A Long Week

The sunrise today was beautiful and I walked about 6k's in the beautiful cool...but it's been a long week. I'd love to go home, but home is such a long way away. So I am here, still here at Papunya/Warumpi...wishing it was a long weekend and I could at least go into Alice. I have been cross and grumpy, it is hard for me to deal with the fallout from a century of invasion politics as well as the usual personality blah you get with anyone. My main problem is (of course) my own personality blah that means I find it really annoying to have people constantly ask me for directions when they are quite competent and have done it heaps of times already - this is part of the black/white syndrome that does not sit well with my little idiosyncracies, particularly when I am working on something else. The other thing which has been hard to deal with is the silent treatment from some workers who don't like being told what to do even though they have asked! It's a bit much....and the ongoing sulks over having to keep the car only for work business is just too much drama for me. So today when everyone decided to leave early (like about half an hour after they started work) to go and play cards (one way to try and get back some of what you lost yesterday) and left me with everything to do by myself (including moving the freezer) I just wanted to go home too. But I did what had to be done and then I left early. I helped Maringka and Charlie move back home from their open-air camp which the old women have been reluctant to leave....I washed half a dozen putrid blankets and delivered cans of irish stew, juice and a peach instead of the sandwiches the workers couldn't be bothered to make because there was no ham...What happened to the ham? Maybe what happened to the powdered milk, just disappeared. Petty theft can be extremely annoying too, when the truck only brings supplies every fortnight. And on top of this the relief storekeeper was in my ear yesterday about how she is glad to be leaving because the people are so slack and they dont clean up their rubbish and they're all stuck in victim consciousness and I stuck up for them! I regret not suggesting that the shop clean up the rubbish seeing as that's where it all comes from...
And it is hard seeing all the garbage that is left by this beautiful swimming hole at Ulumbarra.

I wish I could go swimming there now - the old van lumbered out there with a big load of kids and women last weekend, but the road is a rocky creekbed with gigantic sump-crackers every two metres and swimming there will have to be a rare pleasure.
There were a million tadpoles, everything grabs any chance to breed whenever there is water - I reckon it would be a noisy place to sleep. Which is a pity because it is absolutely beautiful - like a wild and free version of the Desert Park with the most stunning 360 degree view....no way for a camera to capture it but I wish you could see it with me...

This week we went hunting for yininti beans again, in the wonderful troopy brought by Sarah the nutritionist who's young and keen...picture us winding our way through this beautiful country, guided by faint wheelmarks that might once have been a track through the buffel grass, stopping occasionally to check out the yininti trees (looking for the elusive white and yellow beans), and to try and eat watermelon without eating flies too...




we came upon these ruins which may have been built by Bill Mollison in the early '70's - the most serene and glorious place near a creek which may have even flowed before the drought began. If anyone sees Bill can they please ask him if he ever had a camp at Ulumbarra.

I am starting to get a kind of cabin fever from being forced inside by the heat...it doesn't help that I am online for hours every day trying to find a new laptop so I can spend even more time online...I would really appreciate phone calls 8956 4959 because I do miss you all and feel quite isolated here at times. Am missing social life and choir and playing music and stuff like that. I may even try and get a lift into alice for one night tho as Steve and Sunny are planning to go camping at the Ross River, it will depend on whether Fred is OK for me to stay. Sometimes the best company here for me is the old ladies - the ones that aren't bossy and annoying are just great and I wish I spoke better Luritja so I could communicate more with them. Love you all, ring me if you can xxxxxx

Full of Beans

On Monday we went hunting for yininti beans - the bright red seeds of the batwing coral tree, which the women make into necklaces and mats. The older and mostly single women have all been camped out together in the heat and the wind and the rain, having a great time together and cooking for the young boys going through initiation. They descend on the aged care centre like a flock of noisy messy parrots, and spend a lot of time there sleeping in the blessed cool of the aircon. There's an ageless quality to them all despite their arthritis and their trachoma and they seem often like a bunch of teenagers (or old hippies).

They sort of go through fads and phases: one week it's painting, the next it's getting yininti beans. The rarer trees have orange, yellow, white or purple beans so there's a quest to find them....and off we went in the intrepid serendipity van, lurching over an ancient track to the creek near Blackwater outstation .....

(the grass in the picture is the dreaded omnipresent buffel, which has burst up everywhere since the rain, it's too high and is probably full of big brown snakes although it looks so pretty)

Fortunately the tyres stayed full of air and we made it back again, happy and loaded up with tins and bags, full of beans.

A Trip to Alice

A Trip to Alice, originally uploaded by wrap_nimbin.
On the way to Alice we saw camels...lots of camels...and trucks, lots of trucks
...and green green grass, feral buffel grass for all the feral animals.

I am getting so much good feedback about this blog that I feel I have to put something up so you don't find just the same old stuff you've already seen...so here are some photos of my recent expedition to Alice Springs. From which I am now recovering - shopping, shopping, shopping - totally exhausted! We came back with dozens of garbage bags full of second-hand clothes for the masses which are now piled on my back verandah till Friday when they will be released to the general chaos which prevails when cheap clothes arrive.

We went swimming at Alice Springs - the waterhole near the Telegraph Station for which the town is named - as close to paradise as it gets - beautiful warm water swimming with the kids, lazy lying on the grass - bliss! It would have been best to stay there all weekend, but we had to go shopping...


Today, back at work - there were five old ladies painting away - the beginnings of the Papunya Renaissance...For more pics, check out my photo gallery...! I'm off to sleep xxxxxxxx