It's raining! Raining! Like proper north coast rain! I love it, the smell of it, the sound of it, the vague anxiety of it, the snugness of inside, the coolness it brings - Sharon my co-worker doesn't like it, and I bet the boys camping out for their initiation business don't like it much either, but I love it!
Last week I was beginning to feel quite isolated. All around me people doing this men's business and I would love to be there too but no-one invited me. There were groups of women have been camped all around me but they don't call in... they look totally otherworldly in the wierd light and the first few spots of an approaching storm, trooping up to the ceremony ground with their billycans and blankets, some carrying things trad style on their heads. Everyone was into the business - No-one came to work, the car had three flat tyres, the delivery truck from Alice couldn't get through because the road is too wet so we had no food to cook so no meals to deliver...
To make it even worse I started wondering whether I should take the job that had just been offered to me in Alice Springs - with more pay, heaps more than enough to cover the extra costs of living in town. It is hard to be stuck out here when I can't even get to be at ceremonies... and I was fighting off some sort of beastly bug which caused me to feel totally exhausted. So I escaped! Hitched a ride to Alice and recuperated at SS&D's ...and everything is OK now.
The perennial beauty of rain is that it swells the creeks and gives us somewhere to swim at last - here are some photos of a trip to Wigley's Waterhole near Alice with Steve and Sunny and Daimon...
...and rain makes the desert bloom. There are thousands of plants popping up and the vista has different-coloured green patches amid the red sand. Yesterday I dug up and replanted some plants for my garden: baby Desert Rose, bush tomato (has a beautiful purple flower) and other things which for me are unnamed yet - and the rain poured down half the night so they may even survive. If they do, they should last a long time, giving refuge to the birds and delight to whoever lives in this little house. Papunya needs gardens and although many gardeners have come and gone from here, little remains of their efforts with exotic plants. Bill Mollison was even out here in the early seventies, but there is no trace of permaculture left.
We went to the Desert Park again ...and again ...Here we are...We love it!
Sunny and I ate some acacia seeds, delicious! There is food everywhere out here thanks to the acacias, which also provide homes for witchetty grubs and honey ants.
This is me on Sunny's birthday ...that's all folks, take care!
No comments:
Post a Comment