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.