Australia: Tales from a Canadian Nomad: Camp Out in South Australia

never get tired of this view on the bush roads

How cool is a job that pays you to go camping? Well that was my job at the end of June. Along with a youth worker, a policewoman, and a mental health social worker, we took a dozen female Aboriginal youth and several Aboriginal elder ladies camping at a homeland near Ernabella. Our focus was talking to them about sexual assault, the age and concept of consent, gunga and grog, and domestic violence. And we managed this as we sat in a dry riverbed perched on swags around the fire. It was a cold weekend, but such stunning beauty surrounded us, I hardly felt the cold - that and I am also Canadian so conditioned to be comfortable in the cold weather.

The girls were very receptive, and while they do not tend to talk much, you could see they were definitely listening and taking in the information we provided. Other highlights of the trip included cooking kangaroo tails (I did not partake), taking a girl to the clinic for stitches after she sliced her finger open cutting her kangaroo tail, listening to dingoes howl at the moon, watching wild horses thunder by our campsite, and listening to the stories the elder women had to tell, partly in language, and partly in English. After the girls settled into their swags together with the elder ladies for the night around a campfire, the rest of us swapped stories around our own campfire. It was a lovely way to finish out the last days in my job with NPY Women's Council.