Wetherby Station

On the way to Wetherby Station, we stopped at The National Hotel in MT Molloy. After many many hairpin turns, going UP, toward Wetherby, we stopped for a beer or a shandy. The National Hotel is an OLD roadhouse with rooms. The owner regaled us with tales of poisonous snakes in the rafters. The second floor is surrounded by open porch. Each bedroom opens onto the porch for maximum air movement. I want to stay there (except for the lack of security!). A Shandy? You didn't tell us what a SHANDY is! Well, I thought it was pretty vile! A shandy is 1/2 lemonade and 1/2 beer. Understand that lemonade in Australia is Sprite! I did not finish it! Wetherby Station is a working cattle station and tourist spot...I think they call it cattle tourism;-)

We were met at the corral by John Colless on horseback. The station was built in as a homestead in 1879, one of the oldest in the district. It was a stop on the way to the gold fields. The cattle introduced to the area were a cross between brahmins and zebu, making them a smallish, hardy, drought tolerant cow. They are all grass/range fed...organic to the max. They try to run the station in a sustainable manner. They use no herbicides or poisons (except when the dingos get too populous.) There is no shooting on the station except at the gum trees and ironwoods to harvest the seeds! They have a fire plan for the whole area...the station is responsible for the safety of their 26 neighbors. They do use controlled burns to maintain the land, dropping incendiary ping pong balls from helicopters to control the grasses that otherwise would form a serious fire threat to the whole area. There is much wildlife in the area: snakes : Taipans (lose one or 2 calfs per year to them), pythons. Birds: cattle egrets, kookabura, plover and many more listed on their website. Wallabies and kagaroos, termites, fish. It is a lush rich area. They weigh the steers from time to time to determine which are going to which market. Did you know that steers with broad haunches are sent to Korea; old steers to Japan; slender steers to Indonesia to be fattened on sugar cane waste? John mustered this bull and his cows for us. they were very beautiful, healthy animals. A sculpture up by the house. orchids! Love those bromeliads! Various unidentified buildings on the property.

Desert Park in Alice Springs

In and about Alice, we saw our first kangaroo, crested pigeon, gallahs, and magpies and it was warm enough for the gum trees to give off their delicious eucalyptus scent. We visited the extraordinary School of the Air and the Alice Springs Telegraph station.

I spent much of the second day at the Desert Park. Only the morning was scheduled, but several of us stayed longer since the afternoon was free. The birds of prey demonstration was spectacular. Do I remember the names of any of the birds? NO!!! But I bought a guide and marked them off. I so got into watching the birds in Australia. What struck me first, before their uncommon beauty, was the birdsong: new and different. There were, of course, magpies and bower birds, honey somethings and rainbow bee-somethings; gullahs and black cocatoos; buggies. I also attended about an hour lecture by an aboriginal guide, named Doug, at the park about survival skills of the aboriginal peoples. Doug was from the Arrende people of Central Australia. The returning boomerang was not used here, nor was the didgeridoo. The returning boomerang is an east coast style, used in bird hunting to flush out the water birds. Boomerang technology is over 10,000 years old. the Arrende boomer is heavier, curved at one end, designed to break the leg bones of kangaroos and emu...and people, in war time. Spears were also used, the heads attached with fresh kangaroo achilles tendon that dries and shrinks to hold the point tightly. They also used spear throwers to extend the range, nulla nulla or club with a quartz head that could also be thrown. All tools were multipurpose, for hunting, gathering, preparing the ground to sit etc. Women carried spears, digging sticks, a coolamon bowl and maybe a dilly bag. Winnowing was key because some husks were poison. the dilly bag was used for collecting as well and for rinsing out toxins. A quote from his father about the importance of the stories,"If you know the song, you know plenty." He described women as of equal importance to the survival of the group, of equal but different power within the group. He talked about marriage rules...too complicated for me to remember...that prevented inbreeding. Breaking the marriage rules would result in banishing or worse. Children are raised by the "Aunties," a group of adult women including your birth mother and her relations (relations in Aboriginal groups are different than for us...but think aunts, great aunts, some cousins depending on the marriage relation). He said that children "run feral" until 6 or 7 years old. Initiation and scarring is still practiced to some extent. He said it teaches discipline ...and each scar represents a lesson: you look at it and you remember.

We got a ride home fron the Desert Park with an Aussie named Michael who had a huge shotgun shell hanging from his rearview mirror.. Born in Italy, but raised in Australia,He was in Alice on holiday with the Masons. He lives normally in Adelaide. It seems that the Freemasons were in Alice Springs to celebrate the raising of a statue to a pioneer by the name of Stuart. Stuart was a good sort, kind to the natives. But, politically correct types had a fit about placing the statue in the town square because the statue was holding a rifle. The man Stuart never used the rifle to subdue the natives. So, the town council has taken it under advisement and has not raised the statue as yet. So, Michael stayed to party anyways. Among other things, he said he was a conservationist. I asked what that meant. He goes out to the cattle stations to shoot feral cows. When the stations changed over mustering from horses to helicopters, they discovered up to 25% more cattle who had gone feral. Or maybe he meant camels? They are a problem as well. Ran into him later that evening at Bojangles Pub.

On to Alice Springs

More or less rested, more or less adjusted to missing a day and walking upside down...we boarded an airplane for Alice Springs. It is easy to forget that Australia is a country and a continent. Flying to Alice Springs was like flying to Los Angeles...lots fasterthan driving.Flying over vast landscapes of changing colors, over chemical lakes, sand dunes, mountain ranges...all severe. You can see the water courses from the air, even where there is no visible water: follow the trail of the plants.

Alice Springs was begun in the 19th century with a telegraph station at a spring that was subsequently named after the station master's wife, Alice. At the telegraph station I became more interested in the birds. I looked through Judy's good binoculars at this gallah, the ubiquitous bird of down under. They steal food even more blatantly than the seagulls.

The station was the center of operations for communication, mail, medicine, commerce that was brought in by the Europeans. This was one of the areas where there was little hunting of the Aboriginals, thankfully, although their lives were changed for the worse through disease, abuse, and the destruction of their ecologically sensitive and sacred lands. Throughout the history of the Europeans in Australia, there was a mis-understanding of how Aboriginal society worked, and indeed, worked well. The Aboriginal world view was essentially spiritual with the land as sacred and cared for with serious responsibility by those who were mature enough and wise enough to hold the stories and the rituals that would maintain the land in the Dreamtime, the present and the future all at once.Time, for the Australian Aboriginal was circular and ongoing, much like the Inuit.

There are over 300 language groups (tribes) of Aboriginal peoples. The languages can be remarkably different...not just dialects. Language, symbol and sign language were used to communicate over territories. Aboriginal art was part of the communication systems. Today it is on canvas and in bright colors, painted for the burgeoning art market. However, its roots remain practical : describing food sources and locations, seasonal changes, rituals and ceremonies or stories necessary for the maintenance of the land, in some areas mortuary concerns are also a topic. Shields and barks were carved or burned with information that identified your language group, your territory, your family affiliations (sometimes called skin groups) and acted as your passport or calling card. Sometimes bodies were painted with this information as well to help insure safe travels through foreign territories.

As soon as we entered Alice Springs we went to Mbantua Gallery. Mbantua is one of many, many galleries in town. As far as I can tell they all have honest relations with the artists. Most of them give the artists their materials and purchase the finished product outright and pay a further fee upon sale of the painting from the gallery. the painting above is the one I bought.It is by Pauline Morgan Petyarre. Pauline speaks little English. She has been painting for about 10 years. This piece refers to the Pencil Yam Story of the dreamtime, where 2 seeds were born creating 2 different species of pencil yam. The tubers are an important food source and the plant also attracts kangaroos. Pauline and her people perform increase ceremonies to ensure the productivity of the yam.

Alice Springs is a dusty, windy place, raw looking. It was quite cool, since it was winter, but you can feel in your bones that summer would be a scorcher! The air was desert dry, most of us had bloody noses by the time we left the area a few days later. The whole center of town is devoted to Aboriginal arts. It is BIG BUSINESS. The different galleries represent artists from different area, but dominantly in desert dot style here. Many are either fully Aboriginal owned or have boards of directors which include the artists. The galleries are mostly attached to art centers in the outback which function as production facility, store, bank, medical supply, welfare...Art is the primary employment, especially for the women, in the outback areas that maintain a more traditional or isolated lifestyle. Supposedly it is well controlled and not exploitive.

Before we went to Bojangles Pub for a mixed grill of crocodile,bison (water buffalo), kangaroo, camel & emu, we fed the rock wallabies at the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge. It claims to be a premier resort, but in the dark...it looks like an old style Holiday Inn motel. It is situated at a gap in the McDonnell Ranges where black footed rock wallabies live. At sunset, they descend from their rocky home to eat. It you sit very still and remain very quiet, they will feed from your hand. One young girl communed with "her" wallaby for such a long time that she could stroke it. Two wallabies had joeys in the pouch. It was interesting to see them contract the pouch to protect their young when alarmed. I had never thought of the pouch as having volitional muscles! I thought it was just a stretchy pocket of skin.

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