Red on Blue, just the other side of day

One of the best things about living in Darwin is the beautiful clear sunsets and, now that the Dry has begun, they're even better than ever. One of the best ways to view them is on one of the many sunset cruises on Darwin Harbour of an evening. My friends, Kerry and Bruce, were up from Sydney last week, so I took the opportunity to tick yet another activity off my "before I go back to Canberra list" and booked a dinner cruise on the Alfred Noble off Stokes Hill Wharf. The cruise was great, the food was fantastic, the wine refreshing and the sunset impressive. It was well worth it.

Farewell my baby

After 18 years of being a member of my family, my cat, Tia, died today of rhenal failure, which afflicts all cats in the end.

He was a real personality, loving social occasions, laps, sitting in the sun, pizza crusts and generally what everyone else was doing at the time. He was very loving and, like a two-year old person, had all the frustration of complex needs without being able to communicate them. Heaven forbid if we misunderstood the miaow for 'I want to be let out' with 'I want food' or, mostly, 'I want you to go back to bed because I'm tired and I want company'.

Goodbye baby (or, as my mother unfortunately and traumatically called you 'pussy boy'). I will miss you a great deal.

Tiwi Dreaming

A tropical dawn is beautiful. The birds are singing, the stars are still faintly visible in the sky and the sun rises pinky-red over Frances Bay. I sit on my balcony overlooking the water clutching my cup of tea and think: "why the hell am I awake at 6am on a Saturday morning?"

I have been so busy these last few weeks with Uni that I haven't written up about my trip to Tiwi on the Tuesday after Easter. It was a lovely day with visits to the Museum and some Tiwi ceremonies. I bought some artwork from Ngaruwanajirri (The Keeping House), which provides employments and skills training for Tiwi Islanders with a disability. The art is below. The artist for both pieces is Marie Yvonne Tipuamantumirri.

All my friends are getting Mazdas...

Or, in the most traditional version, marriage is in the air. My brother's! Little brother just rang and announced his engagement to his partner, Dan. The two have decided to have a "wedding" (personally I HATE the term commitment ceremony although considering the legal status of homosexual relationships in our country it's probably more accurate). A declaration of commitment and then big party. Congratulations, guys.

I thought the world was supposed to look better in the morning?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that when you take a week off work you will instantly get sick. Such was my thought on Saturday morning as I sat drinking tea in my surprisingly-nice cabin to try to calm my swollen gland, sore throat and headache. This bug, characterised by the headache and a general feeling of being hungover even when you've had nothing to drink has been hanging around work and I keep getting patches of it off and on. Thus I was not the happiest puppy when, three cups of tea but sans breakfast, I met up with today's tour guide. Maybe this is why I didn't enjoy today so much. Still, I got to see Ubirr and that is the main thing.

To start things off, our taciturn guide Victor drove us around Jabiru: not quite the cultural tour I was expecting unless you find uranium mines and demountables fascinating. Then we spent way too long at the Bowali Visitor Centre where I obtained an apple for my breakfast. The Bowali Visitor Centre is very nice but not a patch on the Cultural Centre of the day before. Finally time for the trip to Ubirr, where the rock art is much older than Nourlangie. The paintings range from about 20,000 years ago up to the present day. Because the road is flooded this time of year, the tour company has set up a system of cars and boats to get us across the flooded part.

Photo: People fishing on the road to Ubirr.

What you can't see in this photo is the large croc trap just to the left, thankfully empty. This next photo is of the flooded road from the other side of the boat trip. The boat trip was very pleasant as the plain this time of year is completely submerged in water making it an eerie swamp-like landscape with the ever-present dragonflies that signal the dry is coming flitting everywhere.

Finally we made it to Ubirr and oh yeah, you know how I mentioned it was hot yesterday? Make it hotter today. Definitely 40 degrees, 90% humidity. We started climbing the escarpment at 11:30 and we were clambering up the exposed top at midday. Beautiful view though. The rock art itself was sheltered away from the elements, although a natural leak in one of the galleries has ruined some of them, as have vandals. There is, high on the rock, a painting of a thylacine now extinct everywhere, although extinct on the mainland several thousand years ago. The photo below is the amazing view offered from the top of Ubirr.

Now on the homeward run, we left Kakadu around 4pm and drove back to Darwin via the great view at "Windows on the Wetland" where we had a glass of wine and watched a very impressive storm roll in. Positively monsoonal, it was still raging when we got to Darwin and was very relaxing to watch from my balcony while I ate dinner and chilled.

A Very Good Friday Part 2

From Yellow Waters to the mystic beauty of Nourlangie, where Aboriginal people are believed to have sheltered from storms and the heat. One of the great tragedies of our heavy tread upon the Earth is that the people who lived here, the Warramal clan, were decimated after Europeans came and are now extinct. As such, no one is left alive to tell the stories of the artwork that remains on the rock walls. The art is very special of course and, being comparatively modern, is quite distinct: there is a tradition of painting over older artworks so older paintings can be seen behind the more modern versions. However, what is special about Nourlangie is that it has an old, ancient feel to it. This feel pervades all of Kakadu from the floodpains through to the layered walls of the escarpment. This land is so ancient you can feel its great age surrounding you.

I had some initial reservations about showing the art but have decided to. I've had a look around the net and there seem to be photos of it everywhere. If I find I've made a mistake I'll take it down later but for now here is some art from Nourlangie.

After viewing the main gallery, we clambered up to the lookout for the view. It being around 3:30pm now and nearly 40 degrees, I was, to put it bluntly, buggered. I admired the view then staggered back to the bus to down another litre of water. I had a headache, bad sign, but honestly could not have drunk more water than I did. I drank more than 5 litres and it still wasn't enough.

All finished for the day, the tour bus dropped me off at my accommodation, which rather surprisingly turned out to be a really nice self-contained cabin just outside of Jabiru in a spread-out complex with a pool and bistro. Big shout out to the nice man at Kakadu Lodge who moved heaven and earth to get me a gluten-free meal. I was feeling weary and unwell by this time and it was very welcome. Ate dinner, finished the inevitable "I'm on holiday" Terry Pratchett novel and went to bed at the late hours of...7:30pm. No joke. Bye bye good Friday.

A Very Good Friday

Friday morning, 6am and man was it was hot. And yeah, I know, it's Darwin so it's always hot. But lately it has been genuinely hot. 25 degrees, apparent temperature with humidity 31 degrees. At 6am. Up here, that's about half an hour before sunrise. I stood on the driveway
sweating for all of about 5 minutes before whisked away in air-conditioned comfort to Kakadu.

You know, I have a traditional aversion to coach tours. The only reason I compromised this time round was that it's the only company that takes you to Ubirr (arguably the best rock-art site in the park) in the Wet. The road's still flooded at this time of year so no cars can get through. I have to say, our driver was very knowledgable and I quite enjoyed the three-hour drive down.

So, what's to say about Kakadu that hasn't already been said. It's 20,000 sq km of National Park. It's World Heritage Listed for both natural and cultural reasons, making it only one of about 6 such sites in the world (really should look that up but it's something like that). The name "Kakadu" is from Gagadju, a language that no longer has any living speakers. The Park consists mainly of Aboriginal land leased back to the government and jointly managed by the traditional owners. Most of it is Savannah or woodlands. This time of year, many of the floodplains are covered with water but they're draining fast and will soon be normal ground.

Photo: Photo from South Alligator River of Yellow Waters Floodplain. The bird in the tree is drying its wings after fishing.

Our first stop was actually the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre near Cooinda. I must admit I wasn't expecting much and was pleasantly surprised. The building is designed in the shape of pig-nosed turtle and the displays are about local flora and fauna in terms of their traditional cultural uses. It also has creation myths, an outline of the local tribes' kinship system (including both moieties and skin names) and I really enjoyed my time there.

After the cultural centre, it was off to Yellow Water Wetlands for a cruise with a fantastic guide. Most of the guides and rangers that work in the park are traditional owners and as such are amazingly knowledgable. Not so much wildlife around in the Wet, they all congregate around the remaining billabongs in the Dry, but the cruise was definitely worth it for the eerie paper-bark swamp and the vista of floodplains. The photo below is of the paperbark swamp. It definitely doesn't capture it, unfortunately.

No Easter Eggs for Miss Chubby this year

Wow, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Uni has started and the idiot who took a full-time study load as well as working full-time spends her whole time doing assignments or walking round and round her desk in the time-honoured manner of all procrastinators. Having said that, I really DID need to do that laundry, that floor needed to be mopped and what's the point of studying if I don't have another cup of coffee?

But none of that matters today because it is Easter Sunday and I'm a little sad. This year, I didn't do my mad dash home for Easter as I set aside this time to see the Top End. That's right. I put aside the study books, the familial responsibilities and the Trepang Farming (long story regarding the only Uni assignment I've ever written that involves the word "penis" and not in a metaphorical, semiotic, feminist-studies way) and hit Kakadu.


I spent Good Friday and yesterday touring around in 40 degree heat with a mere 90% humidity and got to see the top three on my Kakadu hit list, Ubirr, Nourlangie and Yellow Waters, and some other stuff as well.

I have a load of photos so I'm going to divide this post up into separate pieces. Thankfully, I'm not sunburnt and exhausted this morning, like I was when in Katherine, so I intend to produce complete sentences, spell words correctly and not generally babble incoherently.

I'm such a teeny weeny bear...

Haven't put a photo from the Dave files up here for a while so here he is: being held in the hand of my lovely assistant (I totally don't remember her name) in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza circa March 2002.

Typical hazy Cairo environs day, unfortunately.

Egypt is pretty amazing. I definitely want to go back.

Sorry

Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

Kevin Rudd
February 13, 2008


EDITED 03/04/09: Want to contribute to discussion about important issues such as the Stolen Generation and overcoming Indigenous disadvantage? Join me over at www.galtha.blogspot.com.