Arnhem Land Trip 2018, Days 3 and 4: The tour starts

Hanging around Nhulunbuy

A lazy day in Nhulunbuy. The tour was to start at 4pm with a quick visit to the town’s lookout before dinner, but as we headed out for coffee in the mid-morning we ran into our tour leader, clearly identified by his badge – and aptly named Ian. We hailed him, and he immediately knew we were Len and Sue. Impressive! He’d done his homework and knew we were already in town. He told us that there was a change of plan and that we’d start the tour at 6pm with drinks and dinner. Fine with us…

So, we took the day quietly – there’s not a lot to see here that we won’t be seeing on the tour. We did some basic shopping in the town centre, followed by coffee at one of the cafes. We ended up having a lovely chat with the Filipina owner who was having a cuppa too, with a couple of her friends. She’s been here for 21 years, with her husband, and before that had lived in the Newcastle area. She explained how they’d managed the education of their 4 children by buying a house in Cairns for them to use as a base (once the eldest girl was able to look after her brothers there!) During this chat, we were visited by various birds, including sulphur-crested cockatoos, little corellas, and a great bowerbird.

We returned to the Macassan (in the Arnhem Club) for lunch, partly because their patio provides a view of the Arafura Sea. (I love that word Arafura – it apparently comes from a word for the mountain people of the Moluccas.)

After a lazy afternoon, reading, doing sudoku, etc, we met our fellow tour members. There’s apparently only 19 of us, after a few late cancellations. Makes the trip nicer for us to be fewer in number. We include a Don and a Donald, a Jennie and a Jenny, a Sue and a Susan. We come from Murrumbateman, Wagga, Jervis Bay, Sydney, Windsor, the Blue Mountains, Ballina and Tamworth, as well as from further afield, Perth.

For dinner most of us had the barra!

The tour proper begins

… and it was a full day, starting with

Welcome to country (Dhuwa)

… at a beach near the Nhulunbuy township. This involved dancing by 2 men and 2 women, accompanied by music and singing by three men, with the stories of the dances (“they are looking for water”, “here is the black cow”, “their dilly bags are full of berries”, and so on) told by another woman. We were invited to learn 2 simple dances with them, sunrise and sunset. After that energetic performance – not! – we were treated to our morning cuppa, before driving to …

Yirrkala and the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka Arts Centre (Yirrkala)

Art work from here, particularly bark paintings, are in galleries around the world. It’s a huge place and had some exquisite work. However, a highlight was the talk by a young Yirrkala man who works on their Archive project documenting the history and culture of the people, including their complicated kinship system. (Kinship was one of the hardest things I remember from my anthropology studies, and this talk didn’t change my mind!) I think we all got something out of it. We spent around an hour and a half here, and Len and I came away a little poorer, having bought a small but cheekily beautiful sculpture.

We then drove to …

Shady Beach

for a women’s healing session and lunch. The healing was done using leaves of the Bucharan’ing healing plant. We spread the leaves, which had been boiled and rubbed, on arthritic joints, but we probably need more than one application to see real benefit. The women were warm and lovely.

We lunched at this beach – on individual lunchboxes presumably prepared by our lodge. It was a gorgeous location except that we were nearly blown away. It was a challenge hanging onto everything. We didn’t chat much over lunch – it was every person for his or herself. And then it was back in the bus to go to …

Macassan Beach

Located in IPA lands – Indigenous Protected Areas – this beach was beautiful, with red rocks, blue blue sea, and, due to the wind, great billows of foam as the waves hitting the rocks. We had our afternoon cuppa here. (You do not starve on an Outback Spirit tour.)

We also did the short interpretive walk describing the local indigenous people’s trading with Macassan trepang fishers, which lasted from around the 1400s to around 1907 when the government introduced taxes on trepang caught, essentially pricing the Macassans out. Until then, it had been a positive, mutually beneficial relationship between the two groups. The walk took us past “stone pictures”, which were probably constructed by Yolngu elders toward the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1960s clan leaders Mungurrawuy Yunupingu and Mawalan Marika said these pictures had been made by older members of their families so that future generations of Yolngu would know the history of the Macassan visits. It was really fascinating to see this practical “archiving” of their history.

And then the coach was turned home, which we reached soon after 4pm, after a quick stop at the Roy Marika lookout.

Some ad hoc facts

  • Yolngu have two moieties – Dhuwa and Yirrkala. If you are Yirrkala you marry Dhuwa and vice versa. You take your moiety from your father.
  • Yirrkala is the birthplace of indigenous land rights, with Roy Marika being seen as the father of land rights. He was behind the 1963 Bark Petition presented to parliament (and which is now held, on display, at Parliament House.)
  • The didgeridoo is called here the Yudaki and is made from eucalyptus tetradenta. One of the performers we saw was famous Yirrkala artist and musician, Djalu who was born around 1930.
  • The dreamtime is called, here, Wanurr
  • There is less eucalyptus oil in trees here – in the warm north, as they don’t need it to preserve water and support photosynthesis
  • The eucalyptus miniata, or Darwin Woolly butt, has bark only part way up the trunk, far enough to protect from fire.

Interestingly NAIDOC Week, which is on now, is not evident here at all because, I guess, it’s not really needed.

Tomorrow we head deep into Arnhem Land – along 420kms of mostly dirt (sometimes corrugated) road to the Arafura Swamp. You may not hear from us for a while!!

Stills…

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Welcome to Country

Healing ceremony

 

8 thoughts on “Arnhem Land Trip 2018, Days 3 and 4: The tour starts”

  1. Wonderful filming Len. The beach, water and people are gorgeous. What kind of leaves are the healing leaves I wonder??

    • Thanks Carolyn, they told us it was bucharan’ing but googling it when I was writing this post didn’t reveal its real name.

  2. *sigh* I didn’t know that about the taxes on Macassans. Why can’t they just let things alone? Perhaps because of White Australia paranoia? Though you’d think they’d have worked out that if the Indonesians hadn’t invaded this far, they weren’t likely to do it at all…

    I’m intrigued: Did they tell you why that portrait of Roy Marika had a circlet of flies around him?

    • Back with the Internet so able to answer now, Lisa. Re the taxes, I don’t know enough about the economic situation but we are talking late 19th century South Australia. It seems they wanted to stop the trade but I need to fnd out more about this fascinating piece of history.

      As for Roy, it’s probably not clear in the picture but I think they are native bees and that they would have some totemic relationship with Roy. I can’t think of any other reason for their being there. I photographed this during free wandering time.

  3. I think the “flies” are bees on honey comb – but still curious to know why they are included in Marika’s picture. Of course, I would not even have thought to ask without Lisa pointing it out. There was a lot in the post that I did not understand. I guess I will have more things to look up. =)

    The pictures were great – no surprise – they always are! Nothing like having a talented photographer on the journey. Curious to know if you show any of the pics to your fellow travelers. Do they ever share their pics with you?

    Loved the videos! So much fun to sort of really ” be there for a moment in time” Loved hearing Sue, too! Wondering if the
    medicinal concoction did dry clear. Silly me – I thought the leaves looked like Eucalyptus – but then YOU would know that
    if it was, I guess. More to try to look up. Wish me luck!!

    As always, thanks so much for sharing and for including me. I especially enjoyed the birds and that red rock beach was indeed lovely!!

    Carry on, seekers of adventure and knowledge and ENJOY!!

  4. Thanks Trudy. Finally back to the world of the Internet. Yes you’re right they are bees, and as I’ve said to Lisa, I believe they’d have a totemic relationship with him.

    We don’t do a lot of showing of pics on these tours mainly because we are all too busy taking our own, but occasionally we’ll say “look at this”. Certainly at the end, we share email addresses and will often send pics around to each other.

    Yes, the leaves really did dry clear and unsticky. It’s apparently a plant in the laurel family, litsea glutinosa, which is native to Australia and neighbouring Asian countries. I found another spelling – Butjiringaning. I suspect we were given an easier more phonetic spelling. Did you find anything?

    I’m afraid we won’t have many critter photos for you but a couple will fascinate you I think, but its going to take me a while to catch up.

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