A propos of yesterday's post about the weather, I came across this on the BBC website. I'm not alone in wondering what's going on and I do agree that the traditional four European seasons do not describe what we have here.
I am curious about the words local Aborigines had for seasons.
I am curious about the words local Aborigines had for seasons.
23 May
I got picked up at 8.30 by the guide. His name is Mark Sutton and he is one of the traditional owners (Mulyankapa) of Mutawintji NP. I was lucky that I was the only tourist going out there with him - all the others we picked up at the camping ground and they had their own cars (all 4WD of course, except for one guy in a Kombi-type van). Having the tour guide to yourself means the possibility of conversation.
The trip out there is 130 km, about half of it on dirt roads which, in the park itself, are badly corrugated. I read somewhere that Mark's uncle is Badger Bates (see previous post) and it is true. The two of them seem to take turns in chairing the local Land Council. When I mentioned that I'd stopped at Wilcannia, he said "good on you!" Apparently most people take one look at the place and put their foot on the accelerator. So I explained that over the course of my life I'd met a handful of people from Wilcannia and so I wanted to see it. One of these people, I met her about 35-40 years ago, was an Aboriginal woman who said that her grandmother (who had lived to over 100) had talked about how the whole area between Wilcannia and Broken Hill had been covered in trees, and was lush and green - not at all like it is today. The white people just cut down all the trees, totally transforming the landscape within a couple of decades. Later in our tour, Mark mentioned the last of the local 'clever women' who'd died in the 1970s at the age of 109. That set me wondering if it was the same woman or if it was just that women born before the arrival of Europeans had a very long life expectancy. Anyway Wilcannia is Mark's hometown. He left when he was 4 and went east to school. He lived in Newcastle through high school - turns out he knows the father of a colleague of mine - went to uni in Sydney, and came back to Broken Hill about 15 years ago.
We stopped for morning coffee in a creek bed. The gums are a smaller relative of the river red (E. camaldulensis) - their name is something like "ombrosa." The creek bed was damp, presumably from the rain a few days ago.
Most of the tour takes place in the restricted area. Mainly it is restricted on account of people having removed stuff in the past, but there is also an important "men's business" area. The guides make sure that tourists don't go to that place. There's a (white) park ranger living at the Park Centre, visible to the left of the picture, but that's because the accommodation was already built when the Aborigines regained ownership, and they didn't want to live in a place that was so closely linked to ceremony. (As Mark put it, the white ranger isn't superstitious, so living there is OK for him.) They've turned the old Park centre into a cultural centre. We were ushered in to watch and listen to a multimedia presentation of a Dreaming story that sounded really like a bit of Old Testament (floods, pestilence, etc). Unlike the OT, however, there is redemption - a sort of Garden of Eden story in reverse. When the people had been punished enough, god turned Mutawintji into a paradise for the people to live in. How nice a story is that! Paradise here on earth and the people can keep it if they behave well!
Then we walked across the valley floor to look at the first set of galleries. On the way we passed an oven floor. Only the floor is left - the rest has been washed away by flash floods. But this is where the corroborees were held. Ten different tribes used to congregate here for trade and ceremony.
I loved the story about how you dig a hole, put stones on the bottom to keep the heat, add flammable stuff, set a fire and then when the stones are hot you put in your kangaroo and emu and cover them over. But you leave the emu's head above ground - because you've stuffed both animals with herbs and when the herbs in the animal's cavity start to cook they send smoke out through the emu's mouth. When the smoke comes out you know your emu is cooked!
These two trees are of the genus Callitris. The one on the right is a termite-proof species (Black), the one on the left (White) is not. Unlike a lot of trees in the outback, they have a nice straight trunk that makes them excellent building material. Consequently, not many are left. Today, only the things built with Black Callitris are still standing (see my post on the Mungo Woolshed).
On the southern side of the valley is a long line of galleries covered in stencils and engraving. There are three types of rock art at Mutawintji - two on this side of the valley and a third on the other side. Here we find, first of all, stencils that are probably a maximum of 300 years old. It is sheltered from the prevailing south-westerlies, but there's water filtering down through the rock, so paint doesn't last long. The present owners have put driplines in - some modern plasticky substance that guides the water away from the paintings. The dark red ochre comes from the Flinders Ranges, about 200 km to the west. The yellow comes from somewhere to the east (I've forgotten) and the white is local gypsum.
There are stencils at child height and at adult height. People apparently made their hand stencils when they first visited this area for a ceremony during childhood, then when they came for other ceremonies as adults.
Only elders were supposed to make stencils of more than their hand. The more arm in your stencil, the more senior you were. You can clearly see a bit of dripline in the bottom left of this photo, but it's generally not very obtrusive.
Looking across the valley. The bump in the middle, that looks like a snake's head, is right by the location of Snake's Cave where the men's business takes place. Don't go haw hawing about men and snakes! The Rainbow Serpent is the creature in Aboriginal folklore that created most of the features of the landscape. How the serpent got into man's imagination is another question :) According to Mark, the snake is also important in Mulyankapa culture. Opals, for example, are said to be pieces of snake shit.
What you can see here is what's left of a double circle. If you stand with your back to the circle you will be facing the Snake's Cave. The circle indicates a water hole. The double circle indicates a ceremonial water hole and the hand print (not stencil) indicates men's business.
The second type of art at Mutawintji is engraved into the rock. Most of it in these galleries consists of animal tracks. The kangaroo footprints just behind Mark's foot are pretty obvious. I thought there were emu prints in this picture too, but blowed if I can see them now! They look like arrows - maybe that grey-looking bit just below the ?-shaped crack in the rock on the far left?
Then there's this thing. Mark said he'd assumed for a long time that it was a modern whitefella adornment. But one day an Aboriginal woman in his tour group said (I wish I could reproduce the intonation) "Nooo boy, that's women's business." "Right auntie," says Mark, "so what does it mean then?" "Noooo boy, that's women's business" replies auntie.
The "women's business" area (the women's equivalent of Snake's Cave is called Mushroom Rock) is away to the south and also restricted. Mark is trying to persuade them to share some of their stuff with strangers, but so far they won't. In the car on the way back he said that he thought the men didn't mind sharing so much because white anthropologists had been collecting data for 150 years and those anthropologists were all men "back then." Women were never asked about their business, so they're not used to sharing it far and wide and maybe they're more defensive because, due to the dominance of male anthropologists, there's a general presumption that the men's story is all there is to tell. However, Mark pointed out that the Mulyankapa, to which he belongs, are matrilineal. It follows that it must be the women who know most about the history of the people and their lands.
Somebody asked whether the people wore clothing. The answer was ever so slightly indignant (like what d'you think they were: cold blooded?) - yes they wore animal furs . Next question "did they wear shoes". Answer - only the 'clever men' wore shoes made of feathers, but that's all that can be said. The last clever man died in the 1930s, the last clever woman in the 1970s. Along the way Mark was talking a bit about medicinal properties of various plants, but how much of that was lost when these old 'clever' people died? White Australians know very well about the fantastic properties of ti tree (melaleuca) oil, but what other local wisdom are we missing out on?
This is, according to Mark, genuine whitefella addition. Apparently the blue tint is provided by Reckitt's Blue (which I remember from my own childhood as being some kind of laundry bleach).
According to this site, Reckitt's Blue was actually used by Australian Aborigines.
Around the corner was a genuine whitey graffito - a now completely illegible black-painted ad for some place in the Blue Mountains, a mere 1100 km to the east. The National Parks and Wildlife Service require that it is not scrubbed out because it is more than 50 years old.
Whatever. Now we're on our way across the valley to visit the third type of art. On the way, we see some 300 million year-old fossils - some kind of sea scorpion that left its tracks on the old ocean floor.
Caterpillar bag. I saw these yesterday too, at the arboretum, and thought they were birds' nests. But they belong to processional caterpillars which leave them in the daytime and return at night. Processional caterpillars walk together in line - nose to tail. I first came across processional caterpillars at Yeppoon in Queensland, though I somehow neglected to mention this at the time.
Another view across the valley. This time from the northern side, looking towards the southwest - but west of the galleries we'd just come from.
Now we get to the real highlight. These engravings are in the so-called Panaramitee style, after a place southwest of here in South Australia, where they were first noticed. Mutawintji is the eastern-most extent of this type of engraving. Nobody really knows how old they are, but carbon dating of organic matter deposited on them says at least 30,000 years. They have been subjected to various pressures - including the addition of chemicals to make them more clearly visible. This one is clearly an emu.
There is a huge jumble of engravings - all over the place. Some human figures here.
Among other things, a kangaroo.
Every surface is covered with engravings. Some years ago, the National Parks decided to clean everything up. They applied pressurized steam, which not only got rid of the ancient patina on the rock, it caused a huge amount of cracking and downhill slippage. Oops. The ladder-like structures worn by the human figures are apparently something to do with rainmaking cermonies.
Back in the valley, this creek has actually got some water in it - thanks to the recent rain. We passed an overhang with an ancient "map" showing 10 water holes, but the layout was changed by the ?Raine?s family that used to run the place as a sheep station..
Finally, at the Park Centre there's a display of some artefacts and a bit of political history. In 1983 the Park was blockaded by the traditional owners.
Political action by the Aboriginal community led to the Park being handed over in 1998. It is now leased back to the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the rent, which if IIRC is over $300k a year, is being put aside by the indigenous owners to buy more land in the area. Mark said that what they want to do first is to buy up land between Mutawintji NP and the nature reserve further east where there is the only known NSW population of the endangered yellow-footed rock wallaby. They want to create a corridor for these wallabies. Mark is proud of the fact that he designed the Mutawintji logo, which includes these wallabies as well as the Pleiades, aka Seven Sisters, who are part of the Mutawintji Dreaming.
I loved this place. I'm so glad I waited in Broken Hill long enough to go there. And it is so hard to get your head around 30 millenia of human civilisation. Or 45 millenia - which is the date they've given to Mungo Lady. Whatever. Burke and Wills came here (circa 1860) on their fateful mission to cross the continent. They were advised by the Aborigines that it was the last major source of water until ...what? There's bugger all between here and the Queensland border. On the way back from the Gulf of Carpentaria, all except one died, possibly from inability to prepare bush tucker properly. The sole survivor, a man called John King, is said to have been so destroyed by his experience that he only lasted another decade, dying at the age of 33. The Burke and Wills story must be a puzzle to the people who've always lived here.
I got picked up at 8.30 by the guide. His name is Mark Sutton and he is one of the traditional owners (Mulyankapa) of Mutawintji NP. I was lucky that I was the only tourist going out there with him - all the others we picked up at the camping ground and they had their own cars (all 4WD of course, except for one guy in a Kombi-type van). Having the tour guide to yourself means the possibility of conversation.
The trip out there is 130 km, about half of it on dirt roads which, in the park itself, are badly corrugated. I read somewhere that Mark's uncle is Badger Bates (see previous post) and it is true. The two of them seem to take turns in chairing the local Land Council. When I mentioned that I'd stopped at Wilcannia, he said "good on you!" Apparently most people take one look at the place and put their foot on the accelerator. So I explained that over the course of my life I'd met a handful of people from Wilcannia and so I wanted to see it. One of these people, I met her about 35-40 years ago, was an Aboriginal woman who said that her grandmother (who had lived to over 100) had talked about how the whole area between Wilcannia and Broken Hill had been covered in trees, and was lush and green - not at all like it is today. The white people just cut down all the trees, totally transforming the landscape within a couple of decades. Later in our tour, Mark mentioned the last of the local 'clever women' who'd died in the 1970s at the age of 109. That set me wondering if it was the same woman or if it was just that women born before the arrival of Europeans had a very long life expectancy. Anyway Wilcannia is Mark's hometown. He left when he was 4 and went east to school. He lived in Newcastle through high school - turns out he knows the father of a colleague of mine - went to uni in Sydney, and came back to Broken Hill about 15 years ago.
We stopped for morning coffee in a creek bed. The gums are a smaller relative of the river red (E. camaldulensis) - their name is something like "ombrosa." The creek bed was damp, presumably from the rain a few days ago.
Most of the tour takes place in the restricted area. Mainly it is restricted on account of people having removed stuff in the past, but there is also an important "men's business" area. The guides make sure that tourists don't go to that place. There's a (white) park ranger living at the Park Centre, visible to the left of the picture, but that's because the accommodation was already built when the Aborigines regained ownership, and they didn't want to live in a place that was so closely linked to ceremony. (As Mark put it, the white ranger isn't superstitious, so living there is OK for him.) They've turned the old Park centre into a cultural centre. We were ushered in to watch and listen to a multimedia presentation of a Dreaming story that sounded really like a bit of Old Testament (floods, pestilence, etc). Unlike the OT, however, there is redemption - a sort of Garden of Eden story in reverse. When the people had been punished enough, god turned Mutawintji into a paradise for the people to live in. How nice a story is that! Paradise here on earth and the people can keep it if they behave well!
Then we walked across the valley floor to look at the first set of galleries. On the way we passed an oven floor. Only the floor is left - the rest has been washed away by flash floods. But this is where the corroborees were held. Ten different tribes used to congregate here for trade and ceremony.
I loved the story about how you dig a hole, put stones on the bottom to keep the heat, add flammable stuff, set a fire and then when the stones are hot you put in your kangaroo and emu and cover them over. But you leave the emu's head above ground - because you've stuffed both animals with herbs and when the herbs in the animal's cavity start to cook they send smoke out through the emu's mouth. When the smoke comes out you know your emu is cooked!
These two trees are of the genus Callitris. The one on the right is a termite-proof species (Black), the one on the left (White) is not. Unlike a lot of trees in the outback, they have a nice straight trunk that makes them excellent building material. Consequently, not many are left. Today, only the things built with Black Callitris are still standing (see my post on the Mungo Woolshed).
On the southern side of the valley is a long line of galleries covered in stencils and engraving. There are three types of rock art at Mutawintji - two on this side of the valley and a third on the other side. Here we find, first of all, stencils that are probably a maximum of 300 years old. It is sheltered from the prevailing south-westerlies, but there's water filtering down through the rock, so paint doesn't last long. The present owners have put driplines in - some modern plasticky substance that guides the water away from the paintings. The dark red ochre comes from the Flinders Ranges, about 200 km to the west. The yellow comes from somewhere to the east (I've forgotten) and the white is local gypsum.
There are stencils at child height and at adult height. People apparently made their hand stencils when they first visited this area for a ceremony during childhood, then when they came for other ceremonies as adults.
Only elders were supposed to make stencils of more than their hand. The more arm in your stencil, the more senior you were. You can clearly see a bit of dripline in the bottom left of this photo, but it's generally not very obtrusive.
Looking across the valley. The bump in the middle, that looks like a snake's head, is right by the location of Snake's Cave where the men's business takes place. Don't go haw hawing about men and snakes! The Rainbow Serpent is the creature in Aboriginal folklore that created most of the features of the landscape. How the serpent got into man's imagination is another question :) According to Mark, the snake is also important in Mulyankapa culture. Opals, for example, are said to be pieces of snake shit.
What you can see here is what's left of a double circle. If you stand with your back to the circle you will be facing the Snake's Cave. The circle indicates a water hole. The double circle indicates a ceremonial water hole and the hand print (not stencil) indicates men's business.
The second type of art at Mutawintji is engraved into the rock. Most of it in these galleries consists of animal tracks. The kangaroo footprints just behind Mark's foot are pretty obvious. I thought there were emu prints in this picture too, but blowed if I can see them now! They look like arrows - maybe that grey-looking bit just below the ?-shaped crack in the rock on the far left?
Then there's this thing. Mark said he'd assumed for a long time that it was a modern whitefella adornment. But one day an Aboriginal woman in his tour group said (I wish I could reproduce the intonation) "Nooo boy, that's women's business." "Right auntie," says Mark, "so what does it mean then?" "Noooo boy, that's women's business" replies auntie.
The "women's business" area (the women's equivalent of Snake's Cave is called Mushroom Rock) is away to the south and also restricted. Mark is trying to persuade them to share some of their stuff with strangers, but so far they won't. In the car on the way back he said that he thought the men didn't mind sharing so much because white anthropologists had been collecting data for 150 years and those anthropologists were all men "back then." Women were never asked about their business, so they're not used to sharing it far and wide and maybe they're more defensive because, due to the dominance of male anthropologists, there's a general presumption that the men's story is all there is to tell. However, Mark pointed out that the Mulyankapa, to which he belongs, are matrilineal. It follows that it must be the women who know most about the history of the people and their lands.
Somebody asked whether the people wore clothing. The answer was ever so slightly indignant (like what d'you think they were: cold blooded?) - yes they wore animal furs . Next question "did they wear shoes". Answer - only the 'clever men' wore shoes made of feathers, but that's all that can be said. The last clever man died in the 1930s, the last clever woman in the 1970s. Along the way Mark was talking a bit about medicinal properties of various plants, but how much of that was lost when these old 'clever' people died? White Australians know very well about the fantastic properties of ti tree (melaleuca) oil, but what other local wisdom are we missing out on?
This is, according to Mark, genuine whitefella addition. Apparently the blue tint is provided by Reckitt's Blue (which I remember from my own childhood as being some kind of laundry bleach).
According to this site, Reckitt's Blue was actually used by Australian Aborigines.
Around the corner was a genuine whitey graffito - a now completely illegible black-painted ad for some place in the Blue Mountains, a mere 1100 km to the east. The National Parks and Wildlife Service require that it is not scrubbed out because it is more than 50 years old.
Whatever. Now we're on our way across the valley to visit the third type of art. On the way, we see some 300 million year-old fossils - some kind of sea scorpion that left its tracks on the old ocean floor.
Caterpillar bag. I saw these yesterday too, at the arboretum, and thought they were birds' nests. But they belong to processional caterpillars which leave them in the daytime and return at night. Processional caterpillars walk together in line - nose to tail. I first came across processional caterpillars at Yeppoon in Queensland, though I somehow neglected to mention this at the time.
Another view across the valley. This time from the northern side, looking towards the southwest - but west of the galleries we'd just come from.
Now we get to the real highlight. These engravings are in the so-called Panaramitee style, after a place southwest of here in South Australia, where they were first noticed. Mutawintji is the eastern-most extent of this type of engraving. Nobody really knows how old they are, but carbon dating of organic matter deposited on them says at least 30,000 years. They have been subjected to various pressures - including the addition of chemicals to make them more clearly visible. This one is clearly an emu.
There is a huge jumble of engravings - all over the place. Some human figures here.
Among other things, a kangaroo.
Every surface is covered with engravings. Some years ago, the National Parks decided to clean everything up. They applied pressurized steam, which not only got rid of the ancient patina on the rock, it caused a huge amount of cracking and downhill slippage. Oops. The ladder-like structures worn by the human figures are apparently something to do with rainmaking cermonies.
Back in the valley, this creek has actually got some water in it - thanks to the recent rain. We passed an overhang with an ancient "map" showing 10 water holes, but the layout was changed by the ?Raine?s family that used to run the place as a sheep station..
Finally, at the Park Centre there's a display of some artefacts and a bit of political history. In 1983 the Park was blockaded by the traditional owners.
Political action by the Aboriginal community led to the Park being handed over in 1998. It is now leased back to the National Parks and Wildlife Service and the rent, which if IIRC is over $300k a year, is being put aside by the indigenous owners to buy more land in the area. Mark said that what they want to do first is to buy up land between Mutawintji NP and the nature reserve further east where there is the only known NSW population of the endangered yellow-footed rock wallaby. They want to create a corridor for these wallabies. Mark is proud of the fact that he designed the Mutawintji logo, which includes these wallabies as well as the Pleiades, aka Seven Sisters, who are part of the Mutawintji Dreaming.
I loved this place. I'm so glad I waited in Broken Hill long enough to go there. And it is so hard to get your head around 30 millenia of human civilisation. Or 45 millenia - which is the date they've given to Mungo Lady. Whatever. Burke and Wills came here (circa 1860) on their fateful mission to cross the continent. They were advised by the Aborigines that it was the last major source of water until ...what? There's bugger all between here and the Queensland border. On the way back from the Gulf of Carpentaria, all except one died, possibly from inability to prepare bush tucker properly. The sole survivor, a man called John King, is said to have been so destroyed by his experience that he only lasted another decade, dying at the age of 33. The Burke and Wills story must be a puzzle to the people who've always lived here.
Holidays were good for keeping up 10,000 steps a day. Now I'm back at work and the idea of being on my feet and moving for 1 hour 45 minutes a day is very daunting - even if it doesn't seem a lot of time. I'm really quite shocked at how little time I normally spend moving around. Yesterday I managed 1,300 steps (though it was exceptionally low). The day before I walked across the Bridge to a function at the old Customs House and clocked up only 4500 steps which was massively disappointing. Today I walked to Berry Island (which is not actually an island) and back, so I'll make 12,000 before I go to bed tonight. This thing is either going to improve my health massively or cripple me. Not sure which it'll be yet.
Yesterday, as noted, was lazy. I slept a lot and read another Sjöwall and Wahlöö. This one is The Abominable Man and is about an ex-cop who goes on a killing spree - targeting his former superiors. The book is full of completely serious commentary on how the police 'normally' behave. Martin Beck gets badly injured at the end, so I'm going to have to start number 8 straight away to see how he recovers :)
I didn't take my camera today as I already have a large backlog of stuff to upload. But if I have to keep up this walking thing for 4 months, I'm sure to get back there. I need to go back to the project I had before of trying to track what happened to the local Aborigines after white settlement. The area I was in today was Wollstonecraft, named after Edward who had the first large land grant on the North Shore. He basically was given all the land from the Pacific Highway down to the harbour. Berry Island had such a huge concentration of middens (shellfish rubbish dumps) that they were quarried for lime! And somebody put a park bench in the middle of some rock engravings, to better enjoy the water views. One of the Council signposts says that the Cammeraigal were thought to have died out with a fellow called "Tarpot" (nothing to do with racism of course) in 1888, but they now say there are some present day survivors. Anyway I'm curious to find out what Wollstonecraft did with all that land. Alexander Berry was his business partner who married Edward's sister and their son David inherited the estate. So that's something to go on.
Yesterday, as noted, was lazy. I slept a lot and read another Sjöwall and Wahlöö. This one is The Abominable Man and is about an ex-cop who goes on a killing spree - targeting his former superiors. The book is full of completely serious commentary on how the police 'normally' behave. Martin Beck gets badly injured at the end, so I'm going to have to start number 8 straight away to see how he recovers :)
I didn't take my camera today as I already have a large backlog of stuff to upload. But if I have to keep up this walking thing for 4 months, I'm sure to get back there. I need to go back to the project I had before of trying to track what happened to the local Aborigines after white settlement. The area I was in today was Wollstonecraft, named after Edward who had the first large land grant on the North Shore. He basically was given all the land from the Pacific Highway down to the harbour. Berry Island had such a huge concentration of middens (shellfish rubbish dumps) that they were quarried for lime! And somebody put a park bench in the middle of some rock engravings, to better enjoy the water views. One of the Council signposts says that the Cammeraigal were thought to have died out with a fellow called "Tarpot" (nothing to do with racism of course) in 1888, but they now say there are some present day survivors. Anyway I'm curious to find out what Wollstonecraft did with all that land. Alexander Berry was his business partner who married Edward's sister and their son David inherited the estate. So that's something to go on.
22 May
Got up and checked out of the motel early this morning and rushed to the info centre to check on road closures. The road is open, but there's another obstacle which is that the major features of interest in Mutawintji - the Aboriginal art and corroboree ground - can only be visited with an authorized guide and they only go out there on Wednesday and Saturday (today is Friday). So I decided to hang around in BH for another day.
I drove a few km out of town to a place called the Living Desert - a sort of conservation park with a 'culture trail', an arboretum and a strange sculpture park on top of a hill. More spectacular landscapes!
That's a ranger hut on the left. Contactable in emergencies only please.
The Aboriginal version of the beach tent - with daytime temps in the 40s-50s during summer you need one of these out here. They're made from 'turpentine bush' and are evidently pretty sturdy. You pick a spot with a view so that you can see any animal (food) movement.
View of the shade houses from a different part of the track.
More story poles, made from red gum.
Rocks, offering shady spots.
Vegetation sticks to water courses.
Quarry - quartz for tools.
Look where I found all the animals! The ranger had put hay out for them.
I found a few flowers and quite a lot of birds in the arboretum.
The sculpture symposium is on a different hill. A bunch of sculptors - local and from Mexico, Georgia and Syria - came there to work on some big lumps of sandstone that had been put there by the organizers in the 1990s. There is something also about the avenue of sculptures pointing towards Bourke where Fred Hollows is buried. I found it mystifying. The Mexican one does have a hole through which you can look at the sunset. The Georgian made a horse's head. The symposium lasted for 6 weeks and most of them look somewhat unfinished. This one is by Badger Bates, a local Aboriginal leader - normally a painter/printmaker.
Nice tree on the way up.
At the bottom of the hill is a waterhole (or it once was anyway - at the moment it is bone dry). These carved circles are all over the place and are thought to be about 30,000 years old.
Clocked up about 15,000 steps. Back in the motel with sore feet and muscles, drinking a beer. I worked out that before this Challenge thing, I was averaging about 4,000 steps a day, so 10,000 is going to be a big jump.
Got up and checked out of the motel early this morning and rushed to the info centre to check on road closures. The road is open, but there's another obstacle which is that the major features of interest in Mutawintji - the Aboriginal art and corroboree ground - can only be visited with an authorized guide and they only go out there on Wednesday and Saturday (today is Friday). So I decided to hang around in BH for another day.
I drove a few km out of town to a place called the Living Desert - a sort of conservation park with a 'culture trail', an arboretum and a strange sculpture park on top of a hill. More spectacular landscapes!
That's a ranger hut on the left. Contactable in emergencies only please.
The Aboriginal version of the beach tent - with daytime temps in the 40s-50s during summer you need one of these out here. They're made from 'turpentine bush' and are evidently pretty sturdy. You pick a spot with a view so that you can see any animal (food) movement.
View of the shade houses from a different part of the track.
More story poles, made from red gum.
Rocks, offering shady spots.
Vegetation sticks to water courses.
Quarry - quartz for tools.
Look where I found all the animals! The ranger had put hay out for them.
I found a few flowers and quite a lot of birds in the arboretum.
The sculpture symposium is on a different hill. A bunch of sculptors - local and from Mexico, Georgia and Syria - came there to work on some big lumps of sandstone that had been put there by the organizers in the 1990s. There is something also about the avenue of sculptures pointing towards Bourke where Fred Hollows is buried. I found it mystifying. The Mexican one does have a hole through which you can look at the sunset. The Georgian made a horse's head. The symposium lasted for 6 weeks and most of them look somewhat unfinished. This one is by Badger Bates, a local Aboriginal leader - normally a painter/printmaker.
Nice tree on the way up.
At the bottom of the hill is a waterhole (or it once was anyway - at the moment it is bone dry). These carved circles are all over the place and are thought to be about 30,000 years old.
Clocked up about 15,000 steps. Back in the motel with sore feet and muscles, drinking a beer. I worked out that before this Challenge thing, I was averaging about 4,000 steps a day, so 10,000 is going to be a big jump.
21 May
Yesterday after lunch I went to the local art gallery where there was some good Aboriginal art (ranging from locals to stars like Clifford Possum Tjapaljtira and Emily Knangwarrye) and a small, but high quality collection of whitefella paintings (Nolan, Pro Hart, etc). The disappointing bit was finding out about the Wilcannia art scene that nobody mentioned when I was there at all. The "story posts" are done by a group of Wilcannia art students. They are a modern adaptation of an idea borrowed from elsewhere - the only Aboriginal people who traditionally do totem poles are in the Tiwi Islands off Darwin. These are in the car park outside the gallery. No photos allowed inside unfortunately - there is some beautiful stuff and the gallery is in an old store with stunning polished floorboards and staircases. Well worth a visit.
This sensitively placed item is by Guy de Main (I hope I've remembered his name correctly, can't find him on google) who teaches the above students at the TAFE.
I probably should've tried getting to Mutawintji this morning, but everyone had been so gloomy yesterday about the road being closed after yesterday's rain. So I went to Silverton instead. Near Silverton is the Daydream mine which is about the only place tourists can still go underground to see what it's like. The way in from the BH-Silverton road was dirt and open. It seemed as dry as a bone.
The underground tour was interesting, but nothing at all related to modern mining. The mine closed in about 1888, having been open for about 10 years. Everyone went to BH where the pickings were much greater. Miners' life expectancy was under 40. They died of lung disease, cirrhosis and infectious diseases, but nobody has any records any more. Mostly they didn't die from accidents - they were just mutilated so they couldn't work any more! At some stage the mineowners allowed just 10 wives on to the site - this turned out to be a great improvement as drunken brawling and rioting was reduced! Mostly the wives remained at Burra in South Australia where there had been the world's largest copper mine that had recently been mined out.
There were just five of us on this tour. When we got back to the surface there was a group of about 25 students from Iowa State University waiting to go down!
Above ground at Daydream.
The landscape around here would originally have had a lot more trees, but they were all chopped down for firewood and mine timbers.
The tea room at Daydream. Great scones!
Old mine workings on the road to Daydream-Silverton road.
More distant view of same.
Later I went to look at the Silverton cemetery, but only the rich and those well-respected enough to have a collection raised for them had headstones and the cemetery was run by somebody called "Bob the Finisher" who paid no attention to things like orderly rows and keeping records.
The most amazing thing about the cemetery, however, was the separate, fenced off area where some Aborigines are buried! I was quite mystified as both of the (marked) graves here were very recent. However, there was no information board to explain anything about this Aboriginal cemetery.
For the miners who died at Daydream, the funeral involved everybody walking into Silverton and back - a whole day expedition. They couldn't be buried near the mine, maybe because the ground is too rocky or, more likely, the mine owners didn't want newly arrived miners to be greeted by the sight of a vast cemetery!. At Silverton the cemetery is 47 acres. The miners' accommodation at Daydream comprised stone huts - the walls were about waist high, there was a fireplace in one corner and there wasn't room to lie down. This is because miners mostly slept in a sitting position in order to keep their airways clear. They would hook their arms over a rope strung across the hut so that they wouldn't fall over in their sleep. Two miners would share a hut. Since they worked 12 hour shifts only one would be "at home" at a time.
Yesterday after lunch I went to the local art gallery where there was some good Aboriginal art (ranging from locals to stars like Clifford Possum Tjapaljtira and Emily Knangwarrye) and a small, but high quality collection of whitefella paintings (Nolan, Pro Hart, etc). The disappointing bit was finding out about the Wilcannia art scene that nobody mentioned when I was there at all. The "story posts" are done by a group of Wilcannia art students. They are a modern adaptation of an idea borrowed from elsewhere - the only Aboriginal people who traditionally do totem poles are in the Tiwi Islands off Darwin. These are in the car park outside the gallery. No photos allowed inside unfortunately - there is some beautiful stuff and the gallery is in an old store with stunning polished floorboards and staircases. Well worth a visit.
This sensitively placed item is by Guy de Main (I hope I've remembered his name correctly, can't find him on google) who teaches the above students at the TAFE.
I probably should've tried getting to Mutawintji this morning, but everyone had been so gloomy yesterday about the road being closed after yesterday's rain. So I went to Silverton instead. Near Silverton is the Daydream mine which is about the only place tourists can still go underground to see what it's like. The way in from the BH-Silverton road was dirt and open. It seemed as dry as a bone.
The underground tour was interesting, but nothing at all related to modern mining. The mine closed in about 1888, having been open for about 10 years. Everyone went to BH where the pickings were much greater. Miners' life expectancy was under 40. They died of lung disease, cirrhosis and infectious diseases, but nobody has any records any more. Mostly they didn't die from accidents - they were just mutilated so they couldn't work any more! At some stage the mineowners allowed just 10 wives on to the site - this turned out to be a great improvement as drunken brawling and rioting was reduced! Mostly the wives remained at Burra in South Australia where there had been the world's largest copper mine that had recently been mined out.
There were just five of us on this tour. When we got back to the surface there was a group of about 25 students from Iowa State University waiting to go down!
Above ground at Daydream.
The landscape around here would originally have had a lot more trees, but they were all chopped down for firewood and mine timbers.
The tea room at Daydream. Great scones!
Old mine workings on the road to Daydream-Silverton road.
More distant view of same.
Later I went to look at the Silverton cemetery, but only the rich and those well-respected enough to have a collection raised for them had headstones and the cemetery was run by somebody called "Bob the Finisher" who paid no attention to things like orderly rows and keeping records.
The most amazing thing about the cemetery, however, was the separate, fenced off area where some Aborigines are buried! I was quite mystified as both of the (marked) graves here were very recent. However, there was no information board to explain anything about this Aboriginal cemetery.
For the miners who died at Daydream, the funeral involved everybody walking into Silverton and back - a whole day expedition. They couldn't be buried near the mine, maybe because the ground is too rocky or, more likely, the mine owners didn't want newly arrived miners to be greeted by the sight of a vast cemetery!. At Silverton the cemetery is 47 acres. The miners' accommodation at Daydream comprised stone huts - the walls were about waist high, there was a fireplace in one corner and there wasn't room to lie down. This is because miners mostly slept in a sitting position in order to keep their airways clear. They would hook their arms over a rope strung across the hut so that they wouldn't fall over in their sleep. Two miners would share a hut. Since they worked 12 hour shifts only one would be "at home" at a time.
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines - not a bad way to start the new year's reading. Hard to tell whether it is fiction disguised as travelogue or the other way around. Anyway, apart from his own, the names are all fictitious and the characters are pretty amazing - more like what you meet in Tall Tales of The Outback than in real life. My main problem with this was the difficulty of telling whether the stuff about 'songlines' had any basis in fact or if it was all 'sung into existence' by Chatwin. In the end, I decided to treat it as a work of fiction and then it became very enjoyable.
The first part is quite funny and then all of a sudden he starts philosophizing about nomads and the nature of Man (which in this case, though unintentionally, refers very much to the gender rather than to the species as a whole). This section reminds one rather too much of the Orientalist scholar - of which there's a great tradition among the English upper classes - and yet, although he's obviously very well read in the relevant literature, it isn't a treatise, just a series of notes. The ideas are interesting, but undeveloped. I was much happier when he got back to describing his interactions with the locals.
The first part is quite funny and then all of a sudden he starts philosophizing about nomads and the nature of Man (which in this case, though unintentionally, refers very much to the gender rather than to the species as a whole). This section reminds one rather too much of the Orientalist scholar - of which there's a great tradition among the English upper classes - and yet, although he's obviously very well read in the relevant literature, it isn't a treatise, just a series of notes. The ideas are interesting, but undeveloped. I was much happier when he got back to describing his interactions with the locals.
Enough is enough: a history of the Pilbara mob, by Noel Olive (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2007)
A colleague of mine was giving out autographed copies of this book by his father to people he thought might be interested. The author-father learned about the Pilbara through his work as a lawyer on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in the late 1980s and spent some time in the 1990s working as "co-ordinator" for one of the Aboriginal communities in the area.
The Pilbara is 1600 km north of Perth. The first white settlers arrived to set up pastoral ventures in 1863 and the history from then on is pretty shocking. A difference from the Israeli case in the last book that I read, is that at first the colonists made no attempt to separate the indigenous population from their land. In fact they needed the population to work the land. The Aborigines stayed on, in slave-like conditions, because the work enabled them to stay in contact with their land. However, if they happened to get fed up enough to try to leave, they would be brought back in chains.
In 1946 they struck. Two Aboriginal elders and a white man collaborated in organizing the strike (they planned it in great secrecy over a four year period!) and the white man helped striking workers to earn a living from mining. This in turn enabled them to buy some pastoral properties in the 1950s and, by providing some choice in the means of living, forced the owners to start paying wages.
The mining boom started in the 1960s and separation of the people from their land began in earnest as the Pilbara became well and truly globalized. The process was interrupted temporarily by the High Court's Mabo decision in 1992, followed by Wik in 1996. The first of these over-turned the concept of terra nullius, the second provided opportunity for shared title and shared usage to be established. The state and federal legislatures moved fairly quickly to nullify any implication that might lead to Aboriginal self-determination. Nowadays, as always, living means surviving.
The style of the book is a bit annoying. It's one of those history as a series of facts books and, perhaps because Olive is a lawyer, it is a book of advocacy rather than analysis. The facts hit you in more or less chronological sequence, but without much apparent rationale (other than moral outrage that is). The title is also wrong (and has been changed in subsequent editions) because it is not in fact a history of the Pilbara Mob ('Mob' in this context means Aborigines). Olive reproduces a little material from interviews he did and describes a tiny bit of local culture, but it is actually a story of white settlement in the region.
This passage, quoted from another book,* made me want to go there:
(I don't know what this biological event was, but I do know that people who are astrobiologists, interested in the origins of life, go up there to dig about.)
* The Voyage of the Great Southern Ark by Reg Morrison (according to Olive) or Maggie Red Morrison or Maggie and Reg Morrison or Reg and Maggie Morrison (according to Google). I need to get hold of a copy to find out who is the true author!!!
ETA: National Library catalogue says Reg and Maggie.
A colleague of mine was giving out autographed copies of this book by his father to people he thought might be interested. The author-father learned about the Pilbara through his work as a lawyer on the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in the late 1980s and spent some time in the 1990s working as "co-ordinator" for one of the Aboriginal communities in the area.
The Pilbara is 1600 km north of Perth. The first white settlers arrived to set up pastoral ventures in 1863 and the history from then on is pretty shocking. A difference from the Israeli case in the last book that I read, is that at first the colonists made no attempt to separate the indigenous population from their land. In fact they needed the population to work the land. The Aborigines stayed on, in slave-like conditions, because the work enabled them to stay in contact with their land. However, if they happened to get fed up enough to try to leave, they would be brought back in chains.
In 1946 they struck. Two Aboriginal elders and a white man collaborated in organizing the strike (they planned it in great secrecy over a four year period!) and the white man helped striking workers to earn a living from mining. This in turn enabled them to buy some pastoral properties in the 1950s and, by providing some choice in the means of living, forced the owners to start paying wages.
The mining boom started in the 1960s and separation of the people from their land began in earnest as the Pilbara became well and truly globalized. The process was interrupted temporarily by the High Court's Mabo decision in 1992, followed by Wik in 1996. The first of these over-turned the concept of terra nullius, the second provided opportunity for shared title and shared usage to be established. The state and federal legislatures moved fairly quickly to nullify any implication that might lead to Aboriginal self-determination. Nowadays, as always, living means surviving.
The style of the book is a bit annoying. It's one of those history as a series of facts books and, perhaps because Olive is a lawyer, it is a book of advocacy rather than analysis. The facts hit you in more or less chronological sequence, but without much apparent rationale (other than moral outrage that is). The title is also wrong (and has been changed in subsequent editions) because it is not in fact a history of the Pilbara Mob ('Mob' in this context means Aborigines). Olive reproduces a little material from interviews he did and describes a tiny bit of local culture, but it is actually a story of white settlement in the region.
This passage, quoted from another book,* made me want to go there:
Western Australia's Hamersley Range sprawls across the ancient Pilbara plateau like a tribal scar, raised and livid. Rivers have torn open its flanks and iron-rich gravel spills like dried blood over the plains. Dusted with green-gold spinifex and sprinkled with white-stemmed eucalypts, the Hamersleys display colour with a savagery that borders on the surreal. It is a landscape unlike any other on Earth.
A walk into one of the winding gorges does nothing to dispel the feeling of unreality. Smooth pavements and sheer walls, composed of neat rectangular ironstone blocks, create the illusion of a rusting city. Water slides across terraces and chatters down stone steps into deep, still pools, shaded by giant fig trees and native pines, and birdsong echoes eerily. Geologically, this walk represents a step backward in time of almost 2.5 billion years. It is a journey that leads to the heart of a biological event that reworked the face of the Earth and changed the course of its history.
(I don't know what this biological event was, but I do know that people who are astrobiologists, interested in the origins of life, go up there to dig about.)
* The Voyage of the Great Southern Ark by Reg Morrison (according to Olive) or Maggie Red Morrison or Maggie and Reg Morrison or Reg and Maggie Morrison (according to Google). I need to get hold of a copy to find out who is the true author!!!
ETA: National Library catalogue says Reg and Maggie.
Yesterday we had a Welcome to Country ceremony, acknowledging the fact that Indigenous people never gave up their land or their rights to occupancy of it.
Today we did the Sorry Business. The Prime Minister apologized without reservation for the grief and pain caused by two centuries of legislation in colonial, state and federal parliaments. The hankies were out in the public gallery, full of Stolen Generations. Instead of asking all those in favour to say 'aye' the Speaker asked everyone in favour to stand in support of the motion. Everyone did. Nobody could escape being seen to vote for the motion. Brilliant.
Tomorrow we have to start the Healing Business or as Kev calls it the Unfinished Business. We will have a kind of War Cabinet on this one issue of closing the gap between indigenous and immigrant Australians. Brendan Nelson, the Opposition Leader, had to agree to it - I think his personal instincts would be for it, but the rest of his party are going to give him a lot of trouble. I wouldn't be in his shoes for anything on earth, and I don't think he will last very long as leader (except that the only alternative is Malcolm Turnbull who won't support the racists either). Judging by Rudd's speech two things are top of his agenda: housing and pre-school. The first of these drew applause from the masses outside.
The only thing missing was the question of compensation. Rudd didn't mention it, but Nelson did, in order to reject it. That was unfortunate, because as Mick Dodson said there is still a job of persuasion to be done if the Stolen Generations are not to have to spend decades plugging through the courts (some of these cases have been going for years already and some, in the absence of acknowledgement that the policy was wrong, have been lost). The fact that Rudd didn't mention it suggests that, for him, this question is still open.
I was wrong yesterday. Old Silver was there too. Every Labor and Liberal PM since 1972 except one.
The Federation Mall outside was lined with beautiful banners incorporating the indigenous flag. So much more attractive than the stupid official flag. I was sitting there watching all this and thinking that indigenous culture is really becoming a huge part of mainstream Australian culture - one of the few things that really distinguishes us from other predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon cultures. It's not just the Welcome to Country ceremonies that happen everywhere these days, or the fact that every major event opens with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners, but the importance of Aboriginal arts. Painting especially, which most people recognize as the most important modern art we have and is also borrowed heavily in other national 'branding' - the painting of Qantas aircraft, for example - but also dance groups like Bangarra, popular musicians and even so-called 'serious' music which makes use of didgeridoo and clapsticks alongside classical European instruments. The fact that terms like 'sorry business' have become part of everyday language.
Today we did the Sorry Business. The Prime Minister apologized without reservation for the grief and pain caused by two centuries of legislation in colonial, state and federal parliaments. The hankies were out in the public gallery, full of Stolen Generations. Instead of asking all those in favour to say 'aye' the Speaker asked everyone in favour to stand in support of the motion. Everyone did. Nobody could escape being seen to vote for the motion. Brilliant.
Tomorrow we have to start the Healing Business or as Kev calls it the Unfinished Business. We will have a kind of War Cabinet on this one issue of closing the gap between indigenous and immigrant Australians. Brendan Nelson, the Opposition Leader, had to agree to it - I think his personal instincts would be for it, but the rest of his party are going to give him a lot of trouble. I wouldn't be in his shoes for anything on earth, and I don't think he will last very long as leader (except that the only alternative is Malcolm Turnbull who won't support the racists either). Judging by Rudd's speech two things are top of his agenda: housing and pre-school. The first of these drew applause from the masses outside.
The only thing missing was the question of compensation. Rudd didn't mention it, but Nelson did, in order to reject it. That was unfortunate, because as Mick Dodson said there is still a job of persuasion to be done if the Stolen Generations are not to have to spend decades plugging through the courts (some of these cases have been going for years already and some, in the absence of acknowledgement that the policy was wrong, have been lost). The fact that Rudd didn't mention it suggests that, for him, this question is still open.
I was wrong yesterday. Old Silver was there too. Every Labor and Liberal PM since 1972 except one.
The Federation Mall outside was lined with beautiful banners incorporating the indigenous flag. So much more attractive than the stupid official flag. I was sitting there watching all this and thinking that indigenous culture is really becoming a huge part of mainstream Australian culture - one of the few things that really distinguishes us from other predominantly white, Anglo-Saxon cultures. It's not just the Welcome to Country ceremonies that happen everywhere these days, or the fact that every major event opens with an acknowledgement of the traditional owners, but the importance of Aboriginal arts. Painting especially, which most people recognize as the most important modern art we have and is also borrowed heavily in other national 'branding' - the painting of Qantas aircraft, for example - but also dance groups like Bangarra, popular musicians and even so-called 'serious' music which makes use of didgeridoo and clapsticks alongside classical European instruments. The fact that terms like 'sorry business' have become part of everyday language.
Day 16:
The little bridge across the Murray at Tooleybuc.
Tooleybuc main street.
A little way out of town is another one of those 'boundary marker' trees. Must have been done at least a few hundred years ago.
Amazingly the tree is still alive, although this galah was trying to kill it. It had plucked off a small twig of green leaves and was using its foot to bash the twig on the branch. Tenderizing it? Trying to shake something off it? Just being a galah (Australian synonym for 'silly')?
I sped through Balranald on my way over, so this time I stopped to have a look around. The river looks kinda sick here - blue-green algae? Otherwise it has a nice park on the banks of the Murrumbidgee with lots of birds. Also an interesting looking thrift shop, but I couldn't stop to look since I really needed to get further than Hay today. I didn't want another 7 hour drive tomorrow.
At Hay my target was the museum of the Internment Camp. It is housed in two railway carriages at the beautifully restored, but defunct, railway station. This camp was set up during WW2 to house German and Austrian Jewish refugees who had originally fled to England, but the British classified them as enemy aliens and packed them off to the colonies in a ship called the Dunera. These urban sophisticates were dumped in a barbed wire enclosure in the middle of a severe drought (the predominant memory is of dust) in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There are several beautiful drawings of camp life done by one of the internees, Emil Wittenberg, of which this photo is the best my pathetic skills could achieve (OK I need to carry a tripod, but it's inconvenient).
According to the local volunteers who set up this little museum, townspeople were ordered to stay indoors whenever the dangerous enemies were driven through town on their way to work - logging, vegetable gardens and such. Nevertheless, there was considerable fraternization. The camp also contained Italian and Japanese - mostly pre-war residents of Australia and many of the Italians were actually Australian citizens (although Japanese were not then allowed to become citizens on account of the White Australia Policy). The local women apparently were especially interested in the Italians. So a lot of the stuff in the museum consists of gifts the internees made for local people who aided them in one way or another. Some of the Jews had been concert musicians, so they gradually acquired or manufactured themselves a few instruments and put on shows, including a musical called "Hay Fever" :) The Germans were eventually released in 1943 and many of them actually remained in Australia for the rest of their lives and made massive contributions to our intellectual and cultural life. The Japanese, however, were all sent to Japan after the war - whether or not they'd ever even been there before. Also they were more isolated from the local community, so there's not much left from their stay.
Camp money, made by the internees. The barbed wire pattern around the edge says "we are here because we are here because..." They were not allowed to have real money in case they escaped.
Some of the things they made as gifts for locals.
I also visited the Hay Gaol, now the official town museum, but really only a junk pile. Before it was a museum and after it was a gaol, it was also a maternity hospital and an institution for refractory girls. The only interesting thing I found there was a photo of Colonel Eduardo Simone, the only person who managed to escape from the Internment Camp. He walked 4-500 km to Melbourne and got a job there before being captured again 6 months later. In the 1970s he came back and tried to repeat his trip to Melbourne (when the photo was taken).
Out of Hay I took the Mid-Western Highway to the northeast. A few km out of town I stumbled on a sign saying 'Sturt's marked tree', so I stopped to have a look. The plaque says that these marks were made in the tree by Charles Sturt and his crew, the first Europeans ever to visit this part of the country, in 1829, i.e., 178 years ago!
The tree must be twice as old as that. The cut section is where the dark shadow is on the right of the trunk.
The next section of the road is extraordinary. Once you get away from the river there are hardly any trees at all - probably mostly cleared for pasture. It is, if possible, even flatter and wider than any of the places I've travelled through so far. This doesn't change until the village of Goolgowi, at the crossroads of two major highways, and there's more flatness after that. I thought about stopping at West Wyalong, but it looked pretty flat and boring, so I ploughed on to Grenfell which, at least, is not flat. Grenfell is very proud of its famous citizens who include Henry Lawson (poet), Stan McCabe (cricketer), Jan Lehane (tennis player) and Ben Hall (bushranger). There is a Henry Lawson festival every June (T-shirts on sale) and the main street is hung with coloured lights - maybe that was for Yule in July. There are no less than 4 pubs in the main street, but only one of them has food on Tuesdays! The Chinese restaurant was also closed.
The little bridge across the Murray at Tooleybuc.
Tooleybuc main street.
A little way out of town is another one of those 'boundary marker' trees. Must have been done at least a few hundred years ago.
Amazingly the tree is still alive, although this galah was trying to kill it. It had plucked off a small twig of green leaves and was using its foot to bash the twig on the branch. Tenderizing it? Trying to shake something off it? Just being a galah (Australian synonym for 'silly')?
I sped through Balranald on my way over, so this time I stopped to have a look around. The river looks kinda sick here - blue-green algae? Otherwise it has a nice park on the banks of the Murrumbidgee with lots of birds. Also an interesting looking thrift shop, but I couldn't stop to look since I really needed to get further than Hay today. I didn't want another 7 hour drive tomorrow.
At Hay my target was the museum of the Internment Camp. It is housed in two railway carriages at the beautifully restored, but defunct, railway station. This camp was set up during WW2 to house German and Austrian Jewish refugees who had originally fled to England, but the British classified them as enemy aliens and packed them off to the colonies in a ship called the Dunera. These urban sophisticates were dumped in a barbed wire enclosure in the middle of a severe drought (the predominant memory is of dust) in the middle of absolutely nowhere. There are several beautiful drawings of camp life done by one of the internees, Emil Wittenberg, of which this photo is the best my pathetic skills could achieve (OK I need to carry a tripod, but it's inconvenient).
According to the local volunteers who set up this little museum, townspeople were ordered to stay indoors whenever the dangerous enemies were driven through town on their way to work - logging, vegetable gardens and such. Nevertheless, there was considerable fraternization. The camp also contained Italian and Japanese - mostly pre-war residents of Australia and many of the Italians were actually Australian citizens (although Japanese were not then allowed to become citizens on account of the White Australia Policy). The local women apparently were especially interested in the Italians. So a lot of the stuff in the museum consists of gifts the internees made for local people who aided them in one way or another. Some of the Jews had been concert musicians, so they gradually acquired or manufactured themselves a few instruments and put on shows, including a musical called "Hay Fever" :) The Germans were eventually released in 1943 and many of them actually remained in Australia for the rest of their lives and made massive contributions to our intellectual and cultural life. The Japanese, however, were all sent to Japan after the war - whether or not they'd ever even been there before. Also they were more isolated from the local community, so there's not much left from their stay.
Camp money, made by the internees. The barbed wire pattern around the edge says "we are here because we are here because..." They were not allowed to have real money in case they escaped.
Some of the things they made as gifts for locals.
I also visited the Hay Gaol, now the official town museum, but really only a junk pile. Before it was a museum and after it was a gaol, it was also a maternity hospital and an institution for refractory girls. The only interesting thing I found there was a photo of Colonel Eduardo Simone, the only person who managed to escape from the Internment Camp. He walked 4-500 km to Melbourne and got a job there before being captured again 6 months later. In the 1970s he came back and tried to repeat his trip to Melbourne (when the photo was taken).
Out of Hay I took the Mid-Western Highway to the northeast. A few km out of town I stumbled on a sign saying 'Sturt's marked tree', so I stopped to have a look. The plaque says that these marks were made in the tree by Charles Sturt and his crew, the first Europeans ever to visit this part of the country, in 1829, i.e., 178 years ago!
The tree must be twice as old as that. The cut section is where the dark shadow is on the right of the trunk.
The next section of the road is extraordinary. Once you get away from the river there are hardly any trees at all - probably mostly cleared for pasture. It is, if possible, even flatter and wider than any of the places I've travelled through so far. This doesn't change until the village of Goolgowi, at the crossroads of two major highways, and there's more flatness after that. I thought about stopping at West Wyalong, but it looked pretty flat and boring, so I ploughed on to Grenfell which, at least, is not flat. Grenfell is very proud of its famous citizens who include Henry Lawson (poet), Stan McCabe (cricketer), Jan Lehane (tennis player) and Ben Hall (bushranger). There is a Henry Lawson festival every June (T-shirts on sale) and the main street is hung with coloured lights - maybe that was for Yule in July. There are no less than 4 pubs in the main street, but only one of them has food on Tuesdays! The Chinese restaurant was also closed.
Day 3: I had to hang around the Park centre to wait for the ranger in order to book myself into the former shearers' quarters for the night. The motel was booked out with a party of rural doctors doing a refresher course. The ranger is only there from 11.30 to 12.00 every day. As I didn't know the shearers' quarters existed before I arrived - the Park website only says that they were burned down in 2003 - I hadn't thought to book in advance. It's a good deal cheaper to stay there than at the motel, but you have to bring everything with you (luckily I'd thought of packing my sleeping bag in case I had to sleep in the car one night). The ranger's name is Colin and he's very friendly. He starts a log fire in the kitchen block every day, which is fantastic when it's nearly zero out of doors at night.
So to pass the morning I went on the 'foreshore track' which takes in part of the western side of the lake, sand dunes and grasslands. At the beginning of the track there's a sign saying 'Please do not move any stones as they are nearly all artefacts'. There aren't any stones on the track, only on the claypans which were apparently ateliers - hard flat surfaces where people sat down to make their stone tools. I walked very carefully on to one of them to see what I could find:
Probably these are all leftovers, since I don't imagine people made tools and then just left them there. The information centre had a display of much more elegant looking scrapers, blades and a hammer stone. There were also some sharp pointed tools for making holes in skins. As an aside, I find it interesting that Aborigines are nearly always depicted naked, but people were living here in the last ice age and even now that it's warmer, it is still bloody cold in winter. Materials like skins and fabric don't last, so there's no evidence around, but the people surely didn't go around naked all the time.
Milling stones.
The kangaroos started popping up almost as soon as I began walking. Here we are still in sight of the Park centre. They are very wary animals and always stand to attention like this when you're around. As soon as you take a step towards them, they hop off. This one is a Western Grey, although she looks red... apparently you can tell by the white markings on the ears
Some pretty flowers along the way.
Looking back towards the Park buildings and across the lake.
Where the clay meets the sand dunes the vegetation changes dramatically. It's more like walking through parkland. The straight trees are the cypress pine (Callitris) that was used for building material.
Callitris alba.
( Kangaroos in their natural habitat under the cut )
If I hadn't been anxious about my rendezvous with Colin, I'd have just sat down out there and let them all hop around me. There were lots of beautiful birds too that I couldn't get anywhere near. Next time I'll take a camp chair and a book and see what happens.
So to pass the morning I went on the 'foreshore track' which takes in part of the western side of the lake, sand dunes and grasslands. At the beginning of the track there's a sign saying 'Please do not move any stones as they are nearly all artefacts'. There aren't any stones on the track, only on the claypans which were apparently ateliers - hard flat surfaces where people sat down to make their stone tools. I walked very carefully on to one of them to see what I could find:
Probably these are all leftovers, since I don't imagine people made tools and then just left them there. The information centre had a display of much more elegant looking scrapers, blades and a hammer stone. There were also some sharp pointed tools for making holes in skins. As an aside, I find it interesting that Aborigines are nearly always depicted naked, but people were living here in the last ice age and even now that it's warmer, it is still bloody cold in winter. Materials like skins and fabric don't last, so there's no evidence around, but the people surely didn't go around naked all the time.
Milling stones.
The kangaroos started popping up almost as soon as I began walking. Here we are still in sight of the Park centre. They are very wary animals and always stand to attention like this when you're around. As soon as you take a step towards them, they hop off. This one is a Western Grey, although she looks red... apparently you can tell by the white markings on the ears
Some pretty flowers along the way.
Looking back towards the Park buildings and across the lake.
Where the clay meets the sand dunes the vegetation changes dramatically. It's more like walking through parkland. The straight trees are the cypress pine (Callitris) that was used for building material.
Callitris alba.
( Kangaroos in their natural habitat under the cut )
If I hadn't been anxious about my rendezvous with Colin, I'd have just sat down out there and let them all hop around me. There were lots of beautiful birds too that I couldn't get anywhere near. Next time I'll take a camp chair and a book and see what happens.
Day 1: Despite setting out late, I got as far as Hay, 760 km from Sydney.
Day 2: Drove to Mungo via Balranald. 29 km north of Balranald there is a place called Penarie marked on the map. It has a pub, the Homebush Hotel, and nothing else! It was north of here that I passed a wedge-tailed eagle sitting on a roadside post. At 58 km you turn left onto a dirt road. It started to rain, which made me nervous as the roads in Mungo Park are closed in wet weather. Luckily it was just a shower and, although the weather was bitterly cold, there was no more rain. The landscape is unbelievably flat. The sky seems to go on forever and the horizon is at least 10 km away. You can see the curvature of the earth.
The next thing that boggles the mind is the age of everything. The Lake Mungo area has had human habitation for at least 50,000 years. There are artefacts that go back this far and human remains with a consensus date of 40,000 years, including evidence of ritual cremation at that date.
I started with the "Visitor Information Centre" at the Park. It has displays that would be very interesting except for the almost complete absence of information. They have made a plastic model of the cow-sized wombat. There was also a giant kangaroo and a giant emu. These megafauna cohabited for a long time with humans and it is thought that they were extinguished by hunting around 15,000 years ago (I read this before I went; there isn't any information at the "information" centre).
Giant wombat bones.
Jaw of another extinct animal found at Mungo (commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger because the last living ones were in Tasmania - I think we humans killed them off circa 1930). Tasmanian Devils have also been found at Mungo (not yet extinct in Tasmania, but seriously threatened by an infectious facial cancer).
There are some very fine stone tools in the so-called information centre as well, but no dates. The only stone found in the area is not very strong, so the tools wore out quickly. After white people arrived, the locals used glass instead.
The footprints have been covered over while what everyone out there calls the 3 TGs (tribal groups) negotiate over what to do about them. The manager of Mungo Lodge told me that the politics are vicious and rarely about matters of principle - at present the 3 TGs have walked out on the Parks management over some personality issue. Meanwhile the only information available on the archaeological evidence of human habitation is to be found in academic papers, while the information at the Park (and on the websites) concentrates on whitefella history, i.e., the approximately 120 years during which it was a sheep station. Here today, gone tomorrow - and who really cares? The history of sheep in this country can be found in a thousand places.
Day 2: Drove to Mungo via Balranald. 29 km north of Balranald there is a place called Penarie marked on the map. It has a pub, the Homebush Hotel, and nothing else! It was north of here that I passed a wedge-tailed eagle sitting on a roadside post. At 58 km you turn left onto a dirt road. It started to rain, which made me nervous as the roads in Mungo Park are closed in wet weather. Luckily it was just a shower and, although the weather was bitterly cold, there was no more rain. The landscape is unbelievably flat. The sky seems to go on forever and the horizon is at least 10 km away. You can see the curvature of the earth.
The next thing that boggles the mind is the age of everything. The Lake Mungo area has had human habitation for at least 50,000 years. There are artefacts that go back this far and human remains with a consensus date of 40,000 years, including evidence of ritual cremation at that date.
I started with the "Visitor Information Centre" at the Park. It has displays that would be very interesting except for the almost complete absence of information. They have made a plastic model of the cow-sized wombat. There was also a giant kangaroo and a giant emu. These megafauna cohabited for a long time with humans and it is thought that they were extinguished by hunting around 15,000 years ago (I read this before I went; there isn't any information at the "information" centre).
Giant wombat bones.
Jaw of another extinct animal found at Mungo (commonly known as the Tasmanian Tiger because the last living ones were in Tasmania - I think we humans killed them off circa 1930). Tasmanian Devils have also been found at Mungo (not yet extinct in Tasmania, but seriously threatened by an infectious facial cancer).
There are some very fine stone tools in the so-called information centre as well, but no dates. The only stone found in the area is not very strong, so the tools wore out quickly. After white people arrived, the locals used glass instead.
The footprints have been covered over while what everyone out there calls the 3 TGs (tribal groups) negotiate over what to do about them. The manager of Mungo Lodge told me that the politics are vicious and rarely about matters of principle - at present the 3 TGs have walked out on the Parks management over some personality issue. Meanwhile the only information available on the archaeological evidence of human habitation is to be found in academic papers, while the information at the Park (and on the websites) concentrates on whitefella history, i.e., the approximately 120 years during which it was a sheep station. Here today, gone tomorrow - and who really cares? The history of sheep in this country can be found in a thousand places.
I've been studying like mad. Today I found these tracks - 18-20,000 years old - that have been uncovered by erosion in the last few years (> 4 years ago). The elders are trying to decide what to do with them. I personally favour the idea of a building with a glass floor. The site is currently closed to the public, but anyway the imagination is already boggling. The tracks lead straight into the fossilized sand dunes and they are trying to decide whether to uncover more - in the hope of finding out where these people were going and what lies at the end of their track. Currently there are 457 footprints exposed. They were spotted in 2003 by one of the locals. She took two more years to decide to inform the archaeologist. Now they think there is a hunting party - with one of the men running at about 20 km/h - and a family group of an adult and several children ranging from 6-9 years in age. There is also a one-legged man who appears not even to be using a stick to get along - quite a feat when you're going through mud! One person had feet 30 cm (1 foot) long, so he was probably pretty tall. I do hope the elders will find a way to share them with the immigrant population.
An aspect of Nimbin that I found fascinating is that Aborigines seem to be well integrated there ('seem to be' is the operative term here). In other NSW country towns they live on the fringe and are looked upon as dangerous by the white population. In Nimbin there is a big Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the middle of town, right next to this sign erected by the Nimbin Chamber of Commerce. I'm sure there is no other town in the country that has a map quite like this one.
( Bundjalung Nimbin behind the cut )
I need to go back and look more closely. I suspect that Aborigines and hippies can get on because both believe in communal ownership.
Outside the town are the Nimbin Rocks, supposedly a sacred site of the Bundjalung people.
I'm sorry I could only spend a couple of hours there. The Nimbin people claim that they are persecuted on account of their 'deliberate community' attitude. I'm really quite curious to see how deep it goes. I sat in one of the cafes for brunch and coffee and watched the other tourists. I could see quite a few balking at the poverty, the less than scrubbed surfaces, the slightly dilapidated appearance of everything. They'd look inside and walk away again. I suspect it's the failure to keep up with the modern consumer culture that upsets people more than the communitarianism.
( Bundjalung Nimbin behind the cut )
I need to go back and look more closely. I suspect that Aborigines and hippies can get on because both believe in communal ownership.
Outside the town are the Nimbin Rocks, supposedly a sacred site of the Bundjalung people.
I'm sorry I could only spend a couple of hours there. The Nimbin people claim that they are persecuted on account of their 'deliberate community' attitude. I'm really quite curious to see how deep it goes. I sat in one of the cafes for brunch and coffee and watched the other tourists. I could see quite a few balking at the poverty, the less than scrubbed surfaces, the slightly dilapidated appearance of everything. They'd look inside and walk away again. I suspect it's the failure to keep up with the modern consumer culture that upsets people more than the communitarianism.
Last night after dinner A. thought she could take a movie, so we walked a bit further down the road to the cinema and saw Ten Canoes. The movie was directed by Rolf de Heer, who also made The Tracker (which, incidentally I saw on the same Adelaide weekend back in 2002 as Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) the first film made in Inuktitut language), and David Gulpilil (who was also in The Tracker and Rabbit-proof Fence). It is set in the Arafura Swamp, next door to Gulpilil's ancestral lands and, apart from Gulpilil and his son Jamie, stars entirely non-professionals speaking in their own language (with sub-titles). Gulpilil relates the story in English. The story is set before European settlement, in sepia, and tells another story about a thousand years before that, in colour. It's a moral tale about what happens to a young man who covets the wife of another. But you don't get the punch line until you've meandered about through all sorts of sub-plots told in a very humorous way, even when you're looking at tragedy. Lots of beautiful, naked bodies and some great hair styles. Oh! and also many interesting ethnographic details. I loved it (and A, under the influence of slightly too much wine, slept through half of it). Gulpilil says at the end: "That's my story - maybe not as good as your story, but a good story nevertheless".
Apparently, because they had to film just after the wet so that the magpie geese would still be around, they were very worried about crocodiles. Yesterday in nearby Maningrida, an 8 year-old girl was taken by one. She was out on a fishing expedition with her family and went to get some water from the river.
Apparently, because they had to film just after the wet so that the magpie geese would still be around, they were very worried about crocodiles. Yesterday in nearby Maningrida, an 8 year-old girl was taken by one. She was out on a fishing expedition with her family and went to get some water from the river.
I was looking again at the photos I posted from Melbourne. The thing that just struck me about the Aboriginal paintings is that of the seven I just randomly picked because I liked them, three were by women and another was by a big group of people that included both men and women. The thing that is interesting about this is that, unlike Western art, in which women have had to fight for recognition. For example, Margaret Preston, who was actually the first truly modernist painter in Australia and not only that, but she didn't simply copy European styles, she was the first white Australian painter (and until very recently the only one) to borrow extensively from Aboriginal ideas</a> of painting. During most of her lifetime, if not all of it, however, she was dismissed in the mainstream art world as a 'decorative' painter. It is really only now that she is getting due recognition for the innovative work that she did - there is a major retrospective of her art at the Art Gallery of NSW at this moment (until 23 October).
Within the Aboriginal art community, however, women have always played a prominent role. I think the reason is that in Aboriginal society art is not separated from normal life. There's no elitism about art. Mostly it is done by elderly people because they are the ones who know the stories that are always an integral part of the painting. In the past, doing art was a form of teaching and communicating. So as younger people learned about the culture, they inevitably picked it up in a highly visual way. The advent of acrylic paint and canvas, and the production of art as a commodity, has inevitably changed things - in particular it has produced new interpretations of old stories and it has separated the merely ordinary from the outstanding. But the point is that, at least in the areas where tradition remains strong, art hasn't been seized by men as an expression of their relative cultural importance. Commodification plays a role here too no doubt. A western art buyer, who doesn't know who did the painting, can't tell if it's a 'feminine' painting or not. Especially since Aborigines don't sign their paintings. When the movement started, people bought everything and there was actually quite a big struggle to get recognition for Aborigines of their intellectual property. It was like: 'Oh, that's a great painting, I'll have it. Huh? Someone called Emily painted it? You mean it's about women's business, well whaddya know!?'
Actually a lot of the pre-commodification art is graffiti. The technique of blowing a mouthful of paint over your hand on the rock face, or drawing a map in the sand as part of teaching the story to others, were essentially impermanent forms of art that were painted over or blown away by the wind. I used to think that the lack of variation in that kind of painting (at least within the territory of the relevant group) was a sign of a closed and fairly stagnant, or at least stable, society. But looking at the graffiti around Melbourne I'm not so sure. Have to think about that.
Within the Aboriginal art community, however, women have always played a prominent role. I think the reason is that in Aboriginal society art is not separated from normal life. There's no elitism about art. Mostly it is done by elderly people because they are the ones who know the stories that are always an integral part of the painting. In the past, doing art was a form of teaching and communicating. So as younger people learned about the culture, they inevitably picked it up in a highly visual way. The advent of acrylic paint and canvas, and the production of art as a commodity, has inevitably changed things - in particular it has produced new interpretations of old stories and it has separated the merely ordinary from the outstanding. But the point is that, at least in the areas where tradition remains strong, art hasn't been seized by men as an expression of their relative cultural importance. Commodification plays a role here too no doubt. A western art buyer, who doesn't know who did the painting, can't tell if it's a 'feminine' painting or not. Especially since Aborigines don't sign their paintings. When the movement started, people bought everything and there was actually quite a big struggle to get recognition for Aborigines of their intellectual property. It was like: 'Oh, that's a great painting, I'll have it. Huh? Someone called Emily painted it? You mean it's about women's business, well whaddya know!?'
Actually a lot of the pre-commodification art is graffiti. The technique of blowing a mouthful of paint over your hand on the rock face, or drawing a map in the sand as part of teaching the story to others, were essentially impermanent forms of art that were painted over or blown away by the wind. I used to think that the lack of variation in that kind of painting (at least within the territory of the relevant group) was a sign of a closed and fairly stagnant, or at least stable, society. But looking at the graffiti around Melbourne I'm not so sure. Have to think about that.
I am in Melbourne again for a few days. I have to give a lecture at Monash on Tuesday so I've come down early for a bit of a break. Everybody had their phones switched off when I got here, so I killed some time by looking at the collection of Aboriginal art at the Ian Potter Gallery in Fed Square. I love this stuff. The paintings are always accompanied by a story that hardly makes sense to the western mind. For example, a square painting with a sort of grid pattern is all about two sisters who travelled a long way north and did a dance and ate some emu, end of story. Or two women ancestors were weaving cloth, an old man in the top right corner whistled and called, but thought they didn't hear so he went away. I can't see any old man in the top right corner, just a bunch of black dots that could possibly be footprints. But they are very beautiful. I apologise for the blurry quality of the photos - there wasn't enough light. All come from either the Northern Territory - northwest of Alice Springs - or Western Australia.
This one is part of a huge canvas - actually a square tarpaulin with studs all around the edges. I couldn't fit the whole thing in my viewfinder. It was done by a large collection of painters - a list of names too long to read - and is a map of their country.
Here is a stunning painting by Emily Kngwarrye, one of the most famous Aboriginal painters. It is a painting of her country - some 200 km northwest of Alice Springs. I look at something like this and think of Jackson Pollock. Without the likes of him, paintings like this would never be recognized in the western art world as having artistic merit - which only says something about the power of western culture. There is a great quote from Emily K, full of alliterative words like 'wriggling, wormy, wobbly... etc. etc.' Yeah, I see that, but how in blazes is it a landscape?!?
This one, by Mick Tjapaltjira is about bandicoot dreaming. The bandicoot's nest is in the centre. The claw marks of the bandicoot, as he scraped the sticks and leaves to make his nest, are all around.
This one, way too blurry, is by another woman painter whose name I can't remember. The title says "Belonging to women".
This photo is of a small part of a joint work by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjira and another relative of his. Clifford Possum's style is very distinctive.
Another famous painter is Rover Thomas. The painting is of a willy willy - like a small tornado of dust. The storm starts in the top right corner and finishes up at a water hole where is is devoured by the Rainbow Serpent.
Limestone hills by Queenie McKenzie from the Western Desert.
This one is part of a huge canvas - actually a square tarpaulin with studs all around the edges. I couldn't fit the whole thing in my viewfinder. It was done by a large collection of painters - a list of names too long to read - and is a map of their country.
Here is a stunning painting by Emily Kngwarrye, one of the most famous Aboriginal painters. It is a painting of her country - some 200 km northwest of Alice Springs. I look at something like this and think of Jackson Pollock. Without the likes of him, paintings like this would never be recognized in the western art world as having artistic merit - which only says something about the power of western culture. There is a great quote from Emily K, full of alliterative words like 'wriggling, wormy, wobbly... etc. etc.' Yeah, I see that, but how in blazes is it a landscape?!?
This one, by Mick Tjapaltjira is about bandicoot dreaming. The bandicoot's nest is in the centre. The claw marks of the bandicoot, as he scraped the sticks and leaves to make his nest, are all around.
This one, way too blurry, is by another woman painter whose name I can't remember. The title says "Belonging to women".
This photo is of a small part of a joint work by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjira and another relative of his. Clifford Possum's style is very distinctive.
Another famous painter is Rover Thomas. The painting is of a willy willy - like a small tornado of dust. The storm starts in the top right corner and finishes up at a water hole where is is devoured by the Rainbow Serpent.
Limestone hills by Queenie McKenzie from the Western Desert.
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