The Wild Garden and the Captive Garden

Things have been moving very fast this week. Tenille from Charles Darwin Uni has been here working with a group of young women who are all enthusiastic about getting the garden going next to the Women Centre. The blokes have been scraping away all the buffel grass and rubbish with heavy machinery and I better hurry up and get the materials for a fence! There's no time to wait for a grant so it will come from our budget. Meanwhile I comb the net for appropriate sources of funds. Any suggestions are welcome - but they must be OK for the NT.

We are beginning to be able to put away some funds from op-shop sales for projects like this. And today we launched our first raffle - a good raffle once a month will boost the coffers. We have bought a good stack of beads online and there is a small group just starting to get into making jewellery. The old ladies are working hard at burning holes in the yininti beans and making beautiful necklaces.




Last weekend I went with Steve and Sunny to Trephina Gorge, a very special and awe-inspiring place about 80k from Alice and these are some of the photos. The wild places here are so deeply and surprisingly fertile and beautiful.









Yesterday we went out in the troopy to a spot about 30k east of here, where the most beautiful mountains rise from the plain - and where the minkulpa (bush tobacco) grows. I spent much of the day climbing impossibly steep and rocky and prickly slopes and finally came down at dusk with bagful of minkulpa to distribute.


The hillside is a botanists delight, a native garden crammed full of beautiful medicinal and food plants. And up there I feel free (if hot!) and can gaze upon the magnificent ancestor mountains stretching away over the plains. Birds fly close overhead and there are kangaroos somehow managing to bound down the hillside.



Even the grasshoppers are beautiful as they jump up all around. My feet are still sore, thongs aren't made for climbing and rock-hopping, but it was a good day. Today I have been clearing out the van because I think I'll sell it when I get back from NSW. And I set up an automatic watering system so my greens will survive while I am away. And I cleaned the house. Very exciting.

I will be back home next week and look forward to seeing everyone there. I am also looking forward to a rest and some freedom from responsibility - and swimming in the sea! Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......................and a little cooler weather will be nice. Though I woke to the sound of light rain today (it only lasted an hour or so) and have not had to have the aircon on all day since. The papers tell me that February was almost 3 degrees hotter than average and the hottest and driest on record...roll on sustainable power out here (quick! get rid of those generators!) A few big settlements now have solar and maybe Papunya will some day soon. Meantime, I await the cooler days - and right now the blessed rain is falling slow and steady!

How to Gut a Goanna

This is Martha, my friend, showing her grand-daughter (who is my classificatory sister Nungarrayi) how to use sand to keep the gut dry enough to gently work it out of the goanna's arsehole without having to cut it. It's really ingenious, as most traditional things are.

It has been a little cooler for the last two days, very lovely. I even had to put another sheet over me last night! It has been so hot here, 42 most days, the hottest and driest February on record - but maybe it will stay below that from here on.

We went out hunting gathering and swimming on Saturday and came home in the rain! real rain, big fat drops of it splatting on the windscreen - of course its all gone now but it was great to get some of God's own aircon. The power went off in the middle of the night which meant my fan went off which meant I got really hot so I went outside and slept naked in the hammock under the almost full moon (well actually under the verandah roof). That was such a treat because usually there are people still up when I go to sleep and if I want to walk naked I am on show because my house has no curtains. Swimming was incredible too - there is a beautiful creek with water all year round that's about 40k away. I'd never been there before because there was a dead cow in it for ages but it is heaven, absolute heaven - and I'd like to camp there soon. The old van would get bogged in the sandy creek crossing on the way so I will have to take a work vehicle - but we have a troopy for a month so if I can persuade some of the women we can have a group adventure. They won't go anywhere overnight on their own, without men - for fear of male spirits coming and getting them in the night (good ol patriarchy out here too) - so we may have to enlist a few sons and nephews for protection. This week has been very hectic and busy, trying to stay on top of paperwork and still get out and about in the troopy. Tomorrow we head off to Mt Liebig, which is only about 75k but it's reportedly a rough road and I have never been there before. There are also reportedly big Yininti trees on the way and we may score some of the elusive white and yellow beans. I was hoping to check out the Aged Care centre there but the co-ordinator is taking people into Alice for a funeral. And I am taking people to Mt Liebig for a funeral......We are also on an expedition to Alice on Friday - the oldies will shop and g0 to the football and I will hang out and play music with Fred and Elliott ...and just play with Daimon ...after the gang has gone back to Papunya.

All the busyness at work is starting to bear fruit, and there is a small group of young women enrolled to learn gardening with a very enthusiastic young teacher from Charles Darwin Uni - so our bush Tucker garden will be bearing real fruit too. I am trying to raise funds for a fence which is fairly essential to such a project and Steve may come out here next week to draw up a water grant submission so we can have rainwater for drinking and for starting young seedlings. I have sent off applications to Indigenous Community Volunteers (check out the link) for people to help train up hairdressing, art & craft and gardening skills - so if anyone is even remotely interested to come out here for a month or two - definitely check out the link and let me know. It is amazing out here, even if you don't want to learn how to gut a goanna and Nimbin-experienced people would be great.

This is the view of the road where I walk every morning - and this is the view of my arm...but don't let it put you off, the flies disappear when it gets cooler...

Flies, Ants and Making Tracks

Well - this week has been much better - a prolonged weekend in Alice (a blowout on the highway on the way back to Papunya meant I had to return to Alice to get a new tyre)...and then a very welcoming homecoming from the workers. Maybe they thought I wouldn't be back, or maybe they were just glad to see all the bags and bags and bags of second-hand clothes I brought back from St Vinnies. Yes, I finally have my own op-shop! We have been doing a thriving trade all week. We also tried selling sandwiches and cold drinks to the card-players on cheque day but didn't do so well.

Anyway, let's stick to the topic: Flies, Ants and ... I know everyone knows all about how bad the flies are here, but I think it is time to be more graphic and to show some of the ways we deal with them. I don't do much actually except wait for winter when they will all be gone (though I rival the Brave Little Tailor with my new improved flyswatting skills) but many people walk around with mini-mossie-nets obscuring their view. Including Jan and Charlie...We went for a trip to Wigley's waterhole, the hang-out of bogans and water desperadoes like me. Steve and Sunny don't liek it because there are too many beer-cans, but for me , it's wet and I can swim in it - and there was a kangaroo and a glorious sunset to make up for the howling gale that made a barbeque impossible. And there were plenty of flies too.OK - that's flies. Then there's ants. Ants are everywhere. Big ants, small ants, biting ants, honey-ants, ants everywhere. I regret very much setting my little mingari free instead of keeping her as my own ant-eater.

She would have been in heaven just sitting by my front door. I am actually surrounded by ants even as I write - the trail winds up the wall by my computer and then meanders along and right around the room to the sink, the bin and the compost bucket...








this is not a good place for Buddhists or other people who will not step on ants. Just about every track is already occupied by long and busy processions...


Some people are happy and look beautiful despite flies...and it has been lovely to spend time with them. Damon is talking more every day and calls me granma, it's sort of a generic term, but I guess I am a sort of generic granma.



Tomorrow we will be making tracks early in the morning, following Toyota dreaming towards Haasts Bluff in the troopy we have for a month from the Carer Respite Centre. It is too hot to have any expeditions other than early morn or late afternoon ...I do all my walking at 6.30 a.m these days, and get some great track photos.

I might write some more in a few days. Thanks to all who visit here and particularly those who have written and rung to keep me from sliding off the edge of the world.