Sitting here tonight in the comfort of our own caravan, I am going to try and share a bit of our tour with Outback Spirit through Arnhem Land with you. The tour was basically over 12 days, so I'l break this up into 5 chunks, corresponding to the places we stayed at.
Day 1 - Nhulunbuy NT
An ‘early’ start, namely 5:15, when we finished packing the van in the dark, trying not to wake our neighbours, and jumped into the car for the run into Darwin airport. Always anxious about departure times and how long it actually takes to get from a to b, we thought we had left early. The nice people at the park said 15 minutes. Not forgetting that its 5:30 on Sunday morning, it still took 25 minutes. Our plan was to dump the car in the long-stay parking, which they had said was something silly like $12 a day. On the way into the terminal, we passed sign pointing to Long-stay-savings or some such, but it seemed like a mile away from the terminal. I drove on. It’s getting late. We drove by the terminal and followed more signs to Long-stay parking, this time annotated with ‘bonus’ or ‘special’ or something. It was just past the rental-car area, so in we went and dumped the car.
A few minutes found us in the terminal being inspected and detected, Judy got busted with her titanium knee and I got busted because I had her carry on bag which had a small pair of scissors in a first-aid kit we had forgotten about. Not to worry, they decided we didn't fit the terrorist profile and let us through sans scissors. Soon enough we were in the air and on our way to Nhulunbuy, being pampered with a hot breakfast and a paper to read. Good one Air North.
Nhulunbuy is over on the east coast of Arnhem land, on the Gove peninsular. The town exists mainly because in 1963 the government of the day allowed a large Danish company to dig a large hole in the ground, build a huge filthy aluminium smelter and put a deep sea port in. The aboriginal population protested all the way to the High Court, failing to win an injunction because The Crown did not then recognise Native Title, adhering to the traditional view of Terra Nullus, that is, that the land was empty when they, the Europeans arrived. This was the start of the Native Land Title claims and the debate has been raging ever since. It was and probably still is, incomprehensible to the white-fellow that the aborigines and the land they are born in are one and the same. They are part of the land, the land is part of them.
Anyhow, we were picked up by our guide in a great big Mercedes Tour bus 4x4 truck thing and taken to the Walkabout Hotel, but via the lookout to give the hotel time to get the rooms ready, something to do with it still only being 830am. The lookout, which the guide had raved on about, is a 10m high steel structure on top of a hill build as a fire observation post. We dutifully climbed up and observed ‘the view’. The view was pretty damn depressing really, not helped at all by the cloud cover and building winds.
 |
| Lookout on a hill called Nhulun, at Nhulunbuy, NT |
 |
| Beautiful downtown Nhulunbuy, NT |
Eventually after more time wasting, we arrived the hotel and made our way tour room. It was all of 9:30. We walked the 200m to the shop and back. We read the paper. We drank a coffee. A walk on the beach was out: someone was taken by a croc the day before and the beach was closed. We had a swim. Hey, now this is better, the pool is great. probably 15m long and at least 2m deep. The water was cool and perfect for swimming. We took another stroll to the shop and back. Nothing in town except Woolies is open mostly because it is Sunday, partly because a lot of it closed down after the refinery closed.
Lunch then had to be at the hotel, and stupidly we ordered a burger each. Wow, could have done one between us and had leftovers. After lunch we sat and watched the storm roll in. It blew so hard it tossed all the nice shade umbrellas all over the place, including one and its heavy steel base which it blew right through the pool fence and into the pool, fence and all. Another swim was in order to retrieve the rest of the bits. So much fun, we hardly noticed the time sliding by and before we knew it we were being assembled at the dinner table to meet the rest of our travelling companions.
They’re all so old. One poor fellow looks about 95, old, even by my standards. Others look hardly able to walk, let alone do the expected hikes in blazing heat through rocky outcrops. What have we done? Retired hurt and lay wondering all night if we should go on with this or cut and run, there's a plane out in the morning...
We elected to stay, of course, we had an ample investment to protect and who knows, it my get better in the morning. The morning dawned and an action-packed day began...
Day 2 - Nhulunbuy NT
First thing on the agenda was a Welcome to Country ceremony, to be performed by one of the many tribes / clans that call the area home. We were in luck apparently as these fellows were serious in liking to show their culture. They were ready for us on the beach under some casuarina trees and started into the dancing cycles accompanied by two clap-sticks and a didgeridoo. It was a nice ceremony, but because we had little idea what they were doing it was a bit lost. As english is usually their third or fourth language; they may say one word then a silence then another, and they are very quiet speakers, it's not always easy for all the tour group to hear what they are saying and some of the interpretation is lost. The other thing is that the dances, which are only about 30-60 seconds long, all appear to be exactly the same with the exception that maybe they are depicting a different animal. And they just finish, usually when the main dancer lets out a whoop! But as it is a nice tradition it was well received and afterwards we had a great old chat with the people and a cup of tea before moving on to the next item on the agenda.
 |
| Welcome to Country ceremony. Nhulunbuy, NT |
 |
| Welcome to Country ceremony. Nhulunbuy, NT |
|
 |
| Welcome to Country ceremony. Nhulunbuy, NT |
|
 |
This dance we knew straight away, they were doing the Galah walk of course.
| Welcome to Country ceremony. Nhulunbuy, NT |
|
 |
Tribal elder and chief music man.
| Welcome to Country ceremony. Nhulunbuy, NT |
|
The arts centre at Yirrkala was a bit of a surprise with some good pieces on display including these two very large panels from the church over the road. Their story was that they were painted by the two main tribes, one each, and they depict the whole life story for that tribe;. They were done and installed in the church when it was first opened, but many years later, some hell-fire-and-brimstone preacher declared them to be the work of the devil and they were pulled down. Luckily they were stored under the church and forgotten for the next 20 years. Only rediscovered recently, they have been fully restored. They now hang in a special sacred area of the art centre and are a fabulous visual depiction of the histories of the tribes. Unfortunately, our guide, a white woman, could not tell us what any of it meant. Only a full blood aboriginal man would know what the full story was, and then only for his clan. And even if such a person was there they could not tell us anything but the simplest picaninny level interpretation because we are not initiated aborigines. I had to leave: the sheer stupidity of the questions being asked and comments being made by the older anglo-saxon white persons, coupled with the ineptitude of the guide had me reeling.
 |
| Art in the Art Centre. Yirrkala, NT |
 |
| Art in the Art Centre. Yirrkala, NT |
 |
| Baru, or Crocodile. Art Centre. Yirrkala, NT |
 |
| Footy, suitably adorned. Art Centre. Yirrkala, NT |
I took some snaps just outside the centre, one is a closed shop, who knows what the other is. On the opposite corners is the church, I suppose it's still used when a 'person of the cloth' wanders through, but it looked abandoned and unfortunately we seemed to be the only 'tourists/balanda/whitefella' who had ever shown any interest so there was no information about it's current use.
 |
| Yirrkala NT |
 |
| Yirrkala NT |
 |
| Church, Yirrkala NT style |
From the arts centre we went further down the Gove peninsular to Shady Beach where we had our lunch. The beach may well have been a swimming spot in days gone by but today it is strictly off-limits to swimming due to the ever present fear of crocodiles.
 |
| Our bus and our lunch stop. Shady Beach, Nhulunbuy NT |
We finished the day with a visit to Macassan Beach, reputedly where the Macassar (from Sulawesi aka Indonesia) came and set up camp for 600 years, collecting Trepang (sea slugs) and trading with the aborigines.
 |
| Macassar Beach. Nhulunbuy NT |
 |
| Macassar Beach. Nhulunbuy NT |
 |
| Me at the end of our first full day, 'en bus'. Macassar Beach. Nhulunbuy NT |
On our way back to town we went via the lookout again so the new people could see it. We elected to stay on the ground and take snaps of green tree ants. A yelp and a crash got our attention: one of the ladies fell over on the top step and tumbled down to the landing. She was badly injured, but luckily we had a doctor with us and they patched her up and managed to get her down. She was later taken to hospital and given 11 stitches in her head and kept in over night.
The day finished with the tour group (21 plus the guide (minus Marjorie-in-hospital)) having dinner at the Hotel before retiring ready for an early start on the adventure proper the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment