grief on community is so confronting, there is something beautiful about it.  Here we can never refer to people who have died by their name any more, and if you are unfortunate enough to share their name you are called Kumuna.

I love talking to the women again about their lives, especially the elders.  There is so much pain and hardship, and I have realised that Australia’s dark past has faces and names and real consequences, but there is still so much joy and strong culture, women who have sacrificed so much for children, often not even their own. They draw patterns in the sand while they talk and they cry and laugh often.  I know that there is so much hidden about the culture that I may never understand and parts of community life now that I don’t like, but I hope that the strength and ability to feel and display emotion is something that I have learned from.

It is freezing here this morning and I can see my breath in the office!  I am heading off to make pancakes for breakfast at the Rec Hall with the kids.  It will be messy… but it will be fun!

Thinking of my beautiful friends

Shan

Reversing!

Ok this may be trivial for most people… but i just wanted to say that I have mastered the art of reversing with a trailer (I think!)… It took about 5 elder women to direct me, a couple of the kids to confuse me with alternating hand/wheel gestures… but finally I managed to reverse park a troupe and trailer. Today I am my own god (tomorrow of course may be a different story)!

Finke Desert Race Survivor…

Ok so I survived the Finke Desert Race. If I am completely honest I may have even squeaked in delight when the first buggy flew into sight and became airborne over the sand dune before the finish line. I wonder what is happening to me out here. I promise that I still don’t like football!

Finke was descended upon by a couple of thousand motorbike and buggy riders for the race and a few hundred football and softball players for the community sports carnival. My little house was filled with youth workers from other communities and we worked ridiculous hours to get games going, umpire, fundraise, set up band nights and dance really badly at the disco!

 

Our bright red jumps!

 

Stolen image of one of the buggies (the kids action shots weren't quite as successful!)

 

 

Our team won the softball, which was very exciting. We drove around Finke (1 whole block!) for an hour with the trophy out the window cheering. However after four days of a sports carnival, that could have stretched for the best part of a month if there hadn’t been a few of us dragging players out of bed, we were all a bit blasé in the end, we tried to finish a night match by car headlights (just a tip car headlights do not necessarily improve the visibility of the softball). During the day it was pretty incredible lining up on the red dirt softball diamond and looking across at the red football oval to see motorbikes screaming over the sand hills. I did wonder if I was going to wake up.

The battle of the bands was amusing, with communities kicking each other off the band equipment to play exactly the same songs over and over again. The disco cracked me up too. I love discos out here. All of the kids do this thing called the sexy dance. I think the only way to replicate it is to dislocate your hips and shake your bottom as much as you can, believe me I have tried and tried. But if you turn off all the lights everyone including adults does the sexy dance, flick the lights back on and everyone flees for the closest wall giggling.

Lots of other stuff has been happening too. I think things got a little crazy out here to write it all down (even for me). I have been on lots of camping and bush trips with the kids, which I love. Have improved in my knitting (I’ll post the proof eventually). Life is kind of continuing here in its strange way, void of time. I keep loosing track of the date and day of the week. I think this is good, although sometimes I crave some form of structure.

 

This is a picture (up my nose!) of one of girls on community who makes me laugh every day! She'd just been teaching me how to dance to reggae!

 

I went into Alice for a young women’s health educator training workshop a few weeks ago, with one of the local workers from here. I don’t think I have ever laughed so much. It was basically like taking a health-ed class at school. At one point we had to play an ice-breaker game, where half of us had to be an SDT (we got a name tag with a word like syphilis on it) the other half had balloons tied to their feet. The STD’s had to try pop the balloons. I was giggling so hard I could barely breath by the end. We were also given a plastic programmed baby. It cried all the time, and we had to work out if it wanted to be held, rocked, needed it’s nappy changed. The creepy thing even made suckling sounds when you fed it. In the end our baby cried so much, we asked how to turn it off. The instructor said it only turned off if you killed it. We took that as a challenge and even after all of our efforts it wouldn’t die. At one point, as I was holding the plastic baby upside-down by its foot, I wondered who let me be a youth worker!

It was actually a great course, it was really interesting learning about how to teach and learn across cultures. Out here there are lots of things that make people ashamed to talk about. It makes it difficult to address issues like sexual health and relationships, but was great to come up with different ways to communicate (although I am not advocating for STD tiggy). I think with the cultural and language barriers out here, I have learnt so much more about communicating without words. I think I am feeling more at home with people here too. Apart from picking up more language and understanding a little more the nuances of humour, I think I’ve become much more comfortable with long silences. Women out here will sit for hours carving punu (soft wood), or burning beads not saying anything, making small hand gestures to ask and answer questions. It is really beautiful.

 

Tree roots in the Finke river (on the bizarrely coldest day ever)

 

I was doing some dispute resolution the other day and at the end of it the two people involved looked at each other and laughed, a genuine deep laugh. I was so confused by it, because it had been preceded by such anger and heated discussions. One of them noticed my confusion and said to me “we laugh to break up hurt and hate. It breaks it all up inside so it can leave.” What a beautiful philosophy.

Have been getting a bit sick lately, sorry to complain! But I was treated by an old nunkary (traditional healer), which was incredible. Apparently the reason I’d been getting sick was that my soul had been frightened and jumped outside of me. He got it back for me and then gave me a little of his soul. After chanting for a while he put his hands on my tummy and dragged my soul back across into it rightful place in slow repetitive movements. It felt really peaceful, although he gave me some pretty bad scratch marks on my belly! At the time I had some reaction to some insect bites and a tummy bug, so I also got an antihistamine injection from the clinic to be sure. But I definitely got better. I like the idea that emotional and physical health are intrinsically linked.

My biggest concern at the moment is that I have nits… my head feels itchy… Before anyone says anything I have washed my hair in the last week! But yuck, I don’t think I can sleep until I’ve had my entire head checked!

Thank you for reading. Although I have been enjoying the community, I have felt really far away lately and a little lost so it has been so wonderful to hear from people. I keep hoping that everything in everyone’s worlds is beautiful, and thinking that I am so lucky to have such incredible people only a phone call away.    me

P.S I have a new pet… Terry.  He usually quite shy (but can be surprising!).  One of the women here made him for me out of a tree root that we dug up from the river bed. I think I like his nostrils and his wonky eyes the best. 

 

Terry sun-bathing in the afternoon...

My inner superhero…

Ok so knitting may not be my forte… but new forms of entertainment are pretty hard to come by out here (as are presents to send to people). So I thought that I would knit my lovely sister a scarf for her Birthday (sorry Vaness I have failed thus far!)

But as a memento of my efforts (and a reflection of just how much I have come to rely on my own extremely witty humour out here in the desert) I have taken some photos.

This was the overall feel I was going for. Warm, classic scarf, symmetrical, long, immaculately woven…

 

The classic snugly scarf

Two slight issues… one end was quite significantly bigger than the other… I ran out of wool for the scarf to be any longer than this…

 

 

Issue 1

 

Issue 2

…and there are some largish holes in it (that is three issues…). What to do? I contemplated this for a while….

 

I let out my inner super hero...

But out of adversity was born a new breed of superhero, Scarfette. I have superhuman powers in um… clearly not knitting. I am still working on my powers.

Ok so by now some of you may have stopped reading, others maybe wondering if I have actually finally lost the plot, or be feeling sorry  for Ben who I work with. Maybe all of these thought are somewhat valid but I think that everyone needs to let out their inner superhero every now and again!

To be honest I think that humour is about the simplest thing to translate across cultural barriers. I am not suggesting that everyone here thinks I am funny, but I do love laughing with a group of people in moments where there are so few spoken words.

There is a couple that are walking eight camels from Darwin to Melbourne to raise money for the Royal Children’s hospital, which is pretty amazing. They stopped over in Finke for a few nights last week. There are lots of wild camels out here, but it isn’t very often that the kids get to pat camels and see them up close. They are such funny creatures, just as we were leaving with the kids one of them walked up to the troupe and burped. I have only just recovered from it- intellectual humour I know!

We had a big outdoor concert here last week too. Everyone from the school kids to the older men performed on a stage around bonfires- it was incredible. Someone stupidly thought it would be a good idea to leave me on face painting and hairspray. I think I may have taken too much creative licence and convinced everyone that they would love to be a jungle animal or at least a strange morph of one. I did discover that I am in fact hairspray retardant. No matter how much hairspray is put on my hair after about 5 minutes it disappears. Weird I know!

There was something really special about sitting around the fires with the community giggling at the kids, feeling proud of them, talking about how next time we could make an even better concert. I felt connected to the community and part of something positive.

I watched some 60 Minutes interview last night about Indigenous kids getting scholarships to prestigious schools in Sydney. I felt really conflicted, it felt too much like a good will story and not about sharing of cultures. We have so much to learn from each other. I realised that we talk about indigenous communities as if they are synonymous. Central desert kids life experiences and cultural are so different to rural indigenous kids. I don’t think scholarships like that would work for most of the kids out here, the change would be too drastic. I guess the sad reality is that in terms of education we are failing lots of these kids. I know that it is complex and that there are people giving it everything. But there are not enough educators who stay, and in my experience community services and resources are so strangely administered out here. I am still sitting with all of this, chatting with some of the elders, who like most people want the bright and health futures for their children.

This is Finke river bed, where I do lots of my contemplating…

Finke river bed

Missing people loads and loads.

Shan xo

The biggest bath in the Universe

There are days that will always stand out in my mind. Falling in love, watching my nephews be born, seeing it snow for the first time. I think I just had one of those days.

I’m not even quite sure why, but there was something about it. I had made a decision at the start of the day to surrender to it, to give way to whatever chaos a bushtrip usually brings, to surrender to the flys, the additudal teenage girls who I was accompanying, stop worrying about the state of the dirt track, or the troupe tyers, stop focusing on feeling alone and just ride with it. So I did.

There is something about the rolling desert here that reminds me of the ocean, mesmerising undulations, subtle changes in colour, endless horizons. We drove for hours, most of the time in some quite medatitive state, broken only by teenage banter (most of which I fortunately couldn’t understand). We arrived a Dalehousie Springs, natural lagoon like hot springs in South Australia, surrounded by palm trees and reeds in the middle of the desert.

 

Delahousie Springs

 

The water was 43 degrees and we all plunged in, diving and leaping off the bank. It was the most beautiful bath I have ever had. Even the teenagers broke their cool exterior to play with rubber tyres, giggling like children in the water.

Having a bath...

 

not wanting to get out of the bath!

We walked are around the other hot springs to the home of the rainbow serpent. The particular spring was perfectly round, calved by the serpent’s body coiling under the surface. I was warned not to go too close to the edge, in case he woke and pulled me under. We watched the patterns on the water, watched while the water moved in a circular motion and screamed and ran away when large bubbles rose to the surface. We returned to the fire where our damper, sweet potato and kangaroo tails were cooking in the coals.

 

 

Kangaroo tails cooking on the fire

 

We visited another tropical paradise on the way home, low palm trees tucked into a valley in the desert, each one making a small cubby house on the ground, each bearing big brown sweet dates. Naturally we picked as many as we could carry and the gilrs scared each other with stories of the serpent. My troupe is now covered in stick date seeds. Definitely worth it.

I don’t think it was just the beautiful landscape that made the day so memorable. I think there was something that epitomised where this journey has taken me, how far I have travelled from the Shannon that started. Something about letting go of expectations, allowing beauty to find you, about contentment, about handing control over to something other than me. Something about the magic of the culture, magic that can follow me anywhere.

I have been so worried about what to do next. I keep thinking that I want to affect change on a bigger, more strategic level, I also keep thinking about the people I am missing, about what I should be building. I still have no idea where to go from here, but I think I stopped worrying for a moment about whether I was having enough positive impact on the community and thought about the whole two-way learning concept. This has changed me, even amid all of the chaos here somehow the world seems more magical, peaceful.; Someone said to me the other day that our world is a reflection of ourselves, maybe I am more peaceful.

I hope you can excuse my internal monologue (if you have made it this far), I think it is in part due to having watched too many episodes of Dawson’s Creek ( I found series six on sale in Alice Springs). I have turned into one of the overly verbose characters, and I am still hanging out to see if Joey does eventually end up with Pacey. Sad but true!

Have another week of trying to get the batik dying program and beading program up and running so we have enough stuff to have a market stall (either in Alice or at the Finke Desert Race on the first week in June). Will be fun to get the girls making stuff and hopefully proud of what they are making and learning skills with money handling. The Desert Race will be interesting apparently our little community of 150 gets 2000 tourists for a couple of days… Strange.

Might be heading into Alice this weekend for a writers festival with a few of the kids. There are some really fabulous central desert writers and film-makers showing their work. Fingers crossed I get to go, because I think I am starved for brain food (not that Dawson’s Creek doesn’t count!).

I hope that everything is beautiful in everyone’s worlds, that it is not getting too cold and again thank you for your emails and blog posts, they make the belly button of Australia seem a little closer to what Territorians refer to as the um… bottom of Australia.

Me xo
P.S Still trying to work out new web browser and photo uploading thingy… photos await!

The roadhouse less travelled…

Hello!

I have been a little slack with writing posts lately, although  think I may have made up for it with my extremely witty literary pun!

I haven’t really been in Finke that much at all… after my very short and extraordinarily last minute trip to Melbourne (catalyzed by a series of unfortunate incidents in Finke followed by a free plane trip in a three seater airplane which was more like a roller coaster ride!), I have been staying in Alice, Kulgra Roadhouse, training in Erldunda, softball carnival at Yulara (Ayers Rock) and now back to Finke!

Was weird being back in Melbourne and then back here in such a short period of time, I think that the contrast blew me away a little.  I’m now not quite sure where I should be, or what I should be doing for that matter (at least some things don’t change!). At least it was lovely to catch up with a small handful of the very beautiful people, who I think I’d forgottern how lucky I am and how much they make my world turn around…

Coming back I did realise that someone really has to make a film about the Aussie Outbacck Roadhouse… the rough dimonds, the red necks, the working tourists who have forgottern that they once had a destination, the drovers, the road train dirvers… Yep there is definitely a movie in it.

I have definitely seen some strange things in the last fortnight. A man (who somewhat resembled Father Christmas, expect with out the red suit and PG rated personality) asked me if I would like to see his trunk… I of course declined , which went unnoticed and he lifted his top to show a stretched tattoo of an elephant trunk poking out over the top of his stubby shorts. Before even had a chance to recover he rolled up what there was of his shorts to reveal another tattoo. This one was of an arrow pointing up and the messily scrawled words “HEAVEN’S THIS WAY.” This time I had to giggle.

The night proceeded as I have found is usual in a roadhouse, with a strange assortment of creatures getting drunk and having “meaningful conversations” about some weird stuff. Mainly harmless, and I think I have been lucky that the red necks have usually been outweighed by the old timers who have an appreciation for the indigenous people and some weird fatherly protectiveness over young women, which I must say I appreciated!

We then had a fire works show to celebrate Easter, although no one could agree on what actually happened on Easter Saturday in a biblical sense, but it was decided that it should be celebrated with homemade fire works. They were really spectacular. Imagine the sky filled with stars, no lights anywhere and then and explosion of light and colour. It wasn’t until a few of the cans fell over and started shooting along the ground towards the petrol pumps, that it dawned on anyone that a petrol station probably isn’t the safest place for a firework show. Oh well, I live to tell the tale!

I have taken a photo of the sign on the door where we did our Suicide Intervention Training (Erldunda Roadhouse). This was a first for me, and a good reason to close the door!

 

I think that the pink highlighter really emphasizes the point!

 

I have also learnt that being vegetarian at a road house in the Northern Territory is as good as fasting… unless of course tomato sauce and bread is appealing!

The softball carnival was fun and I had to keep pinching myself when I looked up to see the beautiful big rock looming on the horizon. There is plenty to be frustrated/scared/lonely about out here, but there is certainly plenty to be amazing/happy/surrounded by wonderful people too. I guess I’ve always loved the extremes!

Back in Finke now… about to reembark on our projects, and get back into softball training (we lost one of our games)… Got to run because I think that the office has been invaded by hyperactive kids, but thinking of everyone.

Shan xox

P.S Can’t get photos uploading thingy to work on my new web browser… but I shall endevour to fix it!

My big footed baby…

My big footed baby??!!

OK so I haven’t had a baby! But I had one for  little while.  One of the community members gave this little guy to me on Friday night.  They had been on a hunting trip and he was in the pouch of one of their catches.  

I was at the Rec hall and someone calls me over to the meshed up window, “I’ve got something for you. Can you look after it??” At first I thought it was a weird looking puppy… but it was a baby (1.4 kg) big red kangaroo’s joey, with no fur and feet longer than it’s body. Anyone with babies can laugh at me now, but after one night of feeding the thing every two hours and having to sleep with it on my skin to keep it from shivering I was so exhausted.  One of the white fellers on the community had some old formula and a special bottle so at least I was armed, but it took me ages to warm him up and calm him down…

More milk!!!

There is a happy ending I promise… The next afternoon (deliriously tired after no sleep) I drove for two hours to Kulgra Roadhouse with him under my t-shirt this time trying to protect him from the heat! I waited for some compassionate tourist to come in to fill-up, trying to get the little guy to look as cute and helpless as possible.  Eventually I managed to find someone who looked trustworthy to take him three hours into the refuge in Alice Springs.  They were ready and waiting to get him into a humidicrib…. I was a bit sad to let him go, but without fur I couldn’t keep his temperature constant enough… 

 

I have the biggest ears in the world

I am hoping that today he is nice and warm and that maybe one day I’ll see him in the wild with the biggest ears in Australia! I know that most people think I am crazy (pretty much everyone laughed at me) and I know that I am definitely not desert-proofed yet, but I am pretty sure not even the desert out here can get quite that far under my skin!

Was thinking again about time last night… and wrote this (I was somewhat sleep deprived but I thought I’d post it anyhow)

What time is it?

I wonder why time must always be linear, why we must draw lines through everything. Out here later can mean anything from three minutes to a week or a month. Tomorrow is a loose term, in fact tomorrow may not come until next week.  There is something I like about the fluidity of time here.

I have always spent time worrying about the future, held tightly onto memories of the past, in fact I think I sweep myself from past to present to future constantly.  I feel like people here understand that there is more room for contentment in the present.  I think I am learning some of this. But it is hope and dreaming for the future that I am missing most.

Somewhere amongst it all I have learnt some other strange things…

• If you get enough food dye in your eye it will come out of your nose.
• It is possible to over-do the amount of yeast you use in damper
• Wombats usually poo in odd numbers (still not sure about this one because there a definately no wombats here, although I am assured it is true and that their poo has eight sides and can be used as a dice)
• Here a ‘cheeky dog’ is not one that might try and steal your lunch, it is one that might try and steal your leg.
• Raw sweet potato can make you feel really sick
• Pears do not freeze well
• Just because you can fit in a chest freezer does not necessarily mean you should get inside one.

Tonight I sat on the back step, looking out over the damn and the stars seemed to take up more room in the sky than the darkness itself. Sometimes out here on nights like this I feel acutely alone. Tonight I felt small, less significant but peaceful.  I think that the whole community is asleep, apart from the distant and irregular dog barking or generator humming. 

Hope everyone is sleeping peacefully in Melbourne.

xo

Gumnut babies…

Ok so I may have had a few strange nick names in my life… but I seriously thought that after 20 years I would have left Shanny Fanny Long Legs back in Melbourne…  It appears not! Well not quite anyhow.  They call me Kunga Wara here, which literally translates into long girl.  Sometimes in English they call me long one… it seems to amuse them.  

I went on a bush trip with some of the elder women today, “Kunga Wara puta…” Tall girl get down branch.  I was in charge of picking the gumnuts and seeds off the branches that the others couldn’t reach.  Important job! We were collecting seeds and gumnuts so that some of the elder women run some of the youth sessions and teach the younger ones traditional beading.  They paint the seeds and gumnuts with such intricate dot paintings, burn holes in them to thread them and  then varnish… the end product is amazing (I’ll take some photos of our attempts). 

While I was fossicking on the ground today for gumnuts, I think I was lost somewhere between congratulating myself on how bush savvy I have become, and harking back to May Gibbs and imagining what life  would be like as a gumnut baby, when I heard an outcry of “Kunga Wara” from the Troupe.  The women are wildly waving their arms for me to come back. Their rationale… a BULL.  Apparently the long eye-lashed female creatures that I had admired from the safety of the Troupe are in fact have giant male counter parts, with horns and big humps on their back and in most cases are quite territorial.  Needless to say I backed the hell out of there, gripping my stash of gumnuts in case I needed ammunition. 

Gumnut Babies

Feeling slightly shaky we found a safer spot to fossick, although I think my frightened jig when attacked by a swarm of, what I was convinced were crazy wasps amused everyone.  It wasn’t until I had finished my dance and the women had finished their laughing that they told me the flying critters were harmless big flies.  Eventually the women looked at the sinking sun and all rushed into the Troupe… “We leave now or Mara comes.” They told me of the Monster Man that comes. By this stage I was definitely keen to show the women that I was not going to be frightened by any more insects and certainly not monsters.  But the story of the night monster that grabs females is ancient and so real within the community, I think I floored it all the way back!

The most amazing sunsets I've ever seen (I wish I could get a photos of the stars)...

I haven’t really got any other photos of our seed gathering trip that I can put up… it is such a shame, there are some amazing shots (I’ll check with some of the elder women to see if they don’t mind their images up here).  I’ve been doing some photoshop work with some of the younger ones which has been fun.  We’ve made some crazy and some beautiful shots (most of them silly).  Unfortunately I can’t put up the pictures of the kids… but as consolation you can see a photoshopped image of me hiding behind an enormous bunch of leeks (I ordered some vegies through the store here and someone in Alice Springs must have an odd sense of quantity I got about 58 leeks and 1 orange and 55 cucumbers… I never want to see a leek or a cucumber again!) But they proved to be interesting props for learning photoshop, I’m not sure I’ll even be able to eat half of them!

Please send me your leek recipes (or alternatively leek jokes... I am enjoying them!)

Just one more thing to scare everyone…  So one of the Government workers here had some printer trouble… the printer kept jamming.  Frustrating.  He tried everything, feeding the paper through mannually, changing the settings, trouble-shooting on the computer, until eventually he called the Tech Support in Darwin.  They suggegested that he check the cartridge… he did and this little guy was sleeping behind it… dangerous paper jam!

I don't think I will ever check the cartridge again!

Thinking of everyone still… Sorry  I have been slow on emails, my hotmail access keeps dropping out here and I keep loosing everything I have written… Technology is not on my side… although I do have a phone (this is quite possibly the most exciting thing for me ever)!

Hope everything is beautiful in Melbourne

xo

Finke after the rain!

Hello again…

It rained and rained yesterday afternoon and through the night… First time it has rained since I’ve been here.  It was so beautiful falling asleep with rain pattering on my tin roof.  We had the most incredible lightening storm I think I’ve ever seen.  It seems like there is more sky here than anywhere else in the world.  Still in the high 30′s today, but there is a cool breeze tonight (although I could be imagining it!).  I borrowed a camera today (just so people wouldn’t have to put up with photo’s of me that people have given me to put on my blog!).

This little guy came out because of the rain… there were lost of reptiles strolling around, but this guy has style!

Just crossing the road...

 

He got a lift the rest of the way...

Managed to get a shot of some of the dogs… there are usually at least 15 dogs outside the community store!  Loads of them have mange, but I managed to capture  health bunch!  There is some weird breed of hunting dog here… it looks like a cross between a greyhound and something far bigger, he seems to get all of the dogs racing the horses.  Quite funny to watch  a bunch of horses galloping across the football oval and a whole pack of dogs trying to beat them.  I don’t think they are trying to catch them.  I have drawn the happier conclusion that it is simply a loving game of chasey! The dogs are not in my good books at the moment, they broke into the kitchen and ate heaps of the play dough that we’d just made (they may have been aided by the fact  I left the door open… but still)!

 

The queue at the shop!

This is a picture of where I’ve been playing basketball most nights.  It is right on the edge of the football oval (I’m not sure I you can make out the goal posts at the far end of the oval)… Grass is not something that features here! But usually by about 5 pm most of the community have either been on the footy oval, basketball court or softball diamond (which looks pretty much identical to the footy oval!) 

Basketball court and footy oval!

Stupid thing came outside-ways again! Somedays  I have the feeling that the universe is testing me… not sure what for, or if I’ve passed or failed… 

Anyway just wanted to post some photos.  I won a camera/cam-corder  on Ebay yesterday (which was a miracle given the download speed out here!) so hopefully when it arrives I’ll be able to take some better photos and hopefully make some movies!  

 

Dreamed of the ocean last night and am missing all of my ocean dwellers

xo