Bush Camping

I'm very grateful to have a job that lets me go camping and be paid for it! Granted, the last bush camp I did for work was in March with about 80 Aboriginal women and 40-50 staff in 45C weather. The weather was much more palatable this time around, with temps in low 30s during the day and in the mid teens at night. The real pest this time was the flies. You know those flies you see on children's faces in Unicef Ads - yeah, they are also here in central Australia, enough to choke you sometimes. You get used to the Aussie wave, batting flies from in front of your face. They head for any source of water - your eyes, nose, ears, mouth. Hardly a day without swallowing a few flies. Beyond that, it was a very successful and enjoyable trip. We picked up 12 teenage girls from a remote community and took them to a nearby homeland called Amuroona, just outside of Indulkana in South Australia (for those looking for it on the map you won't find Amuroona). Homelands are where the owners of the cattle station lived, along with their staff who lived in the outbuildings. Over the years as the cattle stations were abandoned, the houses became occupied by the local Aboriginal population that grew up on those homelands, and worked the station. Some are now the traditional owners of those lands. It's a bit complicated to understand sometimes and I'm not sure I completely understand it all! Either way, the lands are gorgeous and the bush camp area at Amuroona was stunning. Surrounded nearly 360 degrees by red rocky hills, with a nearly circular flat clearing dotted with a few shade trees, bigger than a football field. The bonus was there is a pit toilet there (or as they call it here, a drop toilet). You could chuck your tent or swag anywhere without needing to clear any ground.

burning off the fur from the tails

     We had 12 girls, two senior Aboriginal ladies and the youth worker and I. The first mission was to get all of the swags and tents set up, which the girls did well on their own and they looked after the senior ladies, which was nice to see. Once that was done, we started working on preparing lunch. Each of the girls had a kangaroo tail of their own, plus the senior ladies. We could have each had one, but it does not appeal to me in the very least. First the girls had to get a good fire going with lots of flame so they could burn off the fur and scrape it with a knife or sharp stick. Then they wrapped them up in tinfoil and buried them in the hot coals for about an hour, before taking them out and letting them cool a bit before eating. In my opinion they smell horrendous, but the girls just love them, as do most people from the lands. I'd prefer a kangaroo steak anyday. 

     After lunch we settled into some program materials, such as the gunga card game, my sexual assault information session, and my domestic violence session. We need to work with these young girls as early as possible as the rate of domestic violence in central Australia is absolutely shocking. Some of the key bit I've found important to cover as there is a clear lack of information in the remote communities - no, you cannot get pregnant with twins if you have sex while you're pregnant; just because a young man has been through men's business, you do not have to submit to him for sex, you can indeed still say WIYA! (no) and you must be 17 years old to be legally able to consent to sex with a partner 17 or older. We cannot discuss such issues with any boys or men around, which is why we only took girls. It isn't culturally appropriate to talk about these things in mixed gender groups. It's also much easier to get teenage girls to talk when there are no boys around. 

     Once the programming was finished, the girls were free to hang out, hike up around the rocks, gather firewood for cooking and what came to be their dancing fire. Campfires in central Australia are a breeze. Any fool can make one because everything is tinder dry, and there is an absolute abundance of dry wood, grasses, branches, twigs, leaves, bark, etc. What is popular here and very practical is that only one fire needs to be lit with matches or a lighter. Then to get any other fire going, you just take a burning branch out of the current fire and carry it along. With drought years intermittent, many trees lose limbs, or the entire tree dies. Trees here are pretty smart, if they want to survive the droughts, they will kill off some of their limbs to ensure the main trunk of the tree survives. When the wet weather comes, they grow new limbs. So we had several little fires near swags where the girls put their billy cans (think stainless steel paint can with a pot lid) to boil water for tea. Then they built a big bonfire with large branches that gave off more light and the music started. Someone from the homeland brought a boom box that looked like a commercial speaker and ran on a battery - the sound was amazing. And the girls danced it out in front of the fire. Their favorite tunes were reggae and hip hop. Some of the music was a bit inappropriate, but we used that music during the breaks to make our points about safe sex, violence, drugs, alcohol, etc. It flowed well, which was important. While these girls from remote communities tend to be quite subdued in conversation with whitefellas, you can tell they are still engaged and listening, perhaps running through a situation that may have recently happened in their family. 

     For the last part of the evening, we set the girls up on their swags in front of a laptop set upon my small table and showed them community videos about various topics. They all featured people form the APY lands, so they girls often knew people in them videos. One was on going away to boarding school (very popular here), the Kungka Career Conference (kungka means girl/woman), one on safe sex, one on the community of Mutijulu (the Aboriginal community right next to Uluru aka Ayer's Rock). I enjoyed them as well and they were quite well done, with one of them filmed right here in Alice Springs. Once the videos finished, the girls were sent to bed to start settling in for the night. Like most teenage girls there was a lot of chatter first (always in language so we two whitefellas could not understand), some giggling, rustling of swags being dragged across the campsite to another spot, but before long, everyone was quiet, and it wasn't even 10pm. The moon was up full and bright, and there was only the slightest breeze of wind. I didn't sleep much that night, despite my sleep mask to shut out the brightness of the moon, I just couldn't settle enough to drift off. By 6am. the moon was about to set, and the sun was coming up again. I haven't been up for many sunsets since moving here, so it was gorgeous to sit in the great outdoors and enjoy the ball of fire as it rose. 

     Before long, the girls were all up and eating their wheatbix and drinking cups of tea until we ran out of sugar. Then they packed it all up and we brought them back to community. The youth worker was staying for another night as she planned to do more programming in the community the following day. It was a really good experience, and I'd be happy to do it again soon.