We had the opportunity to attend an Outback Barbeque...a tourist inspired extra. The setting was starkly beautiful, set in a bowl, a rather high flat area surrounded by sheer red rock. A presentation on boomerangs was given by
Denny, a jackeroo, or cowboy. He was goodlooking, I will give him that. But he was rather rude and sort "phoning it home." There is a habit of speech in the outback that contributed to the night. Because of the swarms of flies (blessedly, almost miraculously absent for us) people speak with clenched teeth lest they eat too many bugs. Denny stood over the roaring fire, with clenched teeth, speaking in a normal tone of voice to around 50 people who were my age or older. I asked him to speak louder. He responded,"Move!" A few of us did, but I know there were many who could not hear.
This man, whose name I forget, gave a brilliant talk about Aboriginal traditions and did a star talk at the end of the evening. Seeing the Southern Cross for the first time was awe inspiring.
The menuwas tough steak, baked potatoes, sausage, some kind of salad, and damper bread, cooked in a buried dutch oven...the best part of the meal.
The evening ended with songs and hi-jinks around the fire.
The flies were absent because of a confluence of meteorology and grasshoppers. I guess there has been more rain than usual, more green food, a swarm of grasshoppers came and ate the grasses leaving no where for the flies to lay their eggs....or something like that. In any case, we were lucky. Otherwise we would have had flies at our eyes, our nostrils, the corners of our mouths.
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I paint when I travel in order to understand the landscape. These watercolors are a "way of knowing" for me, not intended as great paintings or even intended for frames. They tend to stay in my travel journal to remind me.
Along the route to Kata Tjuta, I saw cracks in the red, red sand. Distant mountains sped by. I drew the ink sketches on the bus and painted later. I heard it was very distracting for the bus driver.
Kata Tjuta, or the Olgas, did seem very male to me. Indeed, they do have exclusively male sites. If an Aboriginal woman had been with us, she would have covered her eyes rather than gaze on the forbidden sites.
Uluru, the back side, sketched on site, in a big hurry as we walked to a water hole, the most beautiful waterhole I have ever seen. Balancing the pad of paper, the camera and the pace was a challenge...but I did not want to miss what the guide had to say.
Our bus driver was our guide and his love and respect for the Aboriginal people was palpable. A more sympathetic guide could not be imagined.
When I drew this one, I sighed and said,"Now I understand." I felt like the form and the meaning of the mountain had entered me, somehow.
The first glimpse of Uluru is an iconic experiences. It looms in the distance like a big turtle shell, a giant crown of a hat...You see it in the open flat plain and deduce that it must be big. But how big?
