Kalumburu

August 2012

My family and I have spent the last few weeks traversing the Kimberley: a vast area in the North West of Australia. Here you'll find cattle stations, national parks and aboriginal communities, the members of whom have come to uneasy agreements with private and government corporations concerning the care and conservation of this untamed land.It's difficult to get here, live here and for some, even more difficult to understand it here.

We spend a few days at Punamii-unpuu (Mitchell Falls) where the campsite has hybrid toilets (fancy drop toilets) and no showers. We spend a day exploring.

"Watch out for killer-waller-drop-bears", my husband cheerfully announces.

"Are they in the boabs, Dad, or the other trees?"

"Yes" he calls over his shoulder, striding ahead through scrub and savannah bushland, then rock formations where ancient story lines are grooved in surfaces orange and black.

We stand in awe of aboriginal rock paintings with their red ochre markings carved so deeply they are part of a landscape quivering with song, sung thousands of years ago.

We swim in the waterfalls although the red dirt doesn't wash off: it has seeped into our skin and stained the cells under the surface.

The evenings are cool. The sound of bat wings slap in the night sprinkled with light from the stars and moon.

"What's that sound, Dad?"

"Oh, that's the killer-waller-foxes".

We are dirty and smelly; our skin is dry and cracked. The dust gets in to everything and I can't get the dirt out from under my nails.

We spend more days 4 wheel driving; corrugated roads jolting our exhausted and weary bodies. We hear stories of broken axles; trailers destroyed. Our sub-tank gets damaged and starts leaking fuel. We find someone who spends his days welding back tanks and trailers and axles on vehicles braving the roads.

There is no internet access, no mobile phones, no television, no air-conditioning. There is limited water and food: we carry all we need with us.

We begin to adjust to the rhythm of the earth. We cook as the sun hits the horizon. We go to bed when it's dark. We get up at first light, strike camp and walk in the cool of the morning. We sing as we walk; we tell stories around the camp fire.

I miss my comfortable home and conversations with friends. I miss being clean. My preoccupation is utterly physical: the next meal, clean water, enough rest, changing clothes, finding shade. My hair is dirty, my legs are hairy; my clothes are stained red and orange and brown.

I'm intimidated by the silence of space. I avoid the fresh water crocs, watch out for snakes, and then look up to see eagles. I wish I could fly.

We are in the Patrol again: we see three dingoes and not much else. It's another day of bumpy dirt track to get to Kalumburu; a small aboriginal township located slightly inland from a beach at the very top of the Kimberley.

"Why Kalumburu?" I ask my happily, scruffily bearded husband.

"It's at the end of the track" he says, bemused by the question.

We fall out of the car, stretching muscles tense and aching from the endless jolting.

Small houses nestle together in the dust and heat. An old monastery sits to one side; a monument to the Mission days when the aboriginal people thought the white skinned apparitions were ghosts or had just spent too much time living in caves.

We're immediately drawn to the locals sitting in the sun outside the one store in town. A young man bends over an elder, respectfully touching his shoulder, seeing if he is ok. Children with large brown eyes smile shyly at my own children. My youngest daughter trips and the wrinkles of an old man deepen like the gorges of his very own land as he laughs at her clumsiness.

We all smile and feel unexpected joy. At the top end of the continent where the locals are closer to Indonesia than they are to most cities in Australia, we are simply human forms grown out of the very dirt we stand on: reflections of beauty so easily misunderstood.

We head to the ocean's edge to put up the tent. After cold showers (there are no hot taps in the caravan park) we stand together to watch the sun shift towards the horizon.

"You have grey in your beard" I say to my husband.

"You have grey in your hair" he smiles in response.

"Watch out for the killer-waller-salties" he adds to the children dancing on the water's edge.

They back away and we huddle together as the sun's last rays burn like bush fire along the dark blue-grey of the Timor Sea.