Dances with Flies

Have you heard about the Northern Territory wave? It's a lazy and desultory flapping of the hand in front of the face. It works for one second before the relentless critters zoom in again in droves. Yes. Bush flies.
'Pumpumpa ma ara!' In the Anangu language spoken around Uluru, it means, 'Fly, go away!' I repeated and chanted it again and again without success.
A summer that had Alice Springs residents pant in the shade and unusually mild May nights have failed to cull the harassing insects and have had some locals buy their first fly net ever.
I had been warned and it is my first purchase when I arrive, red-eyed in the red centre, on a blue and gold morning, after 22 long Greyhound hours on the Stuart Highway from Darwin.

Carla, my lovely friend from Mangawhai, New Zealand, an inspiration for some of my most uplifting travel adventures, had directed me towards a five day Soul Motion Workshop in the desert.
I had the urge to feel the pulse of the country, of its arid heart.
I would dance on the softness of its dark ochre sands for better to touch its spirit.
I would twirl gently in the midst of its natural majesty.
I would immerse myself in the voices of the hills, bluffs and ghost gums, in a blissful and meditative dance.
God save us from romantic notions.

We were a fly-netted, scarf-wrapped crowd, a cross between bee-keepers and Lawrence of Arabia, a sight fit to bolster any flagging sense of humour. Add beautiful encounters to the mix, the caring dedication of Michael and Kate, our teachers, the sheer beauty of Honeymoon gap -a dent in the west MacDonnell ranges- the determination to ignore the buzzing war of attrition and you get the picture. I always said Australians were a hardy lot.

My friend Nicole is a testimony to the spirit of that lovely group : she sat to meditate at the foot of a tree and emerged from her stillness to discover a small lizard curled up in the folds of her black dress. So cosy was he, he had to be gently persuaded away when the music called her to dance.
Not being Australian and therefore less hardy, by the late afternoon of the second day, I decided that  enough was enough and escaped into the cool shade of a spacious hall and the pages of a fantasy novel.

Something was building up.



That night, and the next day, thunder, lightning and buckets of rain saved us all from a possible mutiny. We retreated into the hall for the rest of the workshop and had a ball.
Never would I have thought, when I reorganised my bags in Sydney, that the desert would be the only place where I would wear my raincoat. I asked around when it had last rained. Replies were vague. 'Oh, not for at least two years!','We had some 6 months ago, but not like that'. 'Not for a VERY long time.' This is the stuff of legends. You know,  that miraculous wet thing that falls from the sky.
No, just joking. It is rare but not unusual.
Still, I can't help wondering why residents liberally use pumped underground water like there is no tomorrow.

Anyway... mozzies made a come-back, cockroaches retreated into houses, I found a frog in the toilet bowl and I had the exceptional privilege to see a rushing muddy flow in the Todd river, reduced to a string of still ponds by the next day.
Luckily, it was not the date for the regatta, otherwise it would have been cancelled, a rare occurence, indeed. It happened once, in 1993.
Regatta? Yes. Alice Springs runs the only dry river bed boating race in the world. The next one is on August 17th. Is there anything more quirky than that? To me, it is another example of humorous hardship-snubbing Australian bravado.

Back to Soul motion.  The music jolted us out of our expectations, from dreamy live percussions, and guitar and saxophone improvisations that were entrancing, all the way to disco, through soul, funk and African blues (not enough of the latter for me, but it's just me).
Free movement. Free expression. The path towards lack of self-consciousness. The willingness to really meet and know the other and accept to be known. It can be daunting. "Community is the 21st century Buddha." Michael quoted.


Where to now

now that I’ve come out of hiding,
my fears are forgetting to be afraid.

now that I’ve dropped my opinions
in the rain, my story is too small
to cover my heart.

now that I’ve put down what I thought
was important, I’m surprised by angels          
lost along the way.

how we got here doesn’t matter
and where we’re going is just
something for the mind to chew.

i’ll meet you here, in the palace
that difficulty opens—the magical
doorway, the shape of who we are.

mark nepo

I'll dance to that.

I can't think of anywhere I have been, where to establish a sense of community is more important and more difficult than in Alice Springs. Maybe Flagstaff, Arizona, where I was in the early 1980s? But they don't really try there. The young Navajo who introduced me to his community was being shot at and running for dear life when I met him.

The feelings I shared with Jane, another dancer, were of an impenetrable distance and aloofness from the Aboriginal community, a surliness from chance encounters, a sens of loss from drunken groups sitting in the shade of trees. And, of course, it is no wonder when one considers the clashing history between settlers and local tribes. And of course, two weeks spent in Alice Springs do not enable me to give an informed picture, just spot isolated dots on a canvas that fail to make a distinct pattern. 

And, indeed, what the Aboriginal community displays of itself is at odds with the stunning paintings in the many Alice galleries, some of them so wondrously essential they brought tears to my eyes.

In his book, "Songlines and Faultlines", my reading companion at present, and one that answers as many questions as it opens others, Glenn Morrison evokes the search for identity that the red centre, the outback, represent for Australians. Now that the colonial period is over in this young country, what makes one Australian? Of course, I have no idea and I believe a few Australians don't either. That leads me to ponder whether it might be linked in some ways to the prevalence of mental disorders in the population at large that my friend Helen, GP in Canberra, faces in her daily practice. Statistics show that half the population is suffering and health structures are not coping. 

There is so much that is tried and attempted with good will and generosity in Alice Springs, once named the stabbing capital of Australia, where I was warned not to walk back home alone from a quiz night (a warning I didn't heed), where you can't buy alcohol without presenting a photo-id (and not before 2pm) and where it is recommended you lock your door. 

Strangely enough, I felt completely at home there, drinking lattes in the many cafés, having a stroll in the morning to get the croissants on a Sunday, and being, as a rule, welcome with smiles, an easy-going openness and a can-do attitude. A small cosmopolitan town with a strong cultural brew, is what I felt Alice to be.

Can there be a true meeting in the middle, on that frontier? Like with everything human, things seem to proceed at the speed of continental drift, shocked into sudden progress by the odd earthquake or eruption. Proceed it does and there is 'an increasingly interwoven sense of place, in Central Australia and elsewhere'. (Glenn Morrison)

Twenty-five years ago, on 26 October 1985,  Uluru was returned to its traditional owners. It was the focus of a ceremony held to transfer custodianship of Uluru and neighbouring Kata Tjuta to its Anangu traditional owners. The ceremony, performed in the shadow of the immense rock, remains one of the most significant moments in the Aboriginal land-rights movement.

 

For my friend Jane, who accompanied me on a cheap and cheerful backpacker tour to King's Canyon and the Red Centre National Park, going to Uluru was momentous. As an Australian, it was significant for her,  in a way my European self couldn't comprehend. 






I can only say, that after that tour, whenever I slipped into sleep or stayed half awake in the morning, out of nowhere came vivid pictures of red looming shapes whispering forcefully in my mind. I can only say that I felt like an intruder as I walked up the valley of the wind in Kata Tjuta. I can only say that I was dwarfed by the flowing river of the milky way and the myriads of constellations, by the scope of the land stretching its desert oaks, ghost gums, mulgas and spinifex to a far distant horizon. I can only remain silent about what I felt when our little group slept in the bush around a big camp fire that kept us warm, against the cold desert night. I can only evoke my awe and reverence as I slowly walked around Uluru.

It is not just the natural landscape, stunning enough in itself. It is how the feet that wandered its many paths have infused it with meaning. It is how it has been and is inhabited. It is not unlike European pilgrimage paths. The one I walked over a year ago from the centre of France to Santiago has been imprinted by millions of souls. 




"The dreaming is when the world was and continues to be created", writes Glenn Morrison. I finally was able to picture, along its pages, the nature of Songlines, a term coined by Bruce Chatwin. There is nothing romantic in them, though. Mythological, yes but ever so practical, a past and present map of landmarks, hunting and food gathering rights, permanent waters and mythological sites. A geography of survival, created by the ancestors, sometimes animals, humans or part humans who created the land as they walked it, and whose stories have been handed over. Australia is crisscrossed by them, a complex web of signs. And I believe, the world. 

Walking the songlines is not aimless walkabout. And there, I realise that the term walkabout, meaning  'To wander around the country like a nomad' represents very well where I am at, with sometimes the sense of being lost, of searching. It has nothing to do with the Aboriginal culture where one leaves one's home, the place limited by the extent of one's language, for a purpose, whether to find a mate or go to a special spiritual site for a ceremony. They are not lost. They are 'restricted nomads', which means their movements are already defined, as are the rights of passing through another tribe's land.

Nicole and I were billeted at Christopher's, close to the centre of Alice Springs for the duration of the dance. In the end, I stayed there two weeks. He refused to be given any money and lent me his car, a big 4WD, complete with kangaroo bars and a snorkel, that took Jane and I on a tour to Hermannburg's mission, home to Hermannburg's potters, whose delightful creations I had first seen at Brisbane museum. I would have loved to visit their workshop but they were at an art fair in Tasmania. One can argue about the work of missions but the Lutherans who established Hermannsburg were tough cookies and, thanks to them, many Aborigines stayed alive, protected from trigger happy settlers. The  heritage precinct gives a fair idea of the austere life of that community. The small museum is a tribute to Albert Namatjira, born at the mission and a pioneer of contemporary indigenous Australian art. None of it with dots. 

There is nothing more magical than the presence of permanent water in the desert, nothing more tender than the lush green reeds of Glenn Helen, nothing sharper than the cold depths of Ellery Creek Big Hole amid the baked red earth. 

Similarly, Christopher's house in Alice was an oasis of shade, with chickens scratching the yard, cooking herbs in the garden, a huge back verandah, where, on my last afternoon before hopping on the bus back to Darwin, discussion was had around a good meal, in the company of a young playwright. Over dessert and coffee, we talked about breaking the rules of poetry, of finding again the nature of language before rational learning. Surrealism reared its head. 

I can very well imagine a writer's retreat there, on the back porch, with the shrieks of the mad neighbour's mad parrot in the background. In the short time I was there, aphorisms sprouted spontaneously like, 'It's amazing how much time there is when you take your time'' and 'Bravery makes angels smile' (and morning croissants make them laugh).

A musician and writer of tales, Christopher greets each and every morning with one of his compositions on the guitar, one of many numbered 'Meditations'. 
He is also a poet, though he might not like me to say that. Here is one of his. You'll understand why I chose it to finish this rather long blog.



I am a Man who Travels through Lands.


I am a man who travels through lands

Where boys turn into Dingoes and back into man

Where wind wakes with whispers of naked spines

And gentle hands guide gentle minds

Where water sings the root of trees

And the singer of water sings next to me

Where rain is called and lightning answers

And skin on fire blaze night, heart and spirit

Where life is a mystery that cannot be found

In the minds or tongues or mouths of men

But between the stars and seas and land

On which we all stand

I am a man who travel through lands

Where boys turn into Dingoes and back into man

Orient Express Walkabout

In a country where long distances are the norm, flying is what people do.
Being European, I rather fancy rail travel.
I research what Queensland has to offer and, miracle, there is a train that runs three times a week. Unlike the Ghan, the luxury and extortionate option that bridges the 3000 km between Adelaide and Darwin, the 'Spirit of Queensland' turns out to be the cheapest and most comfortable choice over cars, planes and Greyhound buses. Ok, it takes longer than driving up the 1837 km of oriental coast from Brisbane to Cairns but it is fine by me.

As the train lurches through the darkening countryside, an impeccably courteous attendant brings me supper then will transform my seat into a pod-like bed, an excellent alternative to barely reclining seats at a very reasonable extra cost. The brightly-dressed middle-aged lady across the corridor talks all the time on her mobile and has yet to discover the use of earphones for watching the vapid series she seems to favour. She is exactly the sort of irritating character that gets murdered in a novel : not aware of the consequences of her actions, she would have inadvertently revealed some dark secret. The old couple in front of her are too polite to tell her she is being a nuisance. They would be the typical beyond reproach characters who snap for some obscure reason that we only discover on page 199. The courteous attendant is 'trop poli pour être honnête' and is more than likely an accomplice.



Alas, nothing dramatic happens and I sleep like a baby until I am spewed onto the Proserpine platform, bleary-eyed, at 6h30 am and dropped at my accommodation, near Airlie Beach, the heart of the Great Barrier Reef, my first stop since Brisbane. In the latter, I only have seen a wonderfully curated museum, where art is not displayed by style or periods but, intuitively, by themes, colours, shapes and have stayed in a peaceful hostel not taken over by backpackers in the New Farm area of leafy streets, good cafés and riverside restaurants.

I shoulder my rucksack towards the reception of the Bush village Budget accommodation. Cabins hide behind palm trees raucous with birdsongs. Faded hammocks sag invitingly in their shade. A small pool glitters by a verandah where Sue and John, the caretakers, are breakfasting. No worries, they show me where to drop my bag, give me directions to the 'best coffee in the area' and caution me not to swim at the nearby beach 'because of crocs and stingers'. Box jelly fish are around until the end of May and it seems to be always the season for crocs.
Sue feeds rainbow lorikeets twice a day. They gather in a keenly focused and shrieky prattle. Yellow-crested cockatoos flock en masse to disperse the smaller colourful birds, who dart over my head in a volley of ruby and emerald arrows. A couple of bush turkeys chase each other in an indignant flurry of black feathers. In the backyard, Japanese bantams scratch the dirt and ducks waddle. In the evenings, I share coronas with John and Sue and recover from the most snorkelling I have ever done and the most wonders I have ever seen.

A cyclone struck Airlie Beach two years ago and where the waves hit, the coral lies in bleached heaps but everywhere else is stunning. Further north in Queensland, the water is warmer and more bleaching has occurred but there are still areas of sheer beauty, or so I was told, in the 2300km reef that stretches all the way to Papua New Guinea. Shall I mention the crown-of-thorns starfish which munched through 50% of the coral cover in 25 years or pollution from pesticides and various chemicals filtering from the land? Conservationists have a hell of a job and the very recently elected government in Australia doesn't seem to put ecological concerns on top of its list, to put it mildly. I shall not mention Adani. (https://www.stopadani.com)

The sun filters through the clear blue sea like rays of light through clouds. My mask fills with water, my nose runs, my eyes sting, I tire to kick my flippers in an agitated swell but I wouldn't be anywhere else in the world. A strong wind almost prevents us to sail to the reef but, thankfully, it dies down to a manageable breeze. The tide ebbs and our small group swims in quieter pools, edged by coral walls teeming with multicoloured life. Staghorn corals are indigo or show an indigo tip, a sign of regeneration. Tiny fluo dots fleet away among the sturdy lobes of brain corals and the long flat ears of table corals. I float among shoals of blue yellow-tailed surgeon fish, among butterfly, cardinal and banner fish, marvel at the stunning glow of the emerald chromies and at the cobalt flesh inside giant clams...

An old, battered, loggerhead turtle swim placidly in front of me. I won't spot the 3 metre reef shark or the enormous stingray that others, better swimmers than me, have seen. But it is enough marvels for one day.

On a tour to the Whitsundays, I walk on Whitehaven beach, deemed to be the second most beautiful beach in the world. I don't know what you think but, were I a beach, I wouldn't want to be in bloody trip advisor. I would wish for my white sands to only show the rare lucky footprint and to only hear the waves lapping and the shrieks of beady-eyed gulls. Still, it is astonishingly, truly, a gem. Goannas stomp ponderously under picnic tables, hoping for scraps to fall in their toothy jaws. They are a diminutive species related to the Komodo dragon. I wouldn't want to walk on their tail by mistake. 

The very tall tour guide has legs like matchsticks emerging from wide shorts and a bagfull of tales. A few years ago, a coastal taipan, the second  most venomous snake in Australia, nay, in the world, slithered among groups of tourists munching on their sandwiches on that very beach. The taipan is one of them 'cigarette snakes': when you are bitten, you hardly have time to smoke your last ciggy. Ah, and a saltwater croc found its way into Airlie beach lagoon, the swimming pool at the water front. It is all very entertaining. 

Still, that evening, as I walked back to my cabin in the darkness of a moonless night, I carefully scanned the path snaking its way through shadowy mangroves. 

Encounters on train journeys can be the most unexpected. On my way to Cairns, the final stretch with the 'Spirit of Queensland', I share a coffee with Suzy in the cafeteria. She is one of those old ladies who don't give a hoot about their appearance. I guess this one never ever did. Her glasses, fixed with tape and elastic bands, perch askew on her long nose, her red jacket is held with the odd safety pin and a frayed flowery scarf completes the ensemble. She jumps from one rapid fire tale to another, of working on missions with aborigines and fighting for their rights throughout her life. Her son owns a solar-powered boat on the Daintree river, silent and flat-bottomed, that can approach wildlife very close. I will follow that lead.

If I didn't have to be in Alice Springs by May 14th for a Soul Motion dance workshop in the bush, I would have lingered in Cairns, a tropical, friendly seaside town nestled in thickly forested hills. 

On Fitzroy island, an hour offshore from Cairns, I relax on Nudey beach, have a cool beer in the shade and visit a sea turtle rehabilitation centre, where they are fattened up before being reintroduced into the wild, 250 of them in 15 years. Australian coasts have the most concentrated turtle population in the world. And they are suffering. From plastic ingestion, yes: it makes them float: unable to dive deep enough, they can't feed themselves and also become an easy prey to sharks lurking in the depths underneath them. But the most common reason for their dwindling numbers is hunger. The food they are used to is not in abundance anymore. The centre is ready to release a green turtle, thus named because they eat their greens.  Julz had been stabbed twice and went into emergency care before arriving at Fitzroy Island rehabilitation centre, being understandably wary of humans. Who would do such a  thing? I despair.

A tour takes me to the stunning Mossman gorge where I swim in cool croc-free waters and to the Daintree forest where a restaurant offers a selection of tropical fruit on the side of the plate. Did you know that oranges originally came from China and are a cross between pomelos and mandarines and that red dragon fruit make you piss pink? The latter taste as if they had been dipped in perfume. 

The hills around Cairns and the Daintree are home to one of the few remaining Gondwana rainforests in Australia. The others are in northern New South Wales and in Tasmania. Gondwana was a giant landmass comprising what later became Africa, South America, Australia, Antartica and the Indian sub-continent. So, species seen in those Australian pockets that have resisted an increasingly drier climate are a testimony of what forests would have been like at that time, before those continents separated and Australia pursued its isolated way: king ferns soaring up to 9 metres and the ancestors of olive trees, of grapevines and rhododendrons. 

It has a very primitive, ancient feel, an emotion that is not dispelled by the sight of 4 metre long saltwater crocs lounging in the sun at the water's edge. Among the pictures taken by David, the owner of the 'Solar whisper' Daintree boat, is a croc eating a shark. It reminds me of one of my father's stories that used to make me squeal in delighted fear. He was a radio officer in the merchant navy for 20 years after WW2. Harbours where not so well equipped then, so unloading and loading took longer and sailors had more time on land. In Abidjan, locals came to fetch him in dugout canoes and, as they were paddling to shore, he enquired about the presence of crocodiles in the waters. No crocodile there, but plenty of sharks, he was told. 
Well, the Daintree has both and both very toothy. 





















We drive all the way up to cape Tribulation, thus christened by Captain Cook. The barrier reef gets increasingly closer to land as one sails north. Cook had to slalom in a reef labyrinth until he hit spiky corals, the Endeavour taking water faster than the crew were able to pump it out. They had to throw tons of load overboard to make it lighter and limped to Cooktown. The hill behind the cape was named Mount Sorrow. They really didn't have a good time there. 

North of the Daintree, all the way to cape York, there are no more services: except in Cooktown, there is no more electricity, no more running water. The peninsula is home to various aborigine tribes and a 4WD is mandatory. 

My trip in Queensland could well continue to be unabashedly touristy, were I not to meet Lucida. She is half Maori and looks like Buffy Ste-Marie. She takes me up the mountains to meet Michaela and Felica who own a beautiful barramundi fish farm. We both drive to Stoney creek water hole and enjoy a swim in gorgeous pristine nature. Lucida writes her own songs and I accompany her on an open Mic pub crawl where she will sing some cover songs and some of her own. She is also part of 'Songs of AustraNesia', a north Queensland group of musician from Aborigine, Torres Straight, Melanesian and Polynesian origins. (https://austranesia.com.au). She is an inspiration.

I remember a conversation with John and Sue, from the Airlie beach Bush Village. Both Kiwis, they have been together a long time. John is half-Maori, and, as such, was invited by tribes in Arnhem land. Sometimes, he would leave, for long months at a time, Sue tells me. He would go walkabout. They share a look of tender humour.

I  guess I answered the walkabout call.