Monday

On Monday morning, I got up at the crack of dawn, made myself some tea on the camp stove, and sat around waiting for everyone else to get up. Russell and Ian were up, and Tony and Merrel the Marvelous followed shortly. But everyone else slept in for a while. After we got up and ate, we broke camp and got back in the troopies. We drove for a few minutes before we stopped at an Aboriginal art site, under some tremendously large boulders on a mountainside. This place was also a quinkan place, and he showed up in some of the paintings. There was also one painting of an echidna that I particularly liked... I'll try to post a photo of it eventually.

We made one or two brief stops on the way, but basically we spent most of Monday driving. The paved roads eventually turned into dirt roads, which occasionally became sand roads (really hard to drive through, by the way). But it was sort of like out west, where there would be miles and miles of straight road. We were averaging about 100-110 km per hour (62-68 mph), which seemed a little drastic for dirt roads. But there you are.

Ian is a huge fan of country music, some Australian and some American, and had it on whenever we were in the car. So we got everything from US top 20 country hits (which reminded me of the farm) to Slim Dusty, who's sort of like the Australian version of Hank Williams. And I believe we had some Hanks Williams himself. Giovanne just rolled his eyes, but I though that the music was really rather appropriate for the occasion, and we had a good time on the ride.

We must have driven for about four or five hours all together, although I'm not really sure. But we ended up a couple hundred kilometres into Lakefield National Park, which is really quite remote. You can't even get that far into the park during the Wet Season, because it's all underwater. That being said, you'd have a difficult time backpacking there without pack animals in the dry season, because there's hardly any water for miles and miles at a time. We brought our own water in, and ended up camping near a small, crocodile-infested stream. There was one part of the stream where the water ran over smooth rocks for about thirty feet, and that's where we did our washing and cooling off. Eventually we filtered stream water to drink, and we did all of our dishes and made our tea with the water, but you had to stay away from the edge and haul it up with a bucket (on a long string) to avoid being consumed by crocs.

The campsite was beautiful, and full of eerie, tall, thin termite mounds. Literally hundreds of them, ranging from a few centimetres to maybe two or three metres tall! We did have a "dunny" at this site (although I might rather have done my necessaries outside, if you know what I mean), but that was the only thing that marked it as any different from the surrounding areas.

We unloaded our gear, set up camp, made dinner (I don't remember what we had that night), and had story time again.

The Rainbow Serpent:

The Rainbow Serpent is the protector of the Aboriginal food chain. Aboriginals must hunt only what they can eat, and to do more is to violate the rules of the Rainbow Serpent. In the Dreamtime, there were two young men who went out to catch some fish. Aboriginals sometimes kill fish by putting sap into the water that reacts with oxygen and suffocates the fish. These young men went to a well-populated lake and poisoned all of the fish, many more than they needed. They stood in the water and threw the fish out on the banks. The Rainbow Serpent saw this waste, and was angry, so he sent a very large, juicy fish their way. When the men turned around to get the fish, the Rainbow Serpent ate them!

An older member of the tribe came to the lake, saw the fish, and surmised what had happened. He set off after the Rainbow Serpent, and found that he lived in a tunnel underground. The old man surprised the Rainbow Serpent from above, and the Rainbow Serpent spat the two young men out again, but they were dead. The old man brought them back to life, becoming the first medicine man, and the boys learned to respect the food chain.

Cairns Again

Well, I'm back in Cairns again after my camping trip. We had a wonderful time, and I'll write a bit more about it in a moment, although it could be some time before I get any photos up. Only two people were allowed to bring cameras on the trip, so I'm at their mercy as far as pictures are concerned. But here's a little synopsis of the past few days:

Sunday morning Bronny and Lila dropped me off at the Tropical Queenslander, some random hotel in Cairns, where we had a decidedly mediocre brunch. I said goodbye to them and went with my group and my backpack to the sidewalk, where there were two jeeps and two Land Rover-y things (troopies) waiting. We all dropped our gear into the trailers behind the troopies, and piled into the cars. Typically, I was in one of the troopies, which had sideways-facing back seats and not much space for eleven people (although fortunately we only had seven in ours). And we started driving. And driving. And driving.

They made us leave our phones and gadgets behind, which was a good thing. But we also had to leave our watches behind, and operate on "Murri Time." Our two guides were of the Murri tribe, and "Murri Time" essentially implies that things happen when they need to and take as long as they need to.

So I have no idea how long we drove, but eventually we ended up at a campsite, which is used every other year as a meeting place for 13 (?) Aboriginal tribes. The quinkan inhabited this campsite, and he would come and scare you if you were somewhere you didn't belong. The quinkan can be friendly or quite nasty, and he appears in a lot of Aboriginal art.

We made camp and pitched our two-man tents over on some open grass which was, unfortunately, occupied by citrus ants. Citrus ants are quite harmless, except that they tend to bite. Hard. Uncomfortable, but harmless, and they don't itch or leave welts, which was some consolation. The first tent that Kevin, my tent-buddy, and I got out was a lovely tent except for one slight complication: the complete lack of poles. Fortunately, however, we found an extra tent.

After our housekeeping was done, we went over to our little kitchen and started making dinner. It was dark by then, so I'm still not really sure what kind of fish I cooked, but cook it I did. And sausages, and a variety of vegetarian foods. Someone got the bright idea to make about 40 gallons of rice (only a slight exaggeration), so we had plenty of that, too. And after we ate and cleaned up, we sat around on the ground and listened to Russell.

I must pause here to mention Ian and Russell, our wonderful guides. They were a couple of retired Aboriginal fellows, and they come on the SIT camping trips every year. Russell is very knowledgeable and open about his culture, bush food, hunting, stories, you name it. He's a bit quiet in person but is great when speaking to groups of people. Ian talks less about his culture, but occasionally surprises you with a little factoid or an observation. He pointed out three black cockatoos in the top of a eucalyptus tree on our drive there (he was driving the troopie I was in). He's approachable, friendly, and loves to talk. His grandson Giovanne (spelling?) came with us on the trip, and the two of them were always looking out for us, giving us lollies, making sure we didn't get dust in our eyes, and so on.

Sunday evening Russell told us this story:
In the Dreamtime, the curlew and his mate laid eggs and hatched their young. One day, the parents left the baby curlews alone for a few hours. The owl noticed the lonesome babies, and called the dingo into his cave. He told the dingo to go and eat the babies. When the curlews returned, there was nothing left of their young. The curlews began to cry in mourning, and they continue to mourn their young every night, to this day. But the father curlew was angry, and knew that the owl and the dingo were responsible for the death of his babies. He told the kangaroo to graze outside of the dingo's den. When the dingo came after the kangaroo, the curlew killed him. Then the curlew went to the owl's roost and challenged him to come down and fight. The owl was a coward, however, and would not fight. Because of this, he is forbidden to show his face in the daytime.

Here are Lila's birthday cupcakes, which Bronny and I decorated. Lila turned six yesterday, and she's having her party tomorrow. They were butterflies and flowers. The butterfly wings are nonpariels, which they call Freckles in Australia. The flower petals are cut-up marshmallows.

Here's a lovely photo of a green tree frog that Lila's dad Alex found in the front yard. He actually got it to crawl on a bit of wood, and brought it in the house along with a giant spider (four or so inches across), which I believe was a huntsman spider. They're quite harmless, but awfully large. But here's the beautiful little frog right after we put him back outside. He's bigger than you'd think, probably five inches.

On Vegemite

Vegemite was first invented in 1922 by a bloke named Cyril P Callister, a doctor working for an Aussie cheese company. It's made of some sort of yeast extract. Vegemite is dark greenish brown and a bit more plastic in texture than peanut butter or Nutella. If you're interested in vegemite, here's a link to the Vegemite timeline: Vegemite Timeline

I tried a bit of Vegemite last week. I was volunteering at the elementary school "tuck shop" with my host mum (she volunteers there every Friday), and she handed me an order for a Vegemite sandwich. So, assuming that Vegemite was much like peanut butter in general usage, I began to spread a thick layer on a piece of bread. No one who hasn't eaten Vegemite can possibly comprehend how terrible a mistake this is. Apparently you're only supposed to spread a few scrapings on top of the bread, just enough for a taste. Vegemite sort of tastes like extra-concentrated, spoiled miso (if you just ate it plain, instead of making it into soup) with a hint of beer. It's not the worst thing I've ever eaten, and I like it better than, say, bananas... but it was pretty horrible.

Easter Bilbies

Fun Australian fact of the day:
Australians have chocolate bilbies for Easter, instead of chocolate bunnies. Bilbies are super cute.

Here's the cute pig photo of the day:

I've been trying to see and photograph an Australian feral pig, but no luck just yet. They're actually sort of a bad environmental pest, but I thought it might be appropriate for the blog. But this pig isn't a pest. She's adorable!