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Desert Feet Tour
7 November 2009
Day 1 Desert Feet Tour
But please allow me to thank you for joining me on the second annual Music Workshops Tour into the remote Kimberley’s. My vision for this Tour feels far larger than my ability and this morning I was plagued by doubt. After a 4am start from Perth, in the loneliness of the road my mind had already assassinated my musical ability as ridiculous and boring and declared myself as an over ambitious fool, luckily I know better than to listen to it too much. Every one else seems happy and excited, so I’ll trust to the plan. The first fuel stop cost $450 for the 3 cars; at Paynes Find I saw an article in the paper about some band touring though the remote Kimberly’s, and it was not about us. I must admit after all this work and the second year running I feel a bit neglected by the media. That and lack of sleep all cast aspersions on my already precarious situation. I cheered myself up by eating a can of corned beef with some onion and cheese on crackers (A diet I might have to get used to on this budget). We should be at Newman by night fall so I have some time now to write to you (while Emily takes a turn at the wheel) and allow my mind to wander into the contemplative pastures of the barren, dry, harsh land flashing by my window, occasionally splashed with what can only be described as ‘seemingly inserted wildflower arrangements’. Like the artist dipped his brush in the wrong tube, wild strokes of fluorescent purple, adorn the ground randomly, explosions of yellow flowers, quickly replaced by endless red sand and spindly, malnourished trees. The resilient matriarchs of a parched land, they offer the little shade the ground can enjoy. Cast down in precious little pools, they are the jewels of the oldest standing life this land has known. Something that can stay green after years of drought, fires and scorching heat deserves to be respected. In an age devoid of true heroes, where God is a smorgasbord of choices, I think I will choose tree. Our indigenous brothers understood this for thousands of years, had regarded and connection to a place otherwise deserted. Our only interest in this land coincides with the destruction of it; mine it, milk it, forget it; who would want to live out here anyway? Well someone did, and they did it well and in a sustainable way. In this time when we are all united on environmental issues, we have overlooked a culture with a lot of answers the world could learn from on sustainable commerce, imagine that! Aboriginal Australians taking the forefront of the global warming forum. “So Mr Australian Aboriginal how did you live in an environmentally sustainable culture for 40,000 years?” The answers are always closer than we are prepared to look. Maybe we are afraid to ask in case we have to do something about it. I heard Colin Barnett tell us we had to use it or lose it, referring to the North West, “The development of mining creates jobs for Indigenous people” he said. That’s great, but what if Indigenous people don’t want to work on a mine? I know I bloody well don’t! How we consistently seem to overlook the greatest resource of this land, more precious than gold, our national treasure, the oldest indigenous culture left on earth, some of it still in pristine condition. But not for much longer. The shadows reach across the road as the Pilbara sun falls on our left. Floodway and cattle grid after floodway and cattle grid, miles of flat open road with triple trailer trucks, like ships of the desert, that shake the cars carriage like a passing typhoon. Tearing down the open road hurtling the corpses of animals aside in its wake, the road side is a battle field, the animal battle field. It looks like there was a war of cow’s against Kangaroos’ and there are victims of the holocaust for hour after hour. The putrid stink of decaying flesh wafts through the air-con vents intermittently. Soon the shadows will take over the daylight and then the deadly obstacle course of the Great Northern Highway will begin, where the giant black bulls are like the perfect death trap, invisible against the black bitumen and moonless night, they can end your holiday in an instant, and the roos that can just appear in front of your car from nowhere. Driving after dark up here is life threatening in a car like mine with no bull bar, I have to slow down to 80 to be able to stop in time and then the kilometers’ start to take their toll, eyes straining so hard you start to see things move that aren’t there, little peering eyes glimmer from behind bushes and under trees. It was somewhere south of Newman that I was trying to keep up with James, a roo appeared out of the darkness, jumped behind James and in front of us doing a 110kph, we clipped its tail and all got a nice fright. I realized the fragility of the situation, if I had hit that roo at full speed we would have been going home very early. Its nearly 930pm my poor little car is rattling along in the darkness, covered in a cloud of dust kicked up from the car in front. We are now about 2 hours south of Marble Bar and on a horribly corrugated dirt road, our accommodation is booked at the Marble Bar Motel and against my better judgment the convoy decided to push on in the night. Traveling out here is dangerous in the right type of vehicle, but in a Mitsubishi Outlander with no bull bar it could be deadly. There is absolutely no wind and the dust hangs in the air like an English fog. The car lights just seem to make it glow and visibility shrinks to ten meters on some stretches. I just filled the car from jerry cans and spilt petrol all over my legs and hands. We are covered in red dust and grime and none of us has had a cooked meal since last night in Newman and there is no chance of sleeping in a car constantly coming to a screeching halt to let cows, bulls, roos, and owls the size of emus, go by. Every one seems in good spirits despite the arduous demand on our persons, I think getting our first workshop and community done has given us a sense of achievement but the idea of driving back into Newman on this road again after Punmu Community is not exciting. This is defiantly the last time I allow us to travel at night again. At Newman this morning we prepared to be out for a few days and stocked up on food, I bought 3 days worth of main meals and the guys loaded up on snacks for the trip, but 3 hours out of Newman and I got a flat tyre on the huge sharp stones in the gravel roads, with only the one spare, I limped into Jigalong with my fingers crossed, we unloaded the gear and set up for the workshops, then my ever loyal and trusty old friend Geoff Talbot (our veteran driver from last year) dove the 300 kms back into Newman with my spare to pick up two new tyres for me. The show must go on. Unfortunately when he left he also left the charger for the only camera we hired for the trip. Noone discover it was missing till we met back at the turn off to Marble Bar, it was late, we where tired and no one was going to drive back 200 klms for something that might be gone by then anyway. So our filming for the trip had a very short life. The western desert is an unforgiving land, the flat dry ground is littered with the burnt out shells of cars, some rolled, some striped bare others freshly abandoned. Patches of the land are covered with the rich mineral iron ore, just laying on the surface, glowing in the heat like rusty steel sheets. Jigalong, made famous by the Rabbit Proof Fence is quite a large community, some 500 residents live here and some renowned artists come form the Martu People that are the traditional owners. The community harbors a public swimming pool, sort of like an oasis. It is behind the football oval that is made entirely of red dirt and stones. I would love to see a game of Footy played on that field, it would be interesting to watch, sort of like a mobile dust ball of activity with occasional glimpses of a football flying into the clear air then disappearing back into a red cloud again.
Day 3 Desert Feet Tour
The morning sun was hot by 630am and I vacated my swag by the grassy pool area early and set up the breakfast table for the crew with cereal and some of my auntie’s famous fruit cake. We used the room kettles to make coffee and refilled our thermos for the four hour slog out to our second community Punmu. Geoff hitched the trailer and left early with two of the crew to get a head start while the rest of us took a guided tour of Marble Bar, which took all of 3 minutes. There is the famous Iron Clad pub (more of a tin shack than a pub really) notorious for its wild nights and copious consumption of the golden nectar. Then opposite that on a little hill over-looking the pub is the town church, strategically located for fast access to redemption after well deserved Saturday nights turn into slight over indulgence.
Not far from that is the police station a beautiful old Victorian style rock and lime stone building, right next door is the local gym, not much more than a garden shed, it must only open at night, any other time would be too hot in there. Still, someone must use it, a big sign says “Marble Bar Gym for enquiries call this number”
That night an amazing thing happened, towards the end of the concert a few of Elders got up and joined in too. This was a great privilege for us and later we where told no one had ever had the Elders involved like that before at all. After the kids had dispersed we played some songs together for a while, mixing it up and doing covers and jamming live till late in the night. One of the local boys got up and played bass on a few of the songs and was greatly received. When we had packed up all the stuff and got back to the house, James had T-bone stakes cooked for us and we ate a huge meal. Satisfied, the girls stretched out on the couches and set up for night. James, Nadine, Em, Geoff and I all hopped in our cars and headed over to Punmu hill to camp out.
A long ‘flat top ridge’ lies to the north of Punmu. At the end of the ridge one hill stands separate as if it broke off tried to reach too far north. This hill is a sacred place. James told us stories of the Dreaming told to him by Elders. Dreaming, the stories and song, are told everywhere but the lore behind them can only be taught out in the bush by an Elder. According to the Dreaming a Martu baby was taken by a giant eagle on his way north. He carried that eagle to Punmu Hill and there the spirit of the child was soaked into the earth. It is now a sight of fertility and couples trying to conceive are prayed (or sung over) on the hill.
We woke the next morning with a rising sun that split the world in half horizontally, down below and stretching out before us, hidden in the darkness when we had arrived last night, was revealed a rolling plain of red desert stretching out before us like an endless sea, a perfect line cut with a clear blue line of a cloudless and empty blue sky. One of the harshest environments on Earth, the hot desert, deadly but beautiful. Mesmerizing.
James took us out to the salt lakes, and showed us how the spines of the two giant lizards that came here to drink from he spring in the Deam time can be made out in the sand. They fought such a terrible battle that they both died of their wounds and now their skeletons can bee seen forever in the landscape. Their blood soaked the ground so deep that now all the orca is collected from this area for paint. The salt lake, like a hard baked salt cake, carried our cars across its surface, barren of life and inhospitable, reflecting the suns rays, it is the epitome of anti-life. Moore barren than Mars. But there is life here and at its edge in a small thicket, bubbles a small fresh water spring! Further around, James showed us the salt pools, these springs of fresh water, too brackish to drink, they are used to heal wounds, scabies or sores. The bark from the surrounding shrubs is then burnt and rubbed into the cleaned area, sealing it from infection. This area is sacred, used for longer than anyone can remember by the Martu people. On leaving the community the elder presented me with a traditional hand carved boomerang and Emily with a woven spinifex basket. (apparently for her baby, they told us with much amusement.) the Elders sung us in when we arrived and now as we left they ceremoniously We all leave Punmu with great regret. It is truly Gods country out there and the Martu are just as truly his people. They belong to the earth and the earth belongs to them, without it they have nothing. No dreaming, no lore, no song. And without them this land has no soul.
Day 5 & 6 Desert Feet Tour
The last few days have been so busy, I have not had a chance to get to my laptop and write to you.
I have called Divers Camp in Broome and spoken to Mat Gresham’s manager so every thing is on track for the gig, Mat flies into Broome tonight at 6pm. Candice and I are in the mighty mouse, my little Mitsubishi Outlander (which the Martdu told us wouldn’t make it to Punmu) It is still overheating a bit now, Emily is at the wheel heading for Port Headland while Candice and I get chauffeured up the Great Northern Highway on the second leg of the tour, the Kimberley’s. We will be in Port Headland by lunch to do some shopping for tonight then head out to Barn Hill Station (about 2 hours south of Broome) to camp out the night and try to catch a few Salmon. I’ve been through 3 tyres and just now the air-conditioner stopped working! So its windows open now till Broome and hope it just needs re-gassing.
Geoff showed up at first light with an empty car and then James car rolled into town at about 10 with 5 people and a trailer jammed to the hilt with crap. Then it started all over again. So and so wanted to tell so and so why they shouldn’t have done this or that. This time I intervened, fearing the end of the tour was at hand, I sent all the performers over to stay with friends and talked in depth with each of the begrudged until I could negotiate a truce. It was resolved that we either; pulled our heads in and made our best efforts, or the tour was finished. A satisfying agreement was made. My fears relieved, I turned now to the next job of organising the concert for that night. Dave took me down to see the oval we would play at and we strung a giant tarp up by throwing a rope between the fork of a great old white gum and the side of the amphitheatre to protect us while we set up the stage. We set up and did sound checks, and before we knew it the girls showed up to start the concert.
After I wrote the last entry in this diary, the car overheated on the way to Port Headland. The only way I could keep it from going into the red was to open the heater vents in the car with the fan blasting on full bore. It was 45 degrees outside but with the heater on in the car it felt like 100. Lilly and Candice were in the back with the esky full of ice drinks, rubbing themselves with ice blocks. But even with all the windows down it was so hot in the car that if you touched the dash it actually burnt. Even the CD player flipped out, a little screen came on flashing V HOT! V HOT! V HOT! I ejected the CD and it came out like a banana, warped and melted. And that’s how we pulled into Port Headland, steaming hot chicks in the back and Em and I in the front like cooked prawns, my head aching and clothes soaked through.
Putting it in the shop at Port Headland was no option as it would cost 10 times Broome to fix any problem. Also, I knew if I got to Broome, Peter Strain our film producer, would be able to take us up Cape Leveque for the 3 days we were on the communities up there north of Broome. That would give me time to leave my car in for a service and hope the problem not too serious. It was nearly dark and with the cool sea breeze coming in across the pains, and with the 80 Mile Caravan Park only 2 hours more driving, I decided to make a run for it then get up early and in the cool of the morning try and get to Broome before it gets to hot.
In the itinerary for the tour, we where supposed to stay at Barn Hill station for the night, but that was a further 2 hours drive. As I knew the owner of 80 Mile Caravan Park from my pearling days, I decided to pull the team in there and say hi to Col. Colin seeing the Desert Feet Banners on the car, refused to take any money from us for camping at his most amazing caravan park. He told us it was his contribution towards the Tour! 80 Mile is home of the Gods. It is a stretch of beach 3 hours south of Broome that is infused with a spiritual essence. We arrived at low tide and took a walk out over the mud flats that stretch out to sea for over a mile. The beach here slopes away from the land so gently that when the huge 8 metre tides that sweep this coast runs off the beds, the tidal flats become a glistening platform that the setting sun runs a ladder across every night, like a stairway to heaven (as they call it in Broome on a full moon), reflecting the reds and oranges of the sky like a mirror. Walking out into the sun set along the temporarily exposed sea bed gives one the sensation of walking on water. The sky, ocean and horizon are all a blur shimmering colours and one feels he could not be nearer to his maker than walking alone on the tidal flats of 80 Mile Beach.
Back at the camp site, the girls, lacking any other container, had made a bucket full of salad. The BBQ sizzled under James expert supervision and a huge feed of fresh fish and mushrooms soon filled our guts to the gills. James had plugged his laptop into one of the caravan power points under a tree on the grass, so we all decided to have an outdoor cinema night and watch a movie on James laptop on the grass. We rolled out our swags and sat around the little screen in the open, it was a funny site to behold, even funnier was when Emily looked at the photo on the desktop and commented “Look, there’s birds flying around”. When we looked closer at the “birds” we realised it was ants and a whole trail of them had marched onto the screen and were all over the computer too.
Later in the night, Jonah and I went down for the high tide to try and get some Salmon, as 80 Mile is famous for its Salmon run every year. We caught a lot of cat fish and a few sharks but had the wrong bait for Salmon. However, the guy next to us having caught his quota gave us 2 big fresh ones to take with us.
In the morning I made a bolt for it early and headed for Broome in the cool morning at 5am, however, my early start was over exuberant, as I forgot I had to fuel up and the only garage between Broome and 80 mile was Sandfire. We got there at 530am and of course it did not open till 7am so there was nothing I could do except sit in the car. When it opened my old mate Ken (the owner) introduced Em and I to his new missus and we stayed for a coffee or two before we headed off. As a result it was a scorching hot day before I got to Broome and the last hour especially was spent sitting in a hot car with the heater on cooking our way into town to stop the car from over heating.
First stop was of course the mechanics, with fingers crossed. Noel (our friendly local mechanic) looked it over and declared it should only be a blocked radiator. But not having time to even stop, I had to leave it with him to do. We had the gig that night at the Divers Camp Tavern and still had to go and meet the owner, find Mat Gresham (our headline act for the night), set up the and sound check the venue and get the crew into some accommodation. An old friend saved us the $1000 or so that it costs to pay for a night with 11 people in hotel rooms, by opening her house to us. Cassy is an old friend from my pearling days to and she had prepared beds for all of us and made a bunch of home made dips and put out a spread of nuts and lovely fresh juice. It was an opportunity to do some washing, scrub behind our ears in a hot shower and get ready for the big gig.
The concert at Divers Camp was the first opportunity for the Tour to make some extra cash. The deal we did with Divers was we take the door and they take the bar. (The same arrangement we have in Derby at the the King Sound Resort) it is an arrangement that can work well if you get the numbers, in Derby on a Friday night we are guaranteed a resident audience, but on a Tuesday in Broome at the end of the Tourist season………well it could be a risk. Mat Gresham and his management made a huge contribution to the tour by headlining the cocnert (Mat Gresham is hugely popular in Broome) without charging us a cent for his performance! I arranged for Mat to fly up and Divers provided his accommodation, so all the take was profit after his airfare. The night started out pretty slow, and was looking like a real flop with only about 30 people in there for all the Desert Feet Tour acts, until Mat took the stage at 9pm, and he seemingly pulled people out of his hat. Then like a true magician, he mesmerised his audience with his fixating act, there bathed in the golden light of the yellow gels, with the black silhouettes of his mysterious fan club stomping in the foreground, like American Indian war dancers around a fire, the smoke of Mat Gresham filled the room while an enchanted crowd breathed it in and sucked it up.
Day 8 Desert Feet Tour
A call this morning the mechanic confirmed my worst fears. My car needed some parts that had to be flown over from East. Enter now Peter Strain to the rescue. Those of you who have not read last years tour may not have met Peter Strain, Kimberly Cameraman and renowned producer (Mary G show and Brand New Day back in the 80’s just some of his accolades) he is also owner of the Giant Tides Gallery in Broome and an accomplished stills photographer (published 3 times now in Austrian Geographic.)
The Cape Leveque road is a dirt track about 15 minutes out of Broome, now a popular tourist destination, and mostly occupied by small Aboriginal communities but also home to several Pearl Farms, the oldest and possibly the first being Cygnet Bay built in 1946. As a young man some 14 years ago I took my first job in the pearling industry at this very farm, which lead to a 7 year career as a pearl diver. I had come to Broome mostly to escape a ravenous drinking problem which seemed to catch up with me everywhere I went, funnily enough. Cygnet Bay in the early 90’s was a haven for young dysfunctional runaways, and I met my match many times over on that farm. Needless to say I was quickly elevated to my level of incompetence and my youthful energy and optimism were converted into what is now the history of a once booming and lawless pearling industry. Many are the stories I could tell of that time but that is for another page. Except quickly to explain the part which relates to this mission and is a block in the journey of my awakening to the conscience I now have around the issues to which I have devoted my time and life.
It started in a bar in Broome called the Tropicana. It was like a hut with stools around it and I drank there, one; because it was cheap and two; because it was across the road from the Roebuck Bay Caravan park where I had my Nissan Patrol parked and my swag rolled out. I was out of money, running from responsibility and down on luck. My mother had wired me 100 bucks to get through the week and as any young promising alcoholic would do upon receiving some money, I proceeded to drink it. My immediate problems piled up seemed overwhelming and compounded to such a dredge that the insufficient funds could not help the big picture of my financial troubles, so of course, I justified a drink will generate a little relief.
In those few weeks, on my introduction to the pearling industry and my initiation as a diver, several chapters could be written, but suffice to say I learnt that there is a lot more to being a pearl diver than doing 2 dives of a wharf at Fremantle Quays, and it cost me some pretty painful experiences. I don’t think I ever got paid a cent for that expedition but the memories of that place will never leave me. I remember being picked up from the drop off by a Landcruiser, or more to the point, the remnants of a Landcruiser. What had not entirely rusted away was bolted together with wire and strips of iron. There were no wheel arches left, or roof for that matter, and the seats were old plastic school seats tech’ screwed to the chassis. The fuel tank was an outboard motor tank which bounced around unsecured as we raced along bumpy old tracks, and there where four different wheels. That was the vehicle that led me to the accommodation. It was like nothing I had ever seen, and I doubt it is still there, but it was made from what they call ‘stack bags’. The process is achieved by filling hessian sacks with cement then sort of skewering them on vertical ribs of Rio’ bar. That is how the walls were built. There was no power and you boiled water in a 44 gallon drum to shower at night. It was only a rumour but I heard it said a few times, Cygnet bay is suspiciously the only free hold land owned up there, granted by the T.O. (Traditional Owners), and the means by which it was acquired in the early 40s is part of the mystery and secrets of remote places, that can never be proven. Maybe it is just a spiteful rumour started by rival pearling companies, maybe it is truth. Whatever it is, that land clearly belongs to someone else and nothing has been done about it.
Our first stop over however was at Beagle Bay. Beagle Bay is the real famous site, with its old church made of Pearl Shell, and is very old. It was founded by Monks during World War 2 it is also a site of controversy. The monks I am sure had the best of intention, but of course the road to hell is paved with them and now Beagle Bay is a community of displaced people and an area that suffered greatly with regards to the Stolen Generation. Traditionally, the Nyul Nyul People owed the land and now some of the Elders have even managed to buy large portions of it back. It must be amongst some of the only freehold land left to our indigenous people and that is only because the families bought it. The community is very strong and the council there have managed the area well. The Missionary did amazing things out there considering just how remote this place would have been back then, those men where driven by a faith and belief that I could never claim to understand, but the truth is they did more harm than good and ultimately they shattered the culture forever.
We all eagerly anticipated the time here for several reasons. This is the first community that we will visit for a second year in a row. Secondly one of our Indigenous performers is a Cox boy whose father is from here and we have been promised an escort out on the estuary at low tide to catch mud crabs. Also, as we are now on familiar ground, this will be the first of the communities that we will be able to conduct the workshops for the kids in school, and then later perform the concert for the whole community, something I have been anticipating for a long time. There are many objectives for this tour, but my greatest desire is to entertain an Indigenous audience that expects our arrival.
It was dampened a little by our discovery that a touring band I had seen a report on in the paper, back at Paynes Find, had in fact performed here the day before us, which was an irony because since we had played there last year not a single act had performed, and then they had two in as many nights! Funny that, after all this time and nearly 3000 kms we had caught up with them, then happened to be performing the following night! However, we where happily informed that we attracted a larger audience but that is to be expected as we had a lot more entertainment.
The principle John Rose was as warm and obliging as last year and we were welcomed by the kids who all showed us the greatest respect and enthusiasm. I have performed for family and friends, I have played at festivals and concerts, I have played restaurants full of guests (most of which will not even acknowledge you are there) but the greatest audience I have ever had is a basketball court full of kids. I guess any break from normal routine is a good day at school for kids, but the appreciation we receive from them is just so much more satisfying than playing to adults. By this stage we had really worked out school workshops into fun interactive and flowing performances that run a little like question and answer time coupled with comical stunts by the adults, performed to overcome the customary ‘shame’ and involve the kids to the greatest degree.
Most of my readers will never have seen a workshop been done except for the photos I have published on the site, so I will take a moment here to comment on one in full, because both Beagle Bay and One Arm Point have been such a success and also because I am excited about the results after having this dream and vision for so long as an idea.
The first thing I have to explain is that the workshops are for the kids and therefore have to be pretty flexible and intuitive. They never run according to plan, time, or requirements. Kids are unpredictable and especially on remote indigenous communities burdened with an immense culture of shame. Shame is in the dictionary as a negative emotion that combines feelings of dishonour, unworthiness, and embarrassment. But in the community it has an extra meaning. It means one person can not be seen to be better than any other for he then brings shame on all the others. For this there are obvious punishments. But there is a way to overcome their shame, and that is to be the most embarrassing and the best at the same time. Then no one can fall below your foolishness or rise above your skill. And that is my job on this tour; I have to simultaneously be the clown and the composer. And for some reason I am really good at that!? Most times we arrive the day of the workshops, so with travel and set up and allowing for delays, the earliest we can be ready is around 12 midday. As this is so, we generally run the workshops between the after lunch bell and end of school day, then invite them to come back with their parents for the community concert that night. As our aim is to inspire kids to develop their talents, we have to disclose the areas of development available to them. I always open the workshop by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land; thanking them for inviting us onto their land and thanking them for the opportunity the privilege we feel it is to be there. I introduce the performers and the types of performances, and then sing a song with Emily on viola. The response is always predictable. They are in awe of Emily’s magical instrument and this is the opening for a short educational session, what type of instrument it is, what group of instruments it belongs in, and so on and so forth. Emily is a great example for the kids as she is the only classically educated musician. This opens the grounds for further discussion on careers in music study, music education and all the industry that surrounds music. Emily gives a small example of classical music which is usually meet with profound silence, and I explain that it was composed by Bach (not the bark off a tree), then paradoxically, I am the alter example of Emily, an example that you don’t need formal training or education to write music. You can do it to express yourself or just to be an entertainer, or just as an outlet and art form.
I keep this type of informational interactive banter up for as long as I can keep their attention and that is the limit. If they wander off or lose interest I go to the next stage. Trying to get volunteers is hard and sometimes I get met with blank stare. So the best way to involve the kids from then on in is with bribes. CDs or healthy food treats make good prizes. From there I can get the stage filled with kids and this is really important, they learn self confidence and experience performing in front of an audience. It is a real treat, I hand out percussion instruments and all along explaining the purpose of percussion, of the need for rhythm in music and why it is there. Then we get more kids to help with the chorus and sing into the mics. They love this, holding a mic is always every kids dream. It’s always just a matter of getting the courage to do it. Once I have played a song through with their participation, and they have been applauded and rewarded for their performance, the rest are now pretty willing and this is where we can usually engage them in any activity we want, especially dancing.
Candice Lorrae has been such an asset to this tour. Her band, Moana Dreaming, was nominated for a WAMi between our last tour and this one. Apart from being a teacher at Abmusic, she is also a confident and brilliant performer and thus a perfect person for this tour. She has a voice like Whitney Houston but with more power, and all three of these girls have amazed me continually. This tour has been pretty demanding at times, and they have never missed a beat and always been supportive of my efforts and vision. They have got up on stage in front of daunting audiences and performed faultlessly, they have conducted their workshops with enthusiasm and care, and I doubt I could get a better mix of performers/ workshop facilitators for any amount of money, yet they have honoured their commitment to the tour at all times.
The girls (and Jonah) are very versatile in their workshops, Candice can deliver written theory to practical dance, and this all depends on the kids reaction to us, but the one she does that I like the most is the ‘songwriting workshop’ because in a matter of 15 minutes, the school and all the children as a group compose a song together, complete and finished from nothing, including chorus, melody, harmony, and 3 verses! This is powerful because the school then owns this song and has written its words. Also all those children get to see that writing a song is easy, you don’t have to be Mozart, you can just pick up a guitar play a few chords and write a song. This is close to my heart as that is what I did.
Lastly but not least! We bring out our secret weapon ‘Bryte MC’ aka Brian Lloyd (Candice’s partner). Candice had insisted we bring Brian, an idea I had not been open to at first simply because of the extra cost, but another example of Candice’s foresite. Her contribution and suggestions are always gentle and she has a beautiful manner that is always welcome. Brian is very similar. He is a carefree young man that has kept the spirits of the team up at all times with his light hearted good nature. It has really been my good fortune to travel with these performers. However Brian’s Hip Hop, beat boxing, and music are always the absolute highlight of the workshops. At some schools, and Beagle Bay was one, we had to actually stop the kids and seat them all again so they didn’t get too carried away. During this workshop, kids get the opportunity to bust out some rhymes, if they are game to try, have a go at beat boxing on the mic and show off their rap dancing moves, encouraged by yours truly, busting out my old-school break dancing moves!
After the workshops we had few hours before the concert that night, and we piled into the cars to take off over the mud flats in pursuit of a feed of mud crabs for dinner. Our tour guide, one of Cox’s family, lead us out to the point in an old Toyota Camry. Beagle Bay is on the ocean side of the peninsular, unlike One Arm Point over on the King Sound side, where there are beaches and rocky shores that are good for swimming. Beagle Bay is at the base of a huge inlet, the inlet is a large mangrove tidal flat and home to all the creatures that inhabit them, like crocs, mangrove jacks, an incredible variety of fish, birds and crustaceans and of course giant mud crabs. The ocean washes across these flats every day twice a day, and the thick mud becomes crusted with a layer of salt. When this salt laden, almost white mud is just a little wet it becomes the ultimate element of destitution to any thing that is prone to corrosion, like a car. The mud flicks up under the wheel arches, sticks to the metal and promptly proceeds to consume it like cancer. Ben’s old Toyota station wagon led us along the edges of the mud flats and up the creek towards the ocean. He took that car over ground that the 4 wheel drives we were in had to stop and engage the diffs. Waiting patiently for us on the other side of the crossing and bog marshes, his skill as a two wheel drive, off road explorer would probably win him a place as a sponsored Subaru rally car driver if he cared enough to be one. That old Toyota had the three huge 4X4 convoy behind him in fits of laughter. A Prado, a Troopy and a GLX Landcruiser were all dubiously in pursuit of the dust up ahead which was Jonah and Ben in the Camry. With no rear window and rusted out wheel arches, spears hanging out the side window and lumps of mud caked to the windscreen, it was truly a site to treasure in my memories of this trip. That part was nothing compared to the hunting fun we were about to have.
A huge spring tide had sucked the inlet dry and water still trying to escape to the ocean trickled down muddy banks and stranded small fish in pools and ponds waited to be rescued by the next tide. The deeper streams, cut by the huge volume of water flowing in and out daily, are lined with mangroves, their roots pitted with the holes of the giant crabs. We walked out even further to the flats where the ground became a mixture of sea sand and mud, and on these endless open plains we caught or speared the mud crabs in the traditional way as they sat in the shallow water. Everyone had a turn at catching one and there were many an incident of trying to spear a mud crab with claws twice the size of a nut cracker, swimming around your feet in ankle deep water. Needless to say there were some interesting dances invented and some hilarity as the onlookers watched the pursuit.
Back at the Community, we performed a mostly relaxed gig. All the kids came back for seconds, and of course brought their parents with them. In the darkness along the side of the basketball court, just out of the light, a row of cars parked and the residents in their customary manner shyly watched from afar.
The day finished with a gut full of fresh mud crab and we all spread out across of the air conditioned classroom, converted into a dorm, and slept like kids on a school camp.
Day 9 Desert Feet Tour
Thursday morning saw the customary shuffle of the team, gobble down some breakfast, jam our gear into the trailer and on to the dirt track north to One Arm Point. There are some real success stories for the indigenous people up here. Cape Leveque itself is a resort/camping area run by the community for revenue. The business has been so successful that the last half of the road was bitumised a few years ago. There are other community managed items of interest too. One Arm Point has a Torques Hatchery set up to replenish the Torques shell stocks but now just used to grow fish. There is an airstrip there too, for light aircraft, used for the community and tourists that don’t want to dive up.
I was in the Troopy with Peter, and along with James’ car we took an inland road up the coast to see some sites on the way to Cape Leveque where we arranged to meet with Geoff, who took the trailer up the sealed part of the road. When we arrived Geoff was nowhere to be seen so we (the two cars) took a swim and a quick fish in the amazing waters called Cape Leveque in the point of the Peninsular. At Cape Leveque the Indian Ocean meets with the waters of the King Sound and huge currents tear through the pass at up to 20 knots. The coast is deadly in every way, box jellyfish and crocodiles infest these waters along with sharks and the dreaded Irigangi stingers.
Back at the community we found Geoff who had got lost and was in a poor state. The constant travel, lack of privacy and constant demands of driving several passengers had taken its toll on him. Used to the quiet bachelors life, he could not cope with the prospect of 8 more gigs to go and another 10 days on the road. Unfortunately, there were a few arguments among the guys and Geoff came off with the resolution to leave the tour. With my car out till at least Friday and 10 people up the Cape, it was not the greatest timing. Luckily Peter was with us and could at least get us back to Broome where, God willing, my car would be ready and we could push on to Derby for the gig tomorrow night. The whole thing was balanced like a circus trapeze artist, and needed constant planning and rearranging.
But in the meantime, I had a workshop for the school and a concert for the community to front up at, so the show must go on. Both events turned out to be the biggest and best of all our travels so far, and another anchor in our resolve to continue on with the tour. Our audience of kids here was the largest so far, and the workshops needed almost no encouragement, they were involved and interacting within seconds and it was the most amazing experience so far. The teachers got up and danced and we were celebrated like a Wiggles concert.
Then in-between concerts, the boys, Em and I got the chance to explore the King Sound side of the Peninsular. We fished off some rocks in the ocean but missed the turn of the tide by minutes, and as a result got nothing but snags. It was awesome fun though and we swam and dived of the rocks into the amazing blue waters. Just out of our reach the sound was dotted with little islands and the water tearing out into the open sea was like a peak hour causeway as it surged between the shore and the little islands trying to escape the gulf. Moving in opposite directions the turbulence caused whirlpools which can drown swimmers, and can get big enough to suck a small boat down in some areas.
One Arm Point was the highlight of the tour so far. The community came in droves to see the concert, probably encouraged by reports of the kids from that day. As it turns out, we were once again on the heels of the other touring band, but once again the reports from the community confirmed that our lineup had attracted a far bigger audience. Despite the fact they had turned on a giant feed with fish, oysters and crabs, they had 20 or 30 of the locals turn up. The Desert Feet Tour filled the hall and our secret weapon, Bryte MC caused the stage to overrun-ith with ambitious young beat boxers trying out their skills. The front floor was covered by kids trying out there rap moves to the beat and the rows of seats behind were occupied by parents in fits of laughter as they watched their animated youths discover a voice and an outlet for their young hearts. There are moments so sublime that I wish I will carry with me to the end, kids lost in a trace of sound and beats, free of inhibitions and fear and crowding the stage, as young as three years old, they moved in robot like fashion imitating the great rappers of MTV, sometimes so serious in their imitation that it was comical and we all had the best night of the trip so far.
Friday was going to be a challenge and I knew it before I fell asleep last night but no matter how I looked at it what I needed was a sort of miracle of events. Perhaps I was a little overconfident in my expectations, as I hoped to be able to congratulate myself by writing in today’s diary how on arriving to Broome my Radiator had arrived as scheduled and the tour was able to roll on like clock work in spite of the major set backs. (With Geoff wanting to leave and my car still in the shop in Broome we had a serious numbers issue now and what’s more it put the stress of towing the heavy trailer on James). But I should have been more realistic than to expect the part for my car would arrive as scheduled in Broome. When I got there with Geoff and Emily, I was told the part could still show up by any time so I waited till 3pm. Needing to be In Derby to meet up with the rest of the team (I had sent them on ahead from One Arm Point) and the trailer for our gig at the King Sound Resort that night meant I had to leave latest by 4pm to be off the road by dark. The only option was to hire a car until mine was ready and drive back to Broome Monday or Tuesday from Fitzroy and swap them over again.
The remaining four of us arrived in Derby just in time to have a quick shower and start the gig. The others had set everything up and we played to a mostly empty beer garden. Unfortunately for us (the arrangement with the hotel was for us to be paid from the door take and no punters meant no pay for my guys!) Most of the Town was on Sorry Business as there had been a funeral that day.
There is not that much to report about the gig apart from the fact that for the first time since we had left the team got nice hotel rooms and restaurant food. Aside from that the only other incident of interest was an interesting response to Brian’s Hip Hop act in which for the first time on the tour some of the local boys actually got up and did some really impressive free styling. Peter was really impressed and filmed the whole night saying that he believed we may have just witnessed the birth of a new voice of expression for the youth of Derby.
After the gig Peter drove back to Broome and so ended Peter’s Tour of duty with our group. I was sad to see him go as he is a quiet inspiration for me and has been a huge factor in both the planning and realization of this Tour right from its inception last year. He has always encouraged me even when the chips have been down, there is a lot could be said for his calm and silent presents. I think he has the perfect characterizes for a cameraman/producer and his philosophy of allowing the film to evolve rather than heavy handed production is in line with his own personality. His unassuming nature allows people to be them self’s, just as he always is. He is quick with a light hearted joke and always looks to the good in any situation. His experience in the Kimberly’s has been my main source of information and most of my contacts have come from his long standing relationships up here which have all amounted to the huge reel of film and production he has under his belt.
Day 11 Desert Feet Tour
Watch the Slide show so far
There was no chance for a sleep in or even a slow start from the luxury of The King Sound Resort. James had a work meeting in Telfer on the Saturday and the only way we could make it fit in with the tour was to fly him out of Fitzroy on the early flight and back in on the Sunday afternoon. We left the girls to rise slowly and meet us in Fitzroy Crossing with the Patrol and James and I along with Bruno and Lilly left at daybreak with the trailer.
One of the highlights of last years tour was my time with Patrick Davies; scholar, bushman, respected community leader, and accomplished musician, Patrick is a man of many hats (you can read more about Patrick in last years tour diary below), but most of all he is a charming, vibrant, colourful character, generous to the extreme, and surrounded by his huge family and an adoring posse, one can not help but be attracted to him. We spent the night at his house eating freshly killed beef ribs off the BBQ, Barra’ baked in hot coals and a huge spread of mussels and salads. Intoxicated by Patrick’s famous yarns, half asleep with fatigue, lethargic from overindulgence, the night was like a narcotic and memories of it are dreamlike. Emily was a huge hit and was in great demand, everyone eager to hear the deep resonance of the Viola that none had forgotten from last year. The mexican guitar they called it, and its sorrowful drone called out into the dark Fitzroy night in tune to old county love songs as I wandered in and out of consciousness near the flickering fire.
Day 12 Desert Feet Tour
It is 11pm Sunday night, I just had an argument with Bruno and sacked him in front of the entire band, over some stupid trivial issue.
This morning I got a knock on the door at 9am, it was Bianca and she looked terrible. I got up and brushed my teeth and thru on some clothes and rushed her down to the local hospital, luckily on a Sunday in Fitzroy Crossing the waiting line in emergency was non-existent and she was taken straight through. Unable to do any more I went back to the hotel, stopping at the garage on the way to fuel up the car and buy some supplies.
I had been invited fishing at 12 on Patrick’s boat and Jonah, Brian, Em and I where pretty excited about possibly getting our first Barramundie for the trip. But at 1030am I got a call from the Doctor saying Bianca need to be expressed to Derby ASAP. There was nothing for it; the only option was to run her back myself. We got away about 1pm after having a quick bite, Jonah was in the car too for his girlfriends comfort and luckily he had the foresight to pack their stuff quickly and throw it all in the back of the car because when we got to Derby two and a half hours later, there was a queue in the hospital. I had to make a decision on the spot as I had less than two hours till it was dark and this stretch between Derby and Kununurra is the worst for cattle. The stations up here are not fenced. If I waited even half an hour to see what was wrong I would have to stay the night or drive in the dark.
Remembering that I had to come back to Derby on Tuesday morning to meet Peter and swap the hire car for mine, I made plans with Jonah to meet at Willare Road House Tuesday. Jonah had family in Derby and could look after himself for the night. By the sounds of it, Bianca was going to stay the night in Hospital anyway. I quickly swung into the Woolworths and did a power shop for major supplies for the next four days out bush. I bought a whole side of T-bones and 2 huge trays of ready made lasagna, a huge tube of water, a carton of coke, four trays of eggs and so on, and so on. Knowing it would be ten times cheaper in Derby than Fitzroy. Then I jumped in the car and tore down the open road lined with bare Boab Tress and distant flat top ridges all dipped in a setting red sun and covered in rays of light exploding from behind a cloud. That is exactly what it’s like out here in the bush, explosive beauty, coupled with a harsh reality. This is a land of paradox. It is the final frontier of a still wild land, a deadly hot country of unimaginable wealth to some, and a grave yard of a shattered culture to others. The endless stream of touring retired, prosperous ‘Grey Nomads’ look out the air-conditioned windows of their shiny mobile homes at the endless beauty of a hostile yet impressive land, yet manage to completely ignore or make any contribution to the most important part of the landscape, the broken and beaten remnants of a people, the victims of our prosperity.
Meanwhile the residents, left in the dust of our wake, given patches of land that no white man wants, struggling to find themselves. Lost between desires for overindulgence in white mans dubious luxuries and the land they can see and feel but no longer own. What is ‘their view” of touring interest to us is a site of unimaginable suffering to others.
This is called tourism, maybe it should be called denialism. The very appearance of a successfully retired, touring white couple is a spit in the eye of a beaten opponent while he is down. The handless hand of a false economy, capitalizing on the misery of misplacement, capitalistic and imperialistic destruction of a culture. Come to Fitzroy and look at the Gorge, come to Fitzroy and look at Tunnel Creek, come to Fitzroy and spend a day in the local park and see what we have done. Then ask yourself what is the difference between you and those in the park. I think I know. At least I have an opinion. It is worth what you just paid for it, but here it is.
Back at the hotel I fueled up again. James pulled in just as I arrived, back from his flight to Telfer so I took the whole team, or what was left, all 7 of us, out to dinner. Back at the rooms Bruno started to ask questions about how we would get home without Jonah and now James wants to fly to back to Perth for a wedding on Saturday. I lost my temper at his nagging sort of enquiry and was a bit rude to him. Of course he reacted and it heated up, in the end James threatened to leave too and feeling foolish I apologized to Bruno for speaking to him badly and asked him to complete the tour. In hindsight I should never have even engaged in the discussion, and I lost from that moment. But I guess as Sun Tzu says in ‘The Art of War’ we build our defense where we are weakest. His fears of how the tour would end felt like attacks on my management ability. Being doubtful of my own ability left me open, but to receive the attack from inside caught me of guard. I know I am as green as a tour manager can be, and right now I feel alone and lost. And maybe Bruno is right; maybe I don’t have the courage to see the truth. But the truth for me is I will finish this tour even if I have to drag that trailer with a rope over my shoulder to the next four communities. Now I sit on the steps of the hotel room. Everyone is asleep; tomorrow we start the last leg of the tour. It is now 1230am I have been writing for an hour. Down below me, under the stilted hotel rooms, cows munch on the lush grass of the resort grounds. Their huge dark shapes all around me. They have not noticed my presence at all and are within arms reach below me. The night is warm and the air is deathly still and silent, the only noise is the grinding jaws of the herbivores masticating on the green grass of this massive hotel
Day 13 Desert Feet Tour
I would not blame you for thinking this diary has become fictional in order to entertain. But I swear to you that it is the truth, like something out of a movie I found myself involved in a high speed car chase that started in Fitzroy and ended some 5 hours later, 300kms down a dirt track in Nookanbah.
It is now 10pm and I have no idea what I am going to do tomorrow. I have 6 performers and one car left. The other car is missing and so are James and Patrick, I have no reception or internet and I am supposed to meet Peter at the Willare Roadhouse about 50 km out of Derby at 8am tomorrow morning to swap the hire car for my car, then pick up my missing performers from Derby and rejoin the tour in Yakanarra (about an other 2 hours inland over the river and down a dirt track from here). But at this stage I don’t have the hire car, can not call Peter to tell him not to leave Broome at 6am with my car, and can not even fit everyone into the car I have.
It all started this morning at 6am sharp, the hot Kimberley sun already poaching the sidewalk and getting a run up for the max temp’, soon to be 45 degrees (Hottest place in Australia today, according to the weatherman). James, Emily and Bruno, all decided to squeeze a Geikie Gorge tour in before check out at 10am. They left at 7am to be back by 930 for departure.
We got away a little late (as usual) and met at the shell road house at 1030am. I had received a call from the West Australian no more than ten minutes before asking if I could do an interview for an editorial I had too do it then and there, for the next week i be out of range. I had my phone on one ear and the laptop on my lap trying to send the press kit to the journalist when next thing I hear yelling! Then the back door flies open, in pours a couple of bags of ice, a few cartoons of soft drink and some bags of shopping, literally hurtled across the back seat. Then Patrick jumps into the front seat yelling “Go! Go! Head for Halls Creek, fast as you can! Someone’s just stolen my car!!!”
I won’t even tell you how fast I was driving but needless to say I definitely broke the speed limit. We overtook a few cars and after getting about 70 kms out of town we realised we weren’t going to find the culprit, they where either traveling too fast or had stopped, so we pulled over and stopped three cars coming the other way and asked them if they had seen a white Prado go by. All of them said no, but not convinced we took off at full throttle again for Halls Creek, there is a long stretch of road just out of Fitzroy that Patrick thought might give us a good view. In the distance we saw two cars. We got up alongside one of them and yelled out of the open window, “have you seen a white Prado!” the guy in the car, without missing a beat, informed us that it had overtaken him about 40 mile back as it turned up a hill.
The next few hours are a comedy of events. I think I was in shock at first and could not believe that someone had actually stolen a car from our posse, including equipment, musical instruments and food for 4 days out bush. For a while I was sure this was the end of the tour, but looking back on it now, I can see how funny it was. It was on the way back into Fitzroy that the police rang to say the car had been seen hanging around Yakanarra, a community we were scheduled to arrive at the following day, and about 2 hours out of town. Yakanarra has a back road that joins up to Nookanbah, impassable in the wet and dangerous at the best of times it passes along the old stock routes. Patrick, now incensed with rage and embarrassed at his misfortune and the cost of it on the tour, predicted his car was heading to Nookanbah and decided that we should all head there as planned. So with my team packed into the cars, trailer loaded with our gear and the school expecting us any minute, we took the road west towards Derby and cut south across country into the Fitzroy Valley (or “the Valley” as the countrymen affectionately call it). There we were, the Desert Feet Tour had now become the Desert Feet Car Chase, and in hot pursuit we headed bush on route for our next gig.
For a man who had just lost his car and everything he owned in it, I have never seen anyone remain so happy. All the way to Nookanbah Patrick delighted us with stories of the country we passed through, its history, its food and its law, periodically digressing into his stream of abuse and comical scenarios of the capture of the culprit, as realization of the disruption to his plans overcame his dialogue intermittently. I have to admit it was hilarious in the extreme and all of us in the car will never forget those few hours with Patrick and his eccentric manner, a unique cross between native countryman and Irish drover.
The car pursuit and time lost meant we arrived too late to host the workshops in school but our accommodation was really good and the CEO, Kathy, was very warm and obliging. Upon arriving though Patrick’s car was no where to be seen, much to his disappointment. Kathy made a few enquiries at the office and we discovered that the car had been seen back in Yakanarra just moments ago. Patrick called town and had one of his brothers head south out on the Yakanarra road and taking my hire car and James he headed across the valley pass to cut him off, confident that they now had him trapped, leaving us with one car, 6 people and the trailer to perform the concert.
Kathy implored the rest of us to stay saying that the community was greatly anticipating our arrival, and so we unloaded the gear in to the old wool shed in the centre of the community for a concert that was to be our biggest so far. Some 300-400 people including over a 100 kids came to the concert. They were the most animated of all the kids we had meet and they proceeded to dance and clap without any encouragement right from the start. It was a greatly fulfilling gig for me and at last I had satisfied my largest ambitions of the tour so far.
As I sit and relay this days events to you, James, Patrick and my car are still missing. There is nothing to do now except go to bed.
Day 14 Desert Feet Tour
I woke this morning at 430am and the sun was already waiting for me, like a flat disk in the haze of dust, an ominous warning of the heat that was to come. Wondering what this day’s adventure would bring, my first priority was to find a way to contact Peter to stop him from leaving Broome with my car. Otherwise he would be sitting there at Willare Roadhouse, unceremoniously stood up.
Stepping from my room, I found Patrick asleep on a swag on the veranda, my sigh of relief woke him and he relayed the story of their pursuit. He had been all over the Fitzroy Valley chasing the car, unfortunately unsuccessful. However, he had the foresight to pick up a satellite phone! So problem solved, or so it seemed, until we tried to use it and realised he had neglected to pick up the pin code for it as well. After a few attempts it locked itself and was useless. Now getting desperate, I walked over to the pay phone outside the store but it was a Telstra card phone and I could not even call an operator to reverse charges. Some young locals were awake so I asked around if anyone had a spare phone card I could use, to which I got some amused looks but no response to the affirmative.
Now time was running out, if I didn’t get hold of Peter in the next 15 minutes he would leave Broome, there was no option but to wake someone up and ask to use the phone. So there I was at 5am on a remote indigenous community in the desert, knocking on doors at 5am begging to use a phone. The great white hunter? I found Kathy’s house first, guided by a few early risers but after a few attempts and receiving no answer I tried some other houses that looked sort of awake and by accident I woke the local store owner, who thinking I was some kid trying to steal petrol or something, came flying out screaming abuse. After explaining my situation, he dubiously lent me his phone and I was able to stop Peter leaving.
In remuneration for my disturbance, I promised to make it up to him but as this was a dry community, I couldn’t give him the customary Kimberley payment (a carton of beer), so I went over to his store and bought a heap of stuff. He was delighted to receive me and encouraged my spending spree by helping me on with a huge Statesman hat, which I am sure I paid 5 times too much for, and a 100% cotton cowboy shirt in brown. And so in this manner, I became a full country cowboy. I also had the foresight to buy $50 worth of phone cards to avoid further incidents of a similar nature, and then I paid, as far as I know, more for a bag of ice than anywhere in the known universe. At $15 a bag, you don’t want keep your beer cold on this ice! The ice cost more than the beer!
Back at the accommodation, some good news awaited me. Patrick’s car had been found, parked back at the roadhouse where it was stolen from, completely intact and with nothing missing at all, except a side of corned beef and some cooked potatoes. His nephew, going for some late night supplies found it with the key in the ignition and an empty tank. It seems that Patrick and James had missed it by only a few minutes in Fitzroy last night. They had clocked up over 1000 kilometers’ in pursuit of the elusive car and a few times, had come so close as to arrive only minutes after it had left. From Nookanbah they had headed south across the Fitzroy River, back to Yakanarra where his brother had just arrived from town. Blocking off the two escape routes and thinking he now knew who the culprit was, he had headed to Milijiddee a community where the thief’s family lived. But after arriving and giving the culprits family a good dressing down, he discovered that his information was wrong, it was someone else all together. Patrick, now in monomaniac overdrive turned around and drove the 2 hours back into Yakanarra, then headed out North east to a community called Rocky Springs, now the only road left unexplored. Just after dark he passed a car in the night and after arriving 20 minutes later in the community discovered he had just missed his own car and had actually passed it! With the whole Valley now before the escaping joy rider, it was impossible to decide where to go next so they headed into town again. Little did they know they were only a few minutes behind his own car most of the way back in, and had he passed the roadhouse instead of heading straight back out to Nookanbah to meet with us, he would have seen his car parked exactly where he lost it.
But he was still minus a car and stuck in convoy with us. The only option was to stay with us and come back into Yakanarra for the next workshop. And so at 9am we broke camp and made the extreme 4x4 crossing through the Valley south across the inland section of the Fitzroy and over to Yakanarra.
At the school in Yakanarra, the principal had heard good reports from other schools and had sent the local bus to pick up kid from 3 of the other outlying communities with smaller schools. It was really the nicest reception we had received yet, and a big group of kids. It was so hot though, so we squeezed all the kids and our gear into an air-conditioned classroom to make the workshops bearable for everyone. The headmistress was so delighted with our performance that we were heartily encouraged to push on and it was just the sort of inspiration we needed now. We also received some very generous offers of help for next year and I look forward to working with this school. So much of this trip has been about meeting all these people I have just dealt with over long distant phone calls and emails.
The drive in from Yakanarra to Fitzroy was exciting. The Fitzroy Valley is a place of great historical interest and much outside the scope of this short blog. Suffice to say, it has been an area of contention for many years. Subject to a 27 year court battle against the state government who supported drilling by a foreign oil company, Nookanbah was given back to the Yungngora aboriginal people not so long ago. But that is only one incident, this Valley is rich in many ways. The Fitzroy has been greedily eyeballed by many governments and private corporations thanks to its massive fresh water catchments and the rich soil of the huge Valley. It is an area similar to the Ord River in many ways and would have been happily dammed, flooded and farmed many times over. It has been a very successful cattle station since the beginning of settlement (and one can understand why when you see the quality and size of the cattle here), and as a result is the scene of some of the most horrific crimes against indigenous people anywhere on earth. The murdered bones of Aboriginal people are still found here regularly.
Nookanbah Community has very successfully managed the station here since 2007 and although the community looks sparse, dry, hot, dusty, underutilized and overpopulated, like most communities it is in comparison, fairly well off. Before you celebrate too heartily I might just remind you that although the traditional owners have had a small victory out here, it is temporary. It has not been given back to them, it is just a 99 year lease! And once the government finds a good enough reason to take it back, they will. Just like has been done time and time again, over and over in the history of white colonisation. Like Red Clouds treaty in 1874 which was honoured by the US Government until gold was found in the Black Hills, the rest is history and you know how the rest of the story goes, right?
Patrick took us off the track to the living springs where the great Serpent from the Dreaming lives, and we sat in awe under a weeping tree. All silently astounded by the beauty of the lily’s, the native bird life, and the fresh water crocodiles caught in a prehistoric capsule. The presents of this place breathes with an audible breath, one has the sense of something very old, something beyond our comprehension like a primal tune playing just beyond our hearing range, silently vibrating in the spheres, something we have lost contact with in our noisy world. Somehow we all felt it but none of us could describe it, and so we left it again to its timeless existence.
Aside from some pretty tough country to cross with a trailer in tow, and some precarious moments in boggy spots, we travelled the length of the valley without any incident and with many stops as Patrick showed us the bush food, like bush bananas and how to use the bark of the spiny tree as an anesthetic for wounds by peeling it off and chewing it to a pulp. He talked for hours about the land and how to live from it but also with it. We all arrived back in Fitzroy feeling a little more connected and alive than before. A good nights rest, long showers all round and a huge meal at the bistro had us all on track for the last two communities and Bayulu was our next destination.
Bayulu itself is a tiny community and the school is not actually on the community at all. It is on Go Go, station about 30 minutes out of town. Sadly Go Go station is owned by an anonymous foreign investor, and is now an efficient and seamless machine run by nameless managers that change constantly and have no connection with the Aboriginal people or even employ any in spirit of the old days when the black fellas out here were sought-after horsemen, skilled ringers, drovers, boundary riders and horse breakers. These new blow-ins pay no respect to the sacred springs or land. They swim in the springs without respect for the locals or paying tribute, and have no connection with the T.O’s. It is a commercial cowboy outfit that employs helicopter heroes and has lost the soul and romance of the drover days. Ultimately this is the cost of Howards Pastoral Leases schemes.
The workshop at the school was the best we have done. Well practiced now and working well as team, we have all learned a lot of lessons. Forged in the furnace, our workshops were at their absolute peak for the tour at Bayulu. The principal, hearing of our attendance at other schools had asked us to write a school song using the schools motto, Honour, Nurture, Succeed. We set up a whiteboard to write the words for the verses and broke the school into three groups. Each group was allocated one of the three words and had to write down what it meant to them. Back as a group, we showed and helped with construction of lines for the verses, encouraging the kids to call out their ideas, based on the discussions in the groups. The result was a really successful and entertaining half hour in which all the kids and the teachers participated in the writing of their own school song. Each time we finished the verse, the school sang the song through together up to that point, so by the end the had kids learnt how to construct a song, how to write verses, choruses, and how to fit the harmony, rhythm, chords and words together. Then Jonah played an awesome lead break for a bridge and hey presto we had a fully completed song.
Day 16 Desert Feet Tour
Wangkatjungka marks an end to the community workshops and concert and the very last of the off road travel. My relation with this community is good because we visited here last year. During the planning stage, Wangkatjunka gave us a real emotional and rewarding letter of support and encouraged us to return again. The CEO organised some really comfortable accommodation for us in some dongers next to the Ngurra Art Gallery about 20 kms from the community, with a little kitchen, an ablution block and washhouse, all air-conditioned and with a nice veranda and BBQ area.
We headed straight to Wangkatjungka after the Bayulu school workshop. The concert for Bayulu had been cancelled, mostly because the CEO was away and we could not get confirmation from the council. It worked out well as it gave us the afternoon off and we took a look at the art gallery, sat in the shade with the painters and met some of the locals. The community was on Sorry Business after a youth had suicided two weeks prior to our arrival. James knew one of the Gallery workers, a lady called Francine, from Pumnu. Francine had traveled across to Wangkatjungka with her husband who had sadly died of alcoholism that year. It is not uncommon for the people here to be from the Pilbara. As the crow flies, it is only a few hundred kilometres to Punmu. Wangkatjungka is mostly displaced people, and the community here is not on traditional lands, it was just an outpost used by the government to hand out supplies during the 60s when this was connected to the old stock route. Most of the residents of Wangkatjungka are desert people brought in from the Great Sandy Desert and the land to the south when it was used to explode atomic rockets by the British or divided up for cattle stations. The T.Os where rounded up like the cattle that would replace them and driven out. Places like Wangkatjungka are the resulte.
We were greeted warmly by the community; kids remembered us from last year and went crazy over the arrival of Lilly Gogos, who had toured through there with The Yabu Band earlier in the year (Now the equivalent of Yothu Yindi up this way). She was treated like a superstar, and the kids clung to her as if she was a diva. The normally shy and quiet Lilly had a smile from ear to ear and a red face glowing with embarrassment at her unexpected brush with fame.
Francine offered to take us to the spring, a great privilege, as these are living waters. Like pockets of heaven in a dusty wilderness, you could never guess at the location of these springs. Discovered by missionary in the 50’s, they used the year round supply of fresh water to grow apples. There is an old mission house long neglected nearby. This is sacred land and we had to warn the living water of our presence by rubbing a stone under the arm and tossing it into the spring. The springs are bottomless according to Francine and none of us could find the bottom. Only narrow and shady, they must be connected to deep fissures in the crust, as if the earth leaked in the wrong place, it is hard to conceive that something so perfect could exist in such a barren place devoid of water at all. We swung off the ropes hung by the kids and marveled at the cool, freshness of these seemingly misplaced luxuries.
Back at the camp we took the opportunity to cook up some supplies and Jonah impressed us all with his famous marinade. He cooked us an amazing BBQ fit for a king and I fell sleep on my swag last night like a contented dog.
The days have looked a little ominous and the first rains look like they could start any time now, an issue I had been acutely aware of when planning the tour earlier in the year. Due to a setback in one of the funding organisations deadlines, I had put the whole tour back 2 months, aware that this made it perilously close to the wet season and right at the end of the tourist season. Not that it worried us at all, just that flash floods out here can close roads for days and a lot of these communities are cut off for weeks at a time. Roads like the one in from Yakanarra, across a flood plain with frequent creek crossings is hard enough without boggy gullies made treacherous by only the shortest rainfall. Once again I have been carried by lady luck and had escaped any of these trials.
At the school this morning it was so hot the teacher asked us to perform in one of the air-conditioned classrooms. The workshop went like clockwork and during the afternoon before the community concert, James and Em and I wandered down to the art gallery again. I sat cross legged on the ground in the dirt with an artist called Clinton, under a tree for about an hour, watching him paint. Slow and methodical, he explained the story we was painting and how he learnt it, talking occasionally in between long periods of meditative silence, as if he had no sense of time. Taking the story up from where he left off as if he had never stopped in between the strokes of his brush. Not needing any confirmation or acknowledgment, I sat in silence. After some time a bunch of kids came down, recognising me from the workshop earlier at the school they invited us to the springs to jump off the rocks with them. The painter rolled up his canvas and together with a couple of other locals jammed into my car we all bounced down the rocky track to the hidden springs. This one was different from earlier on. A small cliff face overhanging its bank about 12 feet high was the perfect diving board. After paying our respects to the living water we jumped off the rocks into the spectacular pool and from the far bank I watched the kids frolic, with a sense of great privilege; one; to be apart of this moment, two; to see a place so beautiful, and third; to be accepted by these people and unconditionally and innocently into this little window of their lives.
In all my time here, on every community I have visited, I have never received a hostile look or been challenged for being the minority. I have never felt projection or blame from for the obvious contrast of conditions, nor has my presence been the object of hostility from the sufferers of my ancestors injustices. I have not once experienced any racial tension from an indigenous person, or been the object of any venting for the frustration that exists. I have never felt afraid or threatened. On the contrary, I have been offered every convenience and hospitality, some that even my hosts would not enjoy themselves except for on occasions. I tell you this my reader, because I often ask myself how would I react if someone I didn’t know and was a different colour came and sat on my front lawn under my tree at the front of my house and watched me paint. Would I just accept their presence with calm acceptance and without any animosity? Would I take them to my sacred pool and let them swim with my children? Would I give them the time of day? Would I tell them where to find food and what to eat safely?
I am acutely aware of my position at all times and loathe the feeling of invasion I often feel when we arrive on the communities, parading around in our big shiny cars like aliens from Mars. These little rectangles of land fenced out of a barren wilderness are what the Government calls Native Title, but what they are is anything but Native Title. More like prisoner of war camps. They are bleak, dry overpopulated, grave yards for broken down Toyota’s propped on drums with the wheels missing. They are the site of malnourished children, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome kids, and a vast discrepancy in the life expectancy compared to the rest of the country. These are the slices of justice we severed cold and called fair treatment. Under the 10 point pastoral and mining rights plan negotiated by Howard, these pockets of dusty land have been leased back to T.O.s for 99 years, then called allocation of rights fairly..? It is more like imperialism really. Does that makes us imperialists?!
I wish you could have been here on this smoky desert night to see the concert. The air is filled with an electricity as the wet season brews. The lands now at their driest, the hills are kindling, ready to burst into flames and pockets of the bush burn here and there, the smoky haze in the sky mixed with the brewing clouds makes the sky pregnant with the coming release, and ominous displays of lightning. The mixture of setting sun, full moon and distant lightning are what make the Kimberleys so special, out here, on an obscure basketball court in the desert, a crowd of people gathered around our dusty PA equipment, in the darkness of the closing night to the rhythm of our songs we let go our differences and danced as one, just people enjoying music and an occasion to be free of reserve, the night was a blanket for our inhibition, the music a bridge across our differences and the opportunity to dance, a moment long overdue.
Later in the night, the local bands setup their drum kit, wired together and with missing parts, it was an intricate operation that required 3 men to play. One to drum, one to hold the tom, and one to push the kick drum back in after a predetermined interval, when it inevitably crawled away from the user as he pounded upon it with his foot. Under the yellow gels of our lighting and through a haze of dust kicked up by energetic dancers, I watched in awe as kids and adults alike, gyrated their hips to the drum rolls. Three different bands had a go, rotating on the stage, all using the same equipment. One band had 4 different drummers, who had mastered the art of interchange with out loosing a beat. One band called themselves the Bayulu Band and had a bass player that kept receiving tuition from two of his mates who lent over the stage and actually held frets down for him as he wandered out of tune. Everyone is a singer, and up to several performers could be singing at any one time. Hands in pockets with hats pulled down low, they sang in language and harmonized. It was chaotic but entertaining; unorganised but an incredible display of raw talent, and best of all it was applauded with hysteria from the audience. Especially when the last band began a ‘Wipe Out’ rendition that lasted for an hour. The crowd, synchronized with the drum rolls, moved into the light in front of the stage, on the drum solo, suddenly a group, hips gyrating rapidly like African drum dancers, all spontaneously disappearing into the dark shadow at its completion. Over and over this little exercise was repeated, finding courage and losing shame in the intoxication of the music and the darkness of the night. One fed off the other and for as long as the band burst into the famous ‘Wipe Out’ drum solo the process was repeated with hilarious repetition. Then suddenly at the end of a drum roll someone yelled out from the darkness, an Elder maybe, “time to stop!” and all of the sudden we were alone. The basketball court emptied, the darkness swallowed the shadows and just as fast as it started it was over. The boys stripped their drums down, jammed all there gear on the back of a ute, shook our hands and left. And so ended the concerts in remote communities. Like a dream that might never have even happened.
Day 17 &18 Desert Feet Tour
And then there were 6!
Nearly 3 weeks ago we left Perth with 3 cars a trailer loaded with PA equipment and 11 people. As of yesterday we became 6 people and one car and a trailer. We have just left the Warmun Roadhouse at Turkey Creek and are about two hours south of Kununurra. It is with a feeling of sentimentality that I reflect on the past few weeks and the trials and tribulations that have brought us to this leg, the final gig and the last 200 kms northwards. It is also a part of the trip I have been dreading for a few days as it became obvious that the only option left to enable us to complete the tour, was for me to take the 2 ton trailer behind my little four cylinder car for the 4 hour trip between Halls Creek and Kununurra. And so far, the Mighty Mouse has responded well to the task. A veteran of last year’s tour and now the last car standing! With too many people to fit in my car, I have bussed Candice and Lilly up ahead on a Greyhound coach this morning at 4am and we will meet them by lunchtime, all things going well.
Yesterday morning James had gone on ahead to Halls Creek to drop the trailer off at the Kimberley Hotel before turning around and heading home with Bruno, back to Perth. In this way we finally negotiated a happy medium for all. It meant James could get back to Perth in time for a wedding on Sunday and laid to rest Bruno’s concerns about being home too late if Emily and I drove home slowly. The rest of us would play the last two gigs without a sound guy and then Candice and Brian would continue on the Darwin to visit their folks.
After they had gone, I came out of Wangkatjungka onto the main road and realised I didn’t have enough fuel to get to Halls Creek. I had not budgeted on all the travel I had done between the accommodation at Ngurra and Wangkatjungka over the last two days, and none of the communities here sell petrol because of sniffing problems. So I had to back track the 120 kms into Fitzroy. On the way north again we passed James and Bruno coming out of Halls Creek and pulled up to say our last goodbyes for the tour, having a sound guy this year was a great improvement on last year and relieved me of one more responsibility, and I am dubious about having to be the sound guy for the last two gigs, and so not overly glad about the arrangement. Also I will miss James greatly and I hope that we will continue to work together for next years tour. I hope he does not think too badly of me for my oversights on this tour, I have been acutely conscious of his burden with the trailer, especially since Geoff left, and completely unable to help him with the towing I have felt a little guilty and totally responsible. It is task he has undertaken with no animosity and considering that he has been a volunteer on this trip, I feel a great debit to him in many ways. He is a character of great intelligence completely modest in all his endeavours. Never once during his conversations with many contemporaries, did I hear him itemise in his accomplishments and academic successes, which he could well have and are many to boot. I believe I have met a man of huge importance to the issues of this country, and maybe even a man with many of the answers. I only hope our country has the foresight to ask him the right questions before it is too late. And more than anything I hope his program will continue to get the funding it needs!
In the last 19 days James has done some huge kilometres, he has been a driver and at times a taxi service. Like in Wangkatjungka when the guys had left the DJ music in the room before the gig, just assuming nonchalantly James would go back and get it for them, until they realised they had locked the keys in the rooms and so made James drive 20 kms to me then 20 kms back to the rooms again to get it. All of this and many other similar incidents, he did with out a single objection and with a smile. He has cooked our dinners, had them ready for us after our late gigs, loaded in and out of the trailer, been our roadie, our navigator and shared a huge portion of the management with me. At times, it seems he has had to be a babysitter, and I am sure some of us could not have keep our stuff together without him, like Jonah, who in the best of spirits is so forgetful that I am sure we could follow his trail of lost personal items all the way back to Perth like a Hansel and Gretel movie. With James leaving I feel a bit sad, truth be known.
After a mostly incident free evening I set up the gear with Jonah, Brian and Emily, eager to make sure all the PA was working and that I knew exactly how to mix the sound before the gig to avoid any of those embarrassing moments. This being the first time had to drive the mixing desk myself and also a paid gig, I was anxious to get it right. The concert in the sports bar of the Kimberley Hotel went smoothly and we entertained a final door count of 170 locals. We had been seen on TV the day before and many had come down just to hear us play, it was a rewarding experience. With the liquor restrictions now in place in Halls Creek the population has considerably reduced and the Kimberley Hotel is the one and only establishment where you’re allowed full strength drinks, so the police had a strong presence and the pub called last drinks around 1030pm, so it was a pretty easy gig really. I had the gear packed into the trailer and was back in the room by 11pm which is probably the earliest night I have had so far. However, the plan was to take Jonah and Lilly down the bus at 330am which meant we wouldn’t get much sleep. I think Jonah must have reasoned that it was not worth going to sleep for that short a time so he swapped his precious few hours for a few drinks and unsurprisingly at 330am when I went to pick them up from the room, both the boys where nowhere to be found! Candice was understandably upset as it now meant that her and Lilly had to go to Kununurra by themselves and I was not happy about leaving them to fend for themselves in Kununurra. I had no choice now though as I had to drive the car and trailer and now wait for the missing boys to surface.
They showed up a bit bedraggled a few hours later, not making much sense and a short comedy act ensured as they realized they had missed the bus and the where in the bad books with the girls. I threw them into the car and headed off. We have stopped twice now for to Jonah purge himself of a mysterious illness and I am listening to the two guys argue in the back over whose fault it was that they where late, both aware that a good dressing down from Candice is waiting for them in Kununurra. Brain justifying that he had stayed to look after Jonah to make sure he got back on time (a job he seems to have failed at), and Jonah claiming he was on time and that he can’t understand what happened! I am happy for them both, they have worked hard and deserved a bit of fun. And it has worked out ok.
And so as I write these words the closures of the tour and the final success seems within my reach. In another 30 minutes we will have reached every concert and community in the itinerary and now all that remains it to drift home at a leisurely speed.
Day 19 Desert Feet Tour
And then there was 4!
I got a knock on the door this morning at 730am and so ended my chance to have the first sleep in for the tour so far. The guys had left some stuff in the trailer and so after sorting them out I dropped them at the bus depot, we said our good byes again. Candice and Brian would continue on to Darwin and the remaining four of us will head back south as soon as I sort out the last issue of the tour and the final part in the jigsaw, the constant rearrangements to this convoy, a convoy now of one vehical. I want to empty the trailer and freight all the gear home so I don’t pull the guts out of my car and so I can at least cruise home without that concern.
Last nights gig coincided with a Halloween fancy dress night, a fact I was not aware of, it looked more like an axe murderers’ reunion, Kununurra locals came dressed in torn cloths, covered in fake blood and wielding plastic knives and axes. There were about 5 Dracula’s and one of them was in a pre-made coffin. Some of them were just near naked and 5 guys came dressed as girls, I don’t know how they got in or how that relates to Halloween, in all it was as bit disconcerting to say the least. After the huge crowd in Halls Creek and the public interest we attracted plus all the reports that we would get a big crowd here too, I am afraid to report that our gig here was quite the anticlimax to the tour and if I had know how poor a response we would get, I most certainly would not have done the extra 8 hours driving it has added on to the end of the tour. It had been worth it in the initial planning as we had offered to revisit Warmun Community again (half way between Halls Creek and here) but as I was unable to contact them till very late in the organising, they got tacked on to the end of the tour and we had to cancel it because Candice and Brian would not be here. The gig here last night was a paid gig and was the last chance for the guys to make a bit of extra cash and seemed like a good end for the tour but for the extra $150 each (once divided among the crew) it was not worth it. The crowd where really rude and the girls got pretty insulted. In fact in the end Candice turned off the music about 30 minutes early and left after one woman said some pretty silly stuff (drunken banter). It is the first time in all our travels together (last year and this year included), that the girls where unable to get the crowd dancing. For me, I am used to it, I guess and it just seemed like another night of playing my unknown originals to an unappreciative audience, with constant interjections for AC/DC covers. But as I explained to Candice this was a paid gig, the management paid us and at the end of the day it is their choice. We were invited back again anytime and they seemed very happy with us. So much so that the manager opened a bar tab for the guys and added breakfast to the meal allowance. The rooms are included in the deal and so, all in all, it is ok.
Sunday in Kununurra is quieter than a church, so I can not do a thing. I would like to drop the oil out of my car and give it a bit of a service too, but nothing is open. It needs a clean and I discovered in the light today there is vomit all down one side, plus some very strange smells in the car. I am almost tempted to just make a run for it to Broome with the trailer and sort it out there, but Jonah is AWOL and Lilly has decided to catch a bus home tonight at 5pm so I might as well stay the extra night and look after my car. With more of the guys gone and the tour over I feel completely empty. There is no applause, nor any of the satisfaction I thought I would feel. I just feel like a washed out musician in a pub at the end of the world, locked in my hotel room.
Day 20 Desert Feet Tour
Mission accomplished!
Down to the three of us now as the tour ends the wet season starts and our last day of the tour was met with a thunderous downpour. As if right on queue the heavens acknowledge our success by changing the season. The drive back to Fitzroy turned out to be the most spectacular scenery of the tour so far. The hills that had been alight with fires on the way up to Kununurra where now charcoal mountain tops. Whole strips of blackened areas scared the distant ridges. An impressive lighting show danced on our horizon in the south all the way to Hall Creek. I used a full tank of fuel to get to Warmen Road House (only 200 kilometers south of Kununurra) even with the traier empty! Irt was just to heavy and the strong winds slowed me down. With my foot flat the mighty mouse was only oushing 90klms per hour. Just after Halls Creek I pulled in a Yiyili Community. I wanted to try meet someone there to plan for next year, it is a community I wanted to go to but was not able to get hold of anyone. It is about half way between Fitzroy and Halls Creek and as we drove in the fields where alight with several small spot fires started by the lighting we had been seeing. As we left Yiyili we had an experience of the power of the landscape of the Kimberly’s in the wet. Low on the horizon a huge full moon lurked behind the smog of the burning land. The setting sun was a disk behind the coming storm to the west and the sky looked like it had two suns. Like an alien world, one hemisphere was black and exploding with massive discharges of electricity, while the other drowned in a haze of the smog, pouring into the heavens from rolling fields alive with spot fires that danced on the dry earth. This is the most extraordinary hour of the year, a contradiction of extreme elements. A land ready, like kindle for the fire, to burst into flames, set alight at the eleventh hour by the very storms that will quash them.
When I look back on this tour it is with affection that I realize that it has been a great privilege. It seems at time the doors of fate opened paths for us, perhaps we have just been lucky or perhaps my impertinence caught disaster off guard? But certainly the timing has been fortuitous on more than one occasion. Like the fires that raged out on the Cape Leveque Peninsula closing the road for a week. If we had arrived 5 days earlier we would have been trapped up the Cape Leveque road! Right in the middle of the tour, we would have missed several dates we could not have made up. Had we arrived a few days latter we would not have been able to get up there at all. As it was fires ravaged the road to Derby from Broome and at times even Peter, an experienced Kimberly man, feared we might not get through the billowing black smoke covering the road. But of course we did.
Then there are the moments in hindsight that are funny but at the time caused us great anguish. Like at the very start of the trip, heading from Newman to the first community at Jigaalong. We filled all the jerry cans on Geoff’s roof rack only to find that two of the four had holes in them. Poor Geoff watched helplessly as petrol ran down the sides of his car like rain.
Or how I could not turn on the wind screen wiper to clear my window for the first five days because the spoiler on the roof of my car slipped down, when I turned on the wiper it ripped the whole arm off.
Or the more spiritual moments like in Wangkatjunka where had watched a pack of wild houses frolic unaware of my presence for nearly an hour. And the three hours I spent fishing on lake Argyle due to the delay with the freight company, that turned out to be a wholly amazing trip. Especially as Jonah and I found a fully loaded ripe Mango tree in the bush that we filled our sacks and stomachs with!
Yes in all it has been well worth it!
Day 21 Desert Feet Tour
My leisurely drive home has so far been anything but that. The trailer, even empty is proving too much for my car. As soon I got into Broome this morning I threw it on a truck and sent it to Newman, it cost another $250 but I can not stand driving at 90klms and hour anymore. We lost the whole day driving to Fitzroy and arrived three hours later that I expected and in the dark, I was planning to do some fishing on the Fitzroy river but we where too tired by the tiem we got there. We had such a bad sleep with mosquitoes and heat that we just left at 430am and headed to Broome.
Reasoning we could get a good night sleep and then catch the tide early Wednesday morning out at Willy Creek. Jonah and I now hell bent on sealing the Tour with a good the catch of Barramundi that has eluded us so far. I took Peter and Cassy out to dinner for helping us with the tour and then had an early night.
Day 22, 23 & 24 Desert Feet Tour
We missed the tide after all that and caught no fish at all in spite of all the gear we had and our pleas to God above, nothing at al! I had to do some running around in the morning and picked up a copy of the DVD from WIN TV of the news report they did. I have added it to the web site so you can have a look, I was a bit disappointed they didn’t show any of the other bands play but at least it got it out there a bit. Not a bad ending considering I was feeling dejected at the start by the press’ lack of interest. I got a call from ABC Radio today and they want to do a retrospective story to help us get sponsors for next year too. So all in all I can’t complain.
All the sudden at 2pm I just had this urge to go home. I just need to get back and start work again! With 2400klms still in front of us and the dangerous dark night coming we did a bolt for the 80 Mile Caravan park 4 hours south. With the idea we could get up early and supplement our need for a Barramundi by catching a famous 80 Mile beach Salmon.
I misjudged the distance to Sandfire Road house and at 50klms out my fuel light came on. In the city with no load and doing 60 klms per hour I get 50klms on an empty tank but with 3 people in the car and the spoiler on the roof and a huge head wind it looked like I was going to have to thumb a lift into Sandfire with the empty Jerry can for sure. It was with baited breath that we all counted the kilometers; we turned off the air-con and dropped back to 80klms and hour. Sure it would conk out any second we hit the 10 klms sign and just as we rolled into the station she did her first stutter! What luck! I narrowly avoided my last drama for the trip.
At 80 Mile Caravan park we where so keen to catch a fish we just fell out of the car and headed for the beach with a pack of bait and a torch. The tide was full low and it was a long way to the water side. We should have been patient and waited for the tide but we had no food and reasoned we could not have dinner till we caught that Salmon. Now entirely desperate to have caught something for the trip we fished for 6 hours straight and gave up at high tide about 12 that night! We had 2 minutes noodles for dinner and hoped back into our swags. But we where woken at first light by an infestation of fly’s to discover there had been a heavy dew during the night and we where soaked through. That was it! Discussed by our lack of fishing luck, low on supplies and enthusiasm, we decided to make a run for home. We broke camp at 530am and drove none stop to Newman. There we picked up the big trailer from Capricorn Road house where the Truckee had dropped it, spent 2 hours cleaning it up. Dropped back in Newman, picked up my little 6x4 trailer and headed straight for Perth. The most dangerous part of the road is Meekatharra so we stopped at the Hotel, had a counter meal, filled up and from there we sat on 80klms per hour the rest of the night. The last 24 hour road house was Mt Barker so we had to fill a Jerry can to make it but with a bit of luck and negotiation we had an incident free night. We arrived back in Perth after 24 hours almost nonstop from 80 Mile, at 630am!
When I left Perth 24 days ago my odometer read 159,886, this morning it reads 171,818. That equals 11,932 Kilometers! The tour is finished and we are home safe! My Nay-Sayers where wrong and I did it again a second year running. This has been a journey of a lifetime for me and a life changing journey for others. It was something I had to do to be happy with my own existence. I can not sit by and expect the problems of this county to sort them selves out. I have no power to speak of, no political influence. I am just like you; maybe I am less than you? I am just a suburban real estate agent! I have no mountain of money; in fact I am darn right broke. I live from hand to mouth and I would say this exercise and all the effort I spend on it keeps me that way more so. I have no connections or family in high places. I have no inheritance or standing, in fact I am not even educated (thus the reason I am in real estate) my back ground is a fisherman come salesman. I have done nothing that I can really be that proud of with my life. But I have one talent, I can play music. This talent was given to me for free and so feely I shall give it away. And it is with this talent that I see my potential to be of use to the problem we have as a county. I do not ask for anyone else to go to the extremes that I do, nor would I even expect you too, what I ask is you help me to be utilized to my full potential. That I might be a conduit for those with a desire to serve but not the time and that by this collective strength I might go on and do more. I am willing to give of myself all that I am if you are willing to support me.
If you have enjoyed this journey with me and you see the value of it then you can help! What we need is sponsors for next year. Businesses, community organization, wealthy individuals! If you know one or are one call me now! Or if you can write grants and want to donate your efforts, we need you!
Thank you for joining me on this tour into the heart of Australia. My vision is to run the tour longer, to reach more communities and children and to create more employment and performance opportunities for Indigenous Performers.
Once again, I am yours in Service
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Desert Feet Tour 08
13 July 2008
For kids in Communities. Taking music workshops to kids in remote communities to inspire them to develop their talents through indigenous role models. Day 1 Desert Feet Tour 08 Picked up the PA for the tour on the Saturday but did not think to try it out first! A trap for younger players that I fell into with a loud bang. When we tried to set it up for a sound check in my lounge on the Sunday the speaker cables would not fit into the PA head. Being a Sunday I could neither call anyone, hire more speakers or call the shop. In the end I took the only option left and loaded my own into the car. We left my front door at 8pm only to discover that the new car battery I installed that day had caused the stereo to shut off requiring a code number to operate again. We searched the house high and low but gave up, accepting that we would have to drive the whole tour, some 8000 km without music! Looked like we would need to spend the time praying instead, after the way it had started. The first night on the road was heavy going, especially as we had a deadline in Broome for an 11am interview at the ABC Kimberley Radio station. We could not afford to lose any time. Kangaroos on the road around Meekatharra slowed us down to 60–70 km and hour around 2am. The road was deserted aside from the multitude of mutilated roo and cattle carcasses. Resembling a war zone, they where strewn in great numbers everywhere. I am not sure what was harder work, dodging the giant bloated carcasses or being prepared for their lightning fast appearances from the scrub as they bounded blindly into our headlights. Once we managed to brake to a grinding halt just in time to give the frozen roo a little tap. Ironically, I broke of the roo whistle I had installed that day. We hit a roo with a roo whistle. Day 2 Desert Feet Tour 08 The dawn found us just out of Newman and the landscape was amazing. Dry and red, but cliffs of iron loomed out of the valleys of pindan. This scenery accompanied us to Port Headland where we filled up for the final run into Broome, hoping to get off the road before dark on this leg of the run. The cattle up here lay on the warm bitumen to sleep during the cold nights and I have heard some horrible stories about accidents with cattle. The number of dead ones on the road tells a deathly story. A black cow on a dark night is almost invisible till you are almost on it! The Roebuck plains are amazing to see and with the sun setting to our right an orange glow through long shadows across the hazy road, bleached white from years of salt lake overflows encrusting it with salty brine. During the wet season these roads become unpassable, sometimes for weeks at a time. This whole area is like a giant flat sea as far as the eye can see. With the road only a few feet above the salty plains often long stretches disappear. Day 2 Desert Feet Tour 08 All we had to do today was find the ABC studio at 11am then try to be out of town and on the road to Fitzroy Crossing by 2pm so we were not driving in the dark again. The road north of Broome is a monotonous repeat of cattle grids, floodways and one-lane bridges that can be very scary when a three trailered road train is heading at you! Waiting for us at the turn off at the Old Northern highway was the smiling Patrick Davies, son of an Irish drover who married a Camooweal woman from Kalkadoon country. He moved here aged 4 and is now married to a Wankatjunka girl named Emily. Patricks house is situated right on the famous Fitzroy River, just past the old crossing after which the town is named. It is a very narrow little single lane road that descends into the bed of the second fasted flowing river in the world, second only to Amazon (the amount of water that flows down this river in peak flood would fill the Sydney harbour in 15 minutes.), fed by several outlets. The track leading to the crossing is carved into the riverbank like a tunnel with out a ceiling and descends precariously to the bed. The crossing is only a foot above the actual riverbed. In 2002 the river broke its banks and flooded into Patricks house. The water reached the floorboards of his stilted home, just as it peaked. Meeting Patrick has been the highlight of my trip and travelling experience so far. His warm handshake and welcoming embrace was a luxury of the weary traveller. If one looked at Fitzroy on the map they would be excused for wondering why anyone would live here. But if you became, like I, the lucky visitor of the Davies hospitality you might wish to never leave here. For one thing this land is rich and it did not take long for me to discover how well Patrick lives here. Barramundi are his regular meal and the river is his local deli. “The freezer on my veranda is always full of meat”, he exclaimed. “I can fill it with roo one day, beef on another, even goanna in the hot weather. What ever wanders across my door is my food”. Patrick lit a fire in a half 44 gallon drum, explaining to me about the wood, “blood wood” he said is good for the fire because it is easy to break up, you don’t need an axe, once it is dry it shatters and can be broken across another log. But the snappy gum was the one they like to cook with. Its coals burned longer and at a lower temperature, ideal for baking and in the morning you can always count on the coals being easy to rekindle once you wipe away the ashes. Mikie his son, told me about the …… tree how they make the number 7 shaped boomerangs because the wood is soft and pliable until it dries, then it is hard and strong. One of natures little paradoxes. The night was a delight of song and campfire talk. Patrick enthralled us with his knowledge of the bush stories, law, history and love for his countrymen. We hung off every word he said and it was easy to see that his family and community respected him with great pride. The mental health nurse from Derby dropped by with a new Maton 12 string and Em and I busted out our guitar and viola, Cole Clarks rang out into the night. We sung our life’s stories and cried and laughed at our misfortunes and joys, but I could not help to feel envy for his connection to his land and people. A connection I will never lay claim to. I learnt of the early settlers and the people of the region, the desert people and the salt water people, the fresh water mob and their regions and language, of how the warriors where all taken away in chains to Derby and shipped to Rottnest, of the memoires of this area and the losses caused by the white man. It was an education and entertaining at the same time but be warned, leave your white pride aside when visiting Fitzroy Crossing because the stories you will hear will not make you proud to be white and it is only a man of no conscience that could listen without feeling responsible. It is not forgotten what has passed and nor should it be. To the contrary, more needs to be discovered. There are the bones of men, women and children still white beneath the sun that need to be accounted for, the bullets of the white man are lodged in their bones and the stirrups of the land owner crushed many a black scull. These are crimes unrecorded, unpunished and forgotten but the evidence is here. Patrick Remised, with the stories of his fore Fathers, the drover life. His memoires reached back to the days before the roads where even here, just gravel tracks and crossings. When I interjected at the idea of how hard life must have been he only shook his head and said “good life” Patrick spoke of the progress of the communities and his pride at the developments and his hope for the future. We brainstormed ideas for the tour next year and I knew I had forged a friendship, in these small hours, which would last a lifetime. But one thing is clear to me and that is that we stand on the brink of the end of a line of descendants that have witnessed the old law and know the ways of cultures passed down through hundreds of thousands of years. If we do not act now we will lose this precious history forever. These people might be a minority but they cannot be covered with one blanket. There are micro cultures within a few hundred miles of each other that may house four to six different languages, with different needs and laws. Maybe we could stop telling these people what they need, what we think is best for them, and asked them what they want. Taking serious action now means owning the past and writing Indigenous people into a constitution set in stone. Making radical changes like 99 year leases on land instead of selling it all to westerners and foreign investors. Look at Perth, the local indigenous tribe, the Noongar people, own almost no land yet the city develops and expands at a rapid rate, these ideas have been acted upon in other countries where the indigenous population is the majority and western development flows into cities. In an era where we face the destruction of our environment, within a few decades if we do not address our environmental crises, I see both a frightening parallel with the ways of the old law of the aborigines and at the same time a shining opportunity to understand and identify the capability of the indigenous people who lived in harmony with the environment in a way that was sustainable. If this is not the greatest paradox of this world then what is? The fact that now, the most depleted indigenous culture on the earth, an almost erased minority, one on the brink of being destroyed at the same rate as our environment. Also holds the secret of sustainable ecology, their ancient ways are the perfect example of how to preserve this earth? There is no longer time to debate these issues in cabinet. While one government allocates land rights, the next introduces the 10 point policy and says if the land is already used you can not claim it. In cycles we give it and take it back. We cannot wait for the politicians to find a solution, the time is not running out it has passed, we can only hope to save a fragment if we act now!! Like the environment, the government has no sustainable solutions to indigenous problems. If they said by 2020 we would no longer be using fuel driven cars but solar and electric power then we would at least have hope. If they said by 2010 all aboriginal children will be schooled with curriculum converted into the thousands of different languages and then I would see hope. This job is in our hands. The power to change lies with the people. We are the privileged occupants of this nation. We do not have to lose anything to realise that we have a historical and anthological opportunity to see the oldest indigenous culture preserved in its pristine form. If we do not then in a hundred years we will be cry our stupidity at the loss as we do over entire species that we has hunted to extinction, lost cultures and languages that have been destroyed by war and changes in religion or power like all the beautiful libraries of Alexander the Great’s era. We will never forgive ourself because now more than ever we have the resources, the intelligence and the ability to act. A generation of white children with a proper compassion, understanding and respect for the indigenous owners of their inherited land.
Wankatjunka Community All the best laid plans of men and mice man…… on an indigenous community you have to be flexible to say the least. We had workshops prepared and a tight itinerary we wrote for the tour plan but when we got there that mattered little. The girls took control of the situation a few times and organised the kids into groups for games. By the end of the day the kids where hanging off the girls, they didn’t want to let them go. I was amazed to see how extremely affectionate these kids are. Far more so than in any of the other area we have visited around the world. Once again I was amazed, refreshed and inspired by the invincibility of the human spirit, that indestructible childish state and once again I was reminded of why I do this, so that children can be children, can have the opportunities we have been given and know the options of the world available to those with an education, simple things that people like myself take for granted. I dream of a day when through example, encouragement and indigenous role models some of these children will remember, “I remember how I saw those people on the Love Angel Tour, I want to be like that and play music.” Having the girls (Moana Dreaming) has been a blessing. I could not have found a better group of people, we have had to rough it up a few times and they have never complained. When called upon to do extra activities they are all flexible. They have sat out long rides in cars overnight and cramped sleeping conditions that most people would have objected to, but they see the value of the tour and understand its focus and goals and are all very compassionate and patient. We all get stuck into setting up the PA, unloading the trailer and packing it all up again. We have no roadie, no sound guy, some of the equipment does not even work and with out Geoff Talbot who has donated his car, time and energy to the whole tour as a friend and member of VOW, I do not think we could be doing this. Day 3 Desert Feet Tour 08 We could get no accommodation anywhere but luckily Ems girl friend from Perth had parents here and they had a spare room and a couch, so the girls all piled in there, and Geoff and I slept in our swags on the veranda. It’s hard to believe that if you want to go on tour all you have to do is do it! The irony is that I am a better organiser than musician and sometimes I get myself into situations out of my league, but I guess that’s how you learn and get things to happen. I am just doing what I want to be doing and that makes it fun. Seeing the effect it had on the kids makes it all worth it and I am just so pleased that the community gig went well. That is what the tour is for, and to be honest that is all I care about. Those kids out there are really the salt of the earth. Day 4 Desert Feet Tour 08
Warmun is a community right on the main road (Great Northern Highway). It is still however classed as a remote community because if you drive through the Kimberley you will see, everything up here is remote. However, I saw some confronting differences between this community and Wankatjunka. I am by no means a expert but if the two examples are the beginning of an experience where I can start to form an opinion, then I would have to say that the more remote the community, the better off it is in some strange way. Communities are dry and have laws and by-laws prohibiting the sale and consumption of alcohol. In a lot of cases, from what I have been told, the locals use the communities as a place to dry out or get away from the issues of town life. There are of course permanent residents, but everyone at some stage will go to town for football, shopping or drinking binges just like any human on anywhere. The problem as explained to me by one gentleman in Warmun is that people smuggle the booze in and there are lots of bootleggers and people out to make a quick dollar by selling petrol and booze at exorbitant prices. They wait up at the roadhouse outside the community border and deal there. This is a problem which is reduced in other communities simply because people are reluctant to drive up the dirt tracks. The kids in Warmun were like kids anywhere in the world, the same influences in their dance and dress as in Wankatjunka, a real phenomenon on which a whole thesis could be written. The kids here were a slightly older age group and really hard to reach to start with. The front was very tough and they were obviously used to adversity. One would have to understand their culture in great depth, which I don’t, but in short from what I learnt from others there is that they have a boundary that they cannot cross in front of the other kids at the cost of being ridiculed. They call it ‘shame’ and I cannot think of a better way to describe it. Basically it means that if you are good at something and you do it openly you will be ‘shamed out’ by the other kids. To get around it, you just have to get all the kids doing it at once. This was a tough audience and they would participate in far less games or dances that the others in Wankatjunka did. I tried to tempt them to participate with prizes of CDs and shirts for the winner of dance competitions and so forth but all to no avail. Then in exhausted frustration I had to bring out the big guns! It was evident by the Eminem shirts and hats on backwards that these kids liked rap and break-dancing and it just so happens that I am an old school popping and bobbing kid from way back. We got the kids into a big circle and I busted out a few backspins and moonwalks and then it was off. The girls came out strong with their interpretation of the black American rap moves, which I can only describe as a funky version of the chicken dance, but with such passion that you have never seen. With eyes closed and expressions of passion they waddle themselves to the floor and back up. Very entertaining. In the early afternoon Richard Thomas, the elder who had given us permission to play at Warmun, showed up with an old Dolboro Gibson. Two other elders also joined him one producing a beautiful Nemesis bass amp and then the show was on. The girls once again improvised this time with a full band behind them and it made for a great show. By 2:30 in the arvo we were all exhausted, and after a great hamburger at the Turkey Creek roadhouse, the best burger I have had on the road yet, we set off for Kununurra, through some of the most majestic country to be seen anywhere in the world. With the setting sun throwing red flames across the landscape, one instantly understands why the indigenous people of Australia have such a profound connection to this land. It is without a doubt the most amazing.
Kununurra As we drove out of Fitzroy Crossing last Tuesday, Patrick passed me a CD through the window. The night before, he had sung a song that I instantly loved, and this was the artist. Loudon Wainright. I slipped it into my CD player straight away and it has stayed in there ever since. I have chosen a sober path for myself and sacrificing the intoxication or elevation of sensations through inebriation means I have no medication for any state of mind, aside from copious amounts of caffeine (which I absorb in the form of coffee in a volume large enough to kill a small horse. I am pretty much entirely sober and have to deal with my anxieties, losses and victories in the moment. Being sober does not mean I am bored, quite the contrary. I am motivated and I find things that affect me profoundly, like a natural high you could say. Finding music that I like is one such experience. There is something captivatingly enjoyable about discovering a new song or artist that you really enjoy and just cannot stop singing, I love being moved in this way. I am always amazed that there is still yet another song that affects me in this way. The sense of nostalgia must be a deep well within me. When I hear music like, I always wonder about the artist, when was the song written, why? Sometimes I discover this song has been around for years and I have only just found it. That’s what I love, songs that latch onto the receptors of my mind like a narcotic to a brain cell, all this time just waiting to be discovered. As a musician that is my only goal really, the idea that I might one day, somehow generate these same emotions in another, have the same effect on another human, then I would have done my job. That is all, no more, just that moment of peace. That is my wish. My own doubts about my ability always plague me and I never feel adequate. I worry that my music is the wrong kind or the wrong style. So why do I book gigs to stand in front of people and sing with this fear ever before me? Just in the hope that someone will discover in its melody what I have discovered in others. The roadhouses up here are full of music stands overflowing with little known country artists and local musicians, known only in the surrounding area with loyal support and followings from communities and towns. There are some real gems amongst them and I made it my duty to listen to the bush poetry of the Kimberley dwellers like Peter Brandy. A lot of these musicians will never be heard anywhere else, maybe they do not even care but they capture the essence of a brutally harsh but mesmerizing and spectacular land, the challenges and adversity of the explorers and drovers that forged the paths to waterholes and landing points. All the while, for thousands of years prior, an unbelievably resilient indigenous people had discovered the secrets of this outwardly inhospitable land. Day 6 Desert Feet Tour 08 Among my own doubts and concerns, my own inadequacies, today I had to find the time to console another member of the tour that found their own challenge in the isolation and remoteness of the Northwest. Frayed tempers and strained emotions got the better of all of us at the halfway mark. I think the confrontation of the truth, the overwhelming nature of what we have seen has challenged us all in its own way, each of us has looked into our own darkness. For me, today started with intense feelings of depression and an overwhelming feeling of impending doom. The first thing that came to my mind was that laying bricks is easier than this. Last night left me despondent and that familiar old companion of low self-esteem rushed into the slightly opened door that the wedge of fear had jammed ajar. After a disagreement between the tour crew, I got a proper dressing down from the hotel manager on a separate issue. On top of all that the crowd had not responded well to my set and aside from being ignored we got a lot of vacant looks. How a man finds it in himself to believe in his music and carry on I do not know. Being a novice and an inexperienced musician on his first tour I feel like a ball bouncing off every obstacles and every one seems to have a tennis racket. I completely refuse to play covers I would sooner go back to selling real estate. I don’t know what type of music I play but I know that is all I have and all I can give. There will be a place for it but Kununurra sports bar is not it. I tell you this not from my own strength but from the advise of my friends. A friend is someone who, when seeing you at your ugliest, looks past it and stays by your side. Today was an ugly day for me. But lucky for me, I have friends. Last night tempers erupted as the forced intimacy and lack of sleep caught up. Thanks to the calm interjection of others it was diffused quickly but we all saw the fragility of our mission. Then today we nearly lost one of the crew who decided to leave straight away. The tension of hanging out in pubs and an incidental meeting in the street with an old drinking friend had set fire to old fears. We took a drive out to Ivanhoe crossing to have a bit of time out and talk but hit a sharp stone that blew the tyre out. Upon replacing it we discovered that another wheel had a large soft wall bulge and might go any minute too. It turned out to be a good distraction. Changing the tyre gave me a chance to get my hands dirty with some of this red earth. At one stage I walked a few metres off the track into the scrub. I noticed the soil here is actually like a mudflat; the deep cracks evidence of a flood at some time. In the wet this must all be covered in water. I bent down and crushed the parched but rich cake in my hands, smelt its warm mustiness. I felt strangely alive, grateful to understand the harshness of this country and respect it. Vulnerable but safe, like a child in its mothers arms. I got a glimpse of how it might feel to be an aboriginal, the true child of this land. A furiously tempered but rich, secretive, silent mother. A mother without mercy that has made men strong as steel. This endless land has parched the throat of many inquisitive wanderers to death. We limped back to town but being a Sunday could get no help. The only tyre place we could get hold of was all sold out. He told us there was a shipment coming in tomorrow morning but he couldn’t tell us what time. We need to leave at daybreak to get to Broome before nightfall, a thousand kilometre drive. We decided to send the girls on first in my car and Geoff and I would wait in town and fix the car then make a run for it, even if we had to drive through the night. The girls could go an ahead and get there before dark to stay of the roads when it was dangerous. They might as well get some sleep and have a rest. Tuesday will be a hard day of travelling 3 hours up the King Sound peninsular on unsealed dirt roads to Beagle Bay community and back again in the same day.
Leaving Kununurra The gig last night went better than the night before, we sold a few CDs and had some really kind comments on our set. A few couples even got up and danced to a few songs but my nerves were shot by the end of the night, worrying about the gig and the one thousand kilometre drive back to Broome. I am usually really nervous before a gig at the best of times but the added stress of getting the PA system to work gets me really in a fluster. I have at last devised a system and numbered all the mics and leads but in the start it was a comedy of errors. Especially with everyone wanting to put their two bobs worth in. In the end it would be so confusing that I would reach breaking point. I am sure the girls must have thought I am mad a few times. I now know to test the fold back first then the front of house. That way I don’t have 4 girls yelling different orders at me. Also I have realised it is better if I just set it up myself in my own time and give myself lots of time to do it. Geoff has been good with that too and always helps me lug it in and out. There has been many a time this last week that I wished Rob Findlay was with me to sort this stuff out. I will never tour without a sound guy again I swear. I also got a call from Ros last night saying that she was coming to Broome to do the love angel workshops for the last of the schools. Ros’ mum has been really sick and it was not looking good for her arrival as planned on the tour. The call came as good news and a big relief for me and I am really looking forward to being able to hand over the reigns to her. She is a great organiser and a powerhouse lady and I feel a great sense of relief. We saw the girls off early and then went in for breakfast at the hotel. We got lucky at the first tyre place we went to. (Thanks to the love angels that Ros asked to help us, so she said) It was open early and had two of the 17-inch tyres we needed. As a result we got away by 830am and where on the open road again. I had 10 hours to reflect on the week so far and the near misses we have had that could have ended the tour instantly. Like the Roo that Em hit, stopping only in time to knock off the roo whistle. And the time that Geoff pulled into Broome from Port Headland with the back trailer doors swinging open, imagine my heart sink as I saw them swinging in the wind and my relief as I approached it only to discover all we had lost in 500 kilometres was a water bottle. There has been some comical mistakes that I can laugh at now that where not too funny at the time. Like playing the whole gig in Halls Creek and struggling through the set like a waking nightmare adjusting the sound on the PA frustrated at my inability to get a good sound only to have Candice walk up to the PA at the end of my set and ask me why I had the fold back off altogether! Then another time when I had got myself a great fold back sound and played for fifteen minutes wondering why I was getting blank stares until I realised I had absolutely no sound coming out of the front speakers and no one could hear a thing. We got into Broome just in time to drive straight into the airport and pick up Ros and Lara from the airport. And we now had the nicest surprise in stall for us all so far. Beagle Bay Peter Strain joined the team again today as well so we now formed a full contingent with a camera man, producer Ros and her personal assistant with a load of Love Angels, the two bands and also a friend of mine that just happened to be up from Perth and her and her cousin jumped in the car too. Twelve of us in all and we headed for Beagle Bay for the day. The track out to Cape Leveque is one of the worst around and we wanted to avoid taking the trailer so we loaded all the stuff into Petes Troopy. I came through a huge could of dust to see Geoff’s Prado sideways on the opposite side of the track. When the dust settled a bunch of trembling women fell out of the doors. In the comfort of the Prado Geoff had got a little to much speed up, hit a hump and just had so much momentum that he sailed through the air landing on the next hump. These humps seem to run in lots of threes and fours and can really send you into a veritable roller coaster ride if your not careful. They had spun out of control and had been on two wheels until they finally regained control on the other side of the track. A near escape! But that was all the scary stuff for the day, the rest of the day was to fall into place like a jigsaw, much to all our delight. I could now hand the tour over to Ros and let go of the reigns a bit, plus with Pete here to direct and produce, the workshops took a more formal shape. With the teachers marching kids into the basketball court Candice stepped up to the mark with her experience as a teacher and organised the music workshops into effective little sessions of 15 minutes each. We took groups of 20 to 30 and rotated them through the different workshops, colouring in angels with Ros, dancing with the girls and then gathered them all under the stadium for one last concert. The girls wrote a song on the spot and then got the kids to make the words for it. They set up a huge white screen and Lara wrote the words as we made them so every one could sing. My job was to do a lead break in the bridge and lucky for me the Aminor pentatonic scale fit in there cause that is all I know!? We all got up, Emily found a Viola part and all the girls did harmonies. It was hilarious going but to my amazement after 3 or 4 trials the whole school, teachers and all, sang the song right through. Candice’s management of the process was incredible and the way she could see how the song needed to go and teach every one how to write a song at the same time was really impressive. These absolutely fearless girls constantly amaze me. The day was huge success and the cake was iced when leaving the community we ran into Wayne Barker, indigenous artist and very famous musician. He took us out his lake on the reserve where we wandered through the glorious freshwater lily covered shallows of its edges. He talked to me of the dreamtime and explained the how he had been taught by his elders how the land breathes if you listen and how all things are connected. He told me the story of the formation of his ancestors, passed down through thousands of generations and I became transfixed and mesmerised by the energy that surrounded him. He named all the concepts of the dreaming in his native language when he had no English for them and they rolled of his tongue like poetry. All the while he spoke, I could not help drawing parallels to almost Buddhist-like philosophy in his ancient law. Especially his ideas about the connectedness of all things and the ball of energy that all things are born from, how cells have eternal lines that be traced to each person back to the origin of time and that all people and cells come from the water. I cannot remember the words he used but I remember my fascination as he spoke, and I asked him before we left if I could come for a week soon and sit with him in the long grass to learn this and to understand it. He accepted and we shook hands white fella, black fella. This man has the power of freedom from the needs of all white mans goods. He knows his traditional ways and culture, and I would like to learn from him. Day 9 Desert Feet Tour 08 The Oasis Bar The morning was full of radio interviews including RTR in Perth, which was exciting. They seemed really interested in our story and gave us a good 20 minutes live on air, plus a song off the album.At midday I had an appointment to meet with the manager of the Roebuck Hotel. I felt a little apprehensive about that, as our promotion of the tour has not been as good as could have been an from the turn up at other venues I would assume, aside from a few friends we would have an empty house. We had done a lot on radio and had run a big ad in the newspapers but no one up here knows us and we have Darrell Braithwaite and the Miss Roebuck competition on the nights either of us. It is an important gig for us because this is the only gig on the trip where we charge entry and the hotel takes the bar, a risk for the hotel to take because if no one comes they pay staff, security and doormen for nothing. So it was with mixed emotions that I walked up the old front driveway of the Pearlers bar. Not least because of the memories it invoked for me as a 23 year old man sleeping in the back of my ute in this very car park, 13 years ago, hoping to find work as a pearl diver. It was a hard time for me then and I did some heavy drinking in the front bar at the pearlers. Also I am not sure why the management decided to give us a gig here, probably because I sold the idea to them so well, but in reality we are way out of our league. Imagine my distress when management open the door and lead us through to the Oasis Bar, a huge venue capable of holding 1000 people! I stood up on the stage and reflected on all the great names I was about to follow in the foot steps of, Diesel, Ian Moss and Alex Lloyd just to name a few that I had seen here all those years ago. But the venue had been renovated and was really nice. The stage had a green room (where rock stars wait to go on) a massive PA system and a giant dance pit under it, lighting and smoke machines and in all I felt a little overwhelmed. The management were really kind and even gave the girls rooms though we had made no arrangement for any, and even gave us meals. The nicer they where the more terrible I felt and when I showed up at 7pm to take the door they had even allocated three giant security men to help us with the door. So it was with great embarrassment that I climbed the stairs to the stage, dwarfed by the massiveness of the complex about me, lit up in proper fashion and decked out like Elton John but with only 5 people sitting in the giant beer garden. I do not know what is harder, playing to a crowd or playing to a few intimately observant friends. But the sense of embarrassment I felt standing on that stage nearly killed me. Here I was, an organiser of the biggest event that no one would ever come to. I struggled through my songs thinking all the time that the staff must think me a total loser. Look at this tool standing up there singing songs no one knows to no one! At the end of my set Rex came up to me. I held my breath for I was sure this was the bit where I get run out of town. “Shit!” he exclaimed, “you guys are amazing!” he said. I was a little taken aback, then he profusely apologised for the lack of attendance which he ardently claimed was all the their fault, he said that he thought that we looked and sounded better than anything he had seen there all year????? Well I nearly fell off the stage backwards. The sentiment was lovely and it was the nicest compliment I have ever had but I guessed perhaps a sympathy vote? Later on one of the duty managers told me that Rex is really a tough critic, so it seems that he really meant it, but better still is he was totally supportive of our cause and offered full support for next year. He excitedly expounded hundreds of ideas and promised us to fill the venue next time! Well I must say we certainly made a good friend there. Big thanks to you Rex! Day 10 Desert Feet Tour 08 Derby High School We rolled into Derby and passed the Boab Inn, where we would be playing our last gig of the tour tomorrow night. A big sign on the lawn declared “The Love Angel Tour, playing here Friday night.” At least they got that right, in Kununurra they had written angle instead of angel. I am sure a few punters came along expecting skimpy waitresses or some dubious stage show doing ‘The Love Angle’ as they called it. We were running a bit late and it was 1030am before we finally pulled into Derby High School. The deputy principal welcomed us and Ros organised to have the kids brought out in age groups. This was a big school; kids from several smaller communities come in every day so the groups were up to a hundred at a time. This time the workshops had to be really structured and teachers marched kids into the basketball stadium in their class groups then sceptically observed from the boundary the goings on of the Love Angel Tour. The first group was the littlest kids, up to about grade three. As we had a few more groups to get through, we had to keep it short. Ros did her Love Angel talk and then I jumped up with Em, I had no idea what to do so I gave out CDs as prizes for right answers about music. Then I invited several kids to join us on the stage to play percussion and sing along. I then offered a CD for the loudest singer in the crowd and busted out the Kookaburra song, which the kids seem to love with its loud chicken noises at the end. They all joined in and it was a real blast. We quickly wound it up and Moana dreaming did the same and invited kids to come to AB music school if they felt inspired by anything they saw. After the workshop kids ran up to me asking for my autograph and hanging off us. It was hilarious and Em and I felt like wiggle style rock stars. We laughed for hours later about how fantastic an audience the kids were; uncritical, mesmerised and completely grateful for the excitement, more then you could ever get out of an adult. The next group where a bit older but were just as excitable and we repeated the process with ease. I snapped into this Fat Cat and Friends type personality, I kept thinking of Keith McDonald, (who I grew up on) and the way he used to talk with big high noted questions in a kid like voice. It came really easily which surprised me as I don’t have any siblings nor children of my own. The next lot where teenagers and I was well aware not to patronize them with the simplicity you can offer kids. These are guys that don’t show emotion and don’t really know what their own emotions are doing anyway. I asked them how they liked school and what they had learnt. Of course I was ready for their bleak answers so I offered them a chance to miss some class and listen to some music to which they all agreed. I was unable to coax any participation but you could have heard a pin drop when Em and I played Time Flies, they were particularly impressed with Em’s Viola. I felt like I made good contact with them and had their attention. I was hell scared that I would mess up and lose it, but God is merciful. The grand finale came and all the students filed back into the stadium for the concert, over 300 kids of all ages. We just went full steam and played them stuff off the album. I had the little ones in the front dancing and jumping like a High Five episode. At times I had to stop singing and ask them to sit down again. At the end of each song the cry of applause was deafening. I can honestly say they are the biggest and best audience I have ever had. I would have to say it is the most fun I have had on the tour yet and the best reward I have ever got for playing a song.
Final Gig: Boab Inn, Derby Yesterday we checked into the Boab and it was nice to get an early night and wake up for the first time this trip and not have to race off somewhere. I did the last radio interview for the trip on the local station and was well received. Playing every day has finally got me up to speed again and now just as the tour is about to end I have my confidence back. I had a good feeling about the gig because the hotel had lots of calls asking about us and the management assured us a guaranteed crowd of two or three hundred people, as it was pay week and a Friday night. So it was with great relief that I set up the PA system for the last time after doing a bit of Derby site seeing. My relief was to be short lived however as I could not, for the life of me, get a good sound in the pub. The walls where lined with corrugated tin and big glass doors everywhere. The PA running on only on channel could not get sound levels up without feeding back horribly and as much as I tweaked and played with it, in the end I had to just play by feel, ignore the horrible bass buzz on my guitar and try to sing really loud so I could keep the mic volume down but still be heard. There was a huge game of football on and locals gathered around a TV at the far end of the bar and screamed and yelled at every mark, kick, or point then went hysterical on every goal. Very disconcerting to say the least. At one point I could not hear anything at all. There were pool tables set up and aside from two drunks, the rest of the pub completely ignored us. I was used to that and took no offence. Knowing now that Moana Dreaming would turn it all around and get them out on the dance floor but as the crowd grew the noise grew louder and so did the girls frustration. I tried desperately to turn up the levels but every time I got it up a bit the quality just disintegrated. The bar was becoming packed but there was a completely empty area in front of the band as if the area was jinxed and the girls had to sing on to no one. No one would dance and as the night got later my anxiety increased. I had 4 girls and a bunch of gear in a pub and now way to get out fast and the crowd were getting more and more drunk. One guy started showing me his martial arts ability and I was sure soon I would be dead in a giant bar fight. At half past eleven I pulled the plug on the PA, quickly cranked up the jukebox to full throttle and did the fastest load out in the history of the Roadie profession. We packed all our stuff into the trailer ready for a fast exit to Broome at first light. The accommodation at the Boab had been great and the food was awesome I had the best steak and the best Barra that I had had anywhere in the Kimberley. The staff were kind and hospitable and went to great lengths to make us all happy. But the tour was over and all we could think about was heading home. Day 11 Desert Feet Tour 08 Heading Home We got away at first light and headed for Broome, I had a few things to do there and then we had to drop off the 3 girls, they had all decided to fly home. The thought of another 24 hours cramped in the car was too much for them. I can’t say I blame them and if I could I would too. By the time we had picked up our stuff and left Broome it was one in the arvo and it was with a little bit of nostalgia that I reflected on the trip. Somehow we had met all our objectives, travelled some 5000 km in 13 days had no major incidents. We have slept little yet not missed a single gig, we have improvised and developed our workshops on the go, played to empty houses and full pubs. Most importantly, we reached a lot of kids, some of whom I think will never forget us and I hope to remind them of us again next year by coming back. I have made friendships that I look forward to developing and contacts that are invaluable but most of all we did it! We did what we set out to do and now we have the runs on the board. Now the hard work begins. Next year will be bigger, longer and better, and I will have to start planning it now. For me I will have a few thousand miles of reflection to analyse the tour. Then I will have to start work again on Monday to pay my bills. I wish we could have taken a week to drive home and spent some time at the amazing Eighty Mile Beach, after carting my fishing rod around for five thousand mile I never made a single cast. It would be nice to stop in at the glorious little Port Samson and stop over at Exmouth, where one could spend a lifetime exploring. It would be good to see the blowholes of Carnarvon or the Red Bluff or stop in with my family in Geraldton but this will be a straight run home. Em is sick, her flu has been really bad, and she also needs to be at school on Monday. Geoff is burnt out and just wants to go home, he has his new friend in the car, the adorable little dog we found on the way to Beagle Bay. Rescued by Anne, adopted by Lara and delivered by Geoff all the way from Broome to Perth, and me, well I miss my dog, haven’t been to the gym in two weeks and cannot wait to sleep in my own bed. Day 12 Desert Feet Tour 08 Nearly Home Last night somewhere just out of Karratha I hit my first roo real hard. It scared me to death! I had no warning and had not even seen any around. Usually before you hit one they get thick, you see them on the roadside and then start to see the dead carcasses smashed by road trains. I must have just got unlucky. I was only doing eighty kilometres an hour as I really am not happy about driving in the dark but I had arranged to meet Geoff to refuel at Karratha and decided to push though the night. This big roo jumped all the way across form the opposite side of the road in two giant leaps and I had hardly time to even brake when we collided. It actually hit my passenger side, that’s how fast it all happened. It went right across the front of me from out the blackness in a second. I was a bit shook up after that as Em and I have already seen two badly crashed cars on the road. One looked like it had hit a bull and was completely flattened at the front. I pulled up and slept in the back of the car till morning but had a horrible sleep, the huge road trains shaking the car as they passed with a sound like a plane landing on you. Too tired to wake up and move but not tired enough to sleep through it. I kept dreaming I had fallen asleep at the wheel and would wake up with a jump. A little depressed about wrecking my poor little car, I woke up with feelings of despair and that familiar sense of being overwhelmed, there will never be peace for me in this world, and maybe I don’t deserve it. End Dear reader, thank you for joining me on this journey into our own heartland. Please remember in your contemplation of what you have read, that this is only my opinion and it is worth what you just paid for it. I am no scholar but I am smart enough to know that what I have said and think is not right or wrong, it is simply the truth as interpreted through the existence that is my life, subject, as is yours, to all the conditioning and experiences that living on this earth has rendered. I am without a doubt imperfect and flawed but also furiously compassionate. My love you all and good night.
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1 February 2008
1st of Febuary 08
Dear Damien and Sabine, We are attaching photographs from the distribution (and from some silly games that I played with them!). Another donor gave us stuffed animals which we handed out and you can see them in the attachments. One girl, Rika (one of the dancers as well with the pigtails) came in second in her class! Once again, we gave Wayan and her Mom a ride home. She doesn't ride her bike to school as her Mom says that she has to get up too early (when she walks, she takes a shortcut). Not sure what the real reason is (other kids would be jealous?).... Thanks again for all your support! Warm regards, Rucina ______________________ |
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19 January 2008
19th of Jan Email to YKIP Hi Ru, Please find below the response I received from Malcolm, the engineer in charge of the development of the Bio-Latrines for human waste being used in After receiving your last email with another 50 children needing sponsorship I felt completely overwhelmed. Are all these children in one village; are they all within a relative travel distance of one school? The reason I ask this is because I was wondering if you would be interested in trying to build one of these bio-schools there, in one of the villages, instead of finding sponsors. For the cost of 50 children to go to school for 2 years, $25,000, we could build one of these centres that would serve the community for generations, with other benefits too. The centres produce a clean fuel source from the decomposition which can be reticulated for use in heating, cooking and used as fuel for generators and machinery. It is both environmentally friendly and easy to maintain. There are no mechanical parts or machinery needed and they can be built from local material. This fits the vision of VOW’s mission as it is a community based project; the residents are taught how to construct them and the technology becomes theirs forever, it is built on their land and they manage it. Much like they manage their complex irrigation systems perhaps. The fuel and secondary by-product, a liquid fertiliser, could be sold and the income from this could support the cost of a teacher. The centre in Anyway I have raved on enough; Malcolm has given us a list of questions (below) to pose to the community. Based on their replies he is happy to assist us with building design and project proposal. Sabine’s friend is an architect and has volunteered to help us with drawings. Would you be interested in taking the first step of identifying a target community and having a meeting on the issues below? I believe I can raise the funds for the development and between all of us we have the ability. Yours in Service -----Original Message----- Dear Damien, Your email got to me in the middle of the first phase of our turmoil and then got forgotten - sorry. We are now into day 2 of the next batch of civil unrest/vicious police over-reaction. So, bioschools – interesting concept. If you have not done so already I suggest you find a target community, sit down with them, and ask, at least, the following questions for starters: 1.Is the concept of an integrated toilet and school culturally acceptable? Note that biolatrines can be wet or dry – what is preferred? Islamic cultures usually favour the use of water (wet) instead of toilet paper (dry). The wet or dry issue has an impact on the design of the flushing system which feeds the biogas digester. 2.Is there a ready market or use for the gas and fertilizer (gas to be piped within a max of 100 metres). What other income generating possibilities are there – renting rooms, fees, video cinema at night etc? Work out some basic numbers, costs and income, with the community so that you can produce a simple business plan with cashflow projections. A business plan is necessary to ensure that the concept is financially viable and will also help to convince donors that this is a serious and well-thought-through intervention. 3.Is there an existing community group that can own and manage the facility or does a new one have to be formed? Note that the hardware is the easy part – the sustainability of the management process and the income flow are more important to the success of the project. 4.What role does the Ministry of Education play – permission, support, teachers? 5.Is the vertical building as used in Kibera appropriate or should should a horizantal approach with seperate wings for the toilet and school be adopted. How close should the men's, children's and women's toilets be? Having gone through the above process you can then produce a building design and project proposal which we will happy to comment on. In the meantime I will contact our resident ecosan expert who worked in number of years to see if he can recomend an Indonesian organisation working with biogas. If required we can provide support in the form of advice and designs for the toilet-related elements of the biogas system. Good luck and keep us informed of progress. Cheers, Malcolm. Globology Ltd Kisumu 40123 Phone: +254 (0)733 600 171/722 322 618 Email: malcolm@globology.biz |
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10 December 2007
· 10th of December I spent the weekend looking at wild animals in the Great Rift Valley. It’s amazing stuff to see all those animals, it’s like moving through a movie set. The Rift Valley is spectacular and unparalleled to anything I have seen. But the poverty is extreme everywhere and the imbalance is very precarious. Hundreds of thousands of acres of grazing and pastoral lands that were previously all the Maasai warriors, was bought for beads or mere trivia, or just manipulated out of their hands. Now it’s owned by single persons and mostly used as game farms and resorts or otherwise for farming huge fields of flowers for export, employing the Kenyans as cheap labour in the masses (a relationship that is clearly unbalanced as you see hundreds of little shanty towns and slum villages that harbour the workers, alongside the luxurious and modern green houses and estates), and pour hundreds of litres of nitrogen based fertilisers into the great lakes of the Rift Valley, slowly destroying the delicate balances in nature. Rinderpest, also known as cattle plague, is an extremely deadly viral disease that infects cattle, and was probably introduced as early as the 1820’s thanks to Thomas and other great explorers who’s root source was the Nile in safaris from Mombassa to Uganda. These explorers trailed with convoys of hundreds of donkeys and horses brought from Europe, contaminating the previously isolated herds, and wiping out entire stocks of the Maasai food sources. It is a tail of woe and deception, of genocide and slavery, of injustice and suffering for as far back as we can remember and it is still going on. I leave Africa on Wednesday and look forward to getting moving on the homeward march. The flight to India is a long and hard one, and I have a few days planned in India because I want to find out more about these Bio-Latrines. The more I think about them the more I am convinced I have stumbled upon a brilliant concept, and it makes this whole trip worthwhile. I really believe they are a solution to the problems I have seen in Indonesia, they are also a project I feel would be easy to find sponsors for, as a very tangible result is evident and it is still aligned with our vision of remaining 100% altruistic. The money is injected into the communities, the community develops and learns the procedure and can own and run a Bio-Latrine without outside intervention. But these are just a few of the benefits. I am very excited about studying the feasibility of implementing this system into Indonesia and getting one underway as a project for VOW!! |
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8 December 2007
·8th of December Hello all from Africa!! Peter (Producer) left yesterday and I am now finally on holiday for the next week, in which I intend to visit some of Kenya’s national parks with my family. Living conditions are good here and my family live in a huge house, but security is tight and we live always under the threat of car jacking, holdups and abductions. An experience most of the westerners have had here at some time or another. Every day I hear stories of someone being held-up at gunpoint, shot or robbed. You just have to be careful; it is election time so things are really heated up at the moment too. The trip so far has been really rewarding, Peter and I have gathered footage that is shocking, tragic and amazing but also inspiring and hopeful. (See the gallery 'Slums of Kibera') I really feel like I have a measure of poverty on a more worldly view and am more determined now than ever! We have had interviews with diplomats and UN officials here in Africa and gathered incredible facts, book-loads of statistics and had access to some of the most notorious areas through their generosity and help; we visited the largest slum in the world, 800,000 people strong and made an incredible discovery that has changed my life forever!!!! In the slums here they are developing a very basic construction called a Bio-Latrine. (see the gallery on www.vow.org.au under 'Bio-Latrines')They are essentially ablution blocks, but utilise basic principles to produce environmentally friendly by-products like fertiliser and a green gas that can be used for heating and cooking! This all takes place underground, then the first level is an ablution block and the second two stories are incredibly cool and would make perfect schoolrooms. It would be a solution to every concern we have had as they have the capacity to reticulate clean fuel to a distance of 200 metres diameter for home use and the fertiliser can be sold, this would create an income that could support the payment of teachers. Not only that, they are environmentally friendly and can be built from local materials by the local communities!! The cost of one is only about 11,000 pound. At least that is how much the first one built here cost. It was donated by an English agency, they discovered the technique from India, would you believe?! There, it has been employed with great success, so I intend to delay my return trip through India and seek some more information and hopefully get some footage there. Peters trip to the Singapore Conference went especially well and he has received an offer subject to the footage we collected this trip. He will stop in Singapore on his return trip to Perth and has been hastily editing some footage for a promo. He is confident that we shall secure a deal and also proposes that what we have is now good enough to approach SBS and ABC for funding! Sorry I have been out of contact for so long! Unfortunately my phone has no reception here in Africa and Internet is very dubious. We have one phone line (that I am using now) in the house but it is so slow that it often drops out before it loads a page. Also the power here drops out regularly, very frustrating for me as I really need my contact with you all and also wish to update info on the web, a job that is impossible here and I will not really have the opportunity to do so again until I am back in Indonesia around the 19th. I miss you all back home, and cannot wait for the New Year, which I believe will be the best ever for Damien Thornber and the Orphans and VOW combined. I have left a trail of CD's across the world, played with African bands, jammed with Indian street beggars, and had a classical ensemble play along to some of my songs with a flute and piano! I have even had requests to learn my songs, a job I had never before contemplated, and complied to with the utmost joy. Also I have realised that my most important mission is right under my nose. Like most journeys they all lead back to the root source, all paths lead to the one! I have realised that my next trip must be up the west coast of Australia into the heartland, to visit, film and play to our indigenous population. What I have been forced to realise here is that my home country is not so different from the situation that Africa is in except for one little fact, in Australia I am the majority and here I am the minority. A situation that could well have been different, and I have realised that that does not excuse me from my responsibility to the true Australian people. Other quick news for the committee is that I had dinner with Ru the director of YKIP before I left Bali and handed over the money for the other 9 children! She was very grateful and impressed with our efforts; I am supposed to be back in Indonesia by the 19th and will meet Rob my lead guitarist and producer, who, it just so happens, will be there on holiday at the same time. We have planned 2 gigs for the both of us to play; one will be a charity fundraiser, which has been organised by Sabine and YKIP to raise money for the schoolroom building costs. This will be held at Sabine’s restaurant and has been sponsored by a restaurateur who is also the head of Bali Rotary! We are expecting this to be a good night with a package deal for food and a little gig. So if you happen to be in Bali on the 20th of December, please come! Also we have organised to go back up to Karangasem to do a little show for the kids there that we sponsored. We hope to show them some of the footage we have shot of them so far, and then their Gamelan Orchestra have offered to play a little for us too! Yours in Service Damien |
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5 December 2007
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5th
December Today we visited the Bio-Latrine being developed in the
Kibera slums, a joint incentive between several charitable organizations and
the locally established Umande Trust, a micro development trust helping
residents out of poverty through micro business financing and savings assistance.
The director of the project and a resident of the area Josiah, a charming and
highly intelligent man who spoke fluent English with great diplomatic grace anticipated
our arrival. He obviously had the respect of his people, as he walked amongst
them they greeted him with great ceremony. Born and raised in the slums, he
coined the phrase Peoples settlements, refusing to call them slums in an effort
to raise the peoples hopes. What we discovered deep inside Kibera was consistent with
every slum we have visited so far, when you get on the ground and walk amongst
the people, what we always find is a community spirit and kindness beyond that
of any 1st world city or population. To these people the food that they offered
us with complete selflessness is the greatest expense they could incur. The
meat that they fed me is scarce and usually only eaten on special occasions. It
is a nourishing treat that they can rarely afford. What I saw today gave me great hope, I was inspired by the
strength I witnessed and the character of fortitude that is evident in spite of
the obvious adversity they suffer, their willingness to take responsibility for
their situation rather than lay blame or quite, is a lesson for us all and these
people, the slum dwellers of KIBERA are my true heroes. Kibera has an estimated population of 800,000. That is more than
twice the number of Nairobi, the next largest slum is in Mombasa and is
estimated at around 320,000. It is the largest slum in Africa and possibly the
world, its numbers are larger than all the rest of the slums in Nairobi
combined, and it is also one of the oldest. Right next door to the cramped and
undulating mud shacks of Kibera is the Nairobi Polo Club, a club for elitist
westerners to play one of the most expensive sports on earth, and this, as if to
add insult to injury, is bordered by the lush manicured fields of the Royal
Kenya Golf Course. The projects that we were given a tour of today are not new;
in fact they have been employed in India with great success. A team was
assembled and an Australian engineer trained the residents to build the first
one. Then with the technique mastered and with their own plans the community is
now developing the fourth one. Firstly we were shown one in construction stage,
then a completed one. These, essentially toilets, are actually ingenious
inventions of modern science, but employ the most primitive and simple
principles. They are environmentally friendly sanitary units that create
green fuel for cooking and heating and fertiliser as by-products. Amazing for us to consider but the simple act of going to
the toilet, which we would never give a second thought to as we flush litres of
precious fluids down the loo, is, in a slum of 800,000 people, a major life
threatening issue that causes many problems. The conditions are so bad in some
areas that there are actually no toilets, and as water cannot be wasted on
flushing toilets, the few makeshift drop holes soon fill and cause an even
greater sanitary problem. After years of this problem, the people have resorted
to what is called a flying toilet. With no option left the act (of toileting)
is committed into a plastic bag, which is then hurled over the nearest wall,
and if you happen to be passing by on the other side of the wall, you might
just get hit by the flying toilet. These Bio-Latrines are a breath of fresh air, literally, as
not only do they provide an ablution block, much needed in itself, they also
provide secondary by-products in the form of bio-gas and fertiliser. The
Gawekera Bio-Latrines are owned by a network of five community groups under the
name Gawekera TOSHA. TOSHA is an acronym for Total Sanitation and Hygiene
Access, and also a Kiswahili word meaning adequate. The Bio-Latrine is fully
managed by the network and has an average of 600 users daily, visiting both the
bathrooms and toilets, the facility earns the network and average of 30,000
shillings per month (about $517 AUS (not bad considering it has turned a
problem into an income)). Currently the Umande Trust is working to construct 20
of these Bio-Latrines in the slums in Nairobi, Korogocho, Kibera and Mukuru.
The cost of the first one was about 11000 pounds, but now that the residents
have learnt the skills, the cost is greatly reduced each time. This is truly a
case of “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and eats
for a lifetime.” |
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29 November 2007
· 29th Nov 07 Day one in India; New Delhi. I woke early to unfamiliar sounds in our hastily rented hotel room after arriving in Delhi late at night. Inside the hotel I could have been anywhere in the world, it was a nicely tiled, air-conditioned, clean room with only one peculiarity, no window!! When I stepped outside there was, unmistakeably, only one place on earth I could be, Delhi city! Like watching American movies for a lifetime then visiting L.A. to discover all those places you see on film are real, finding a little man on the sidewalk wobbling his head from side to side was just such an experience. I had to shake my self to realise this really happens, that this cute little idiosyncrasy of a nation is real and not only real but an actual means of communication. A quick wobble from left to right is the equivalent to the western nod of acknowledgement, it means hello, thankyou and goodbye too. My journey down the first street took half an hour as every site was amazement and I lingered in curious awe at the trivialities of everyday life for the waking residents of New Delhi. Snapping shots through my camera lens to freeze the moments that intrigued my eyes, a feast of sensory input surrounded me in a cultural overload, all the while presenting my self as a curiosity to the locals as they smiled tolerantly at a fool taking photos of innocuous sites. Meantime, cute puppies ran between their parent’s legs and around the still sleeping bodies on stretcher beds covered with dirty blankets that filled almost every nook and cranny of the dusty street. As I wandered past, some threw back their blankets and sat up waking into the new day. Goats were tied to street posts or roamed free, seeing the animals everywhere was a peculiar sight that I found hard to comprehend. That was until I got to the end of the street and found huge cows solemnly grazing the road eating from bins and accepting handouts of fresh Nan bread from local stalls. Now I had dogs, goats and cows around me in the middle of a city but I was not ready for my next surprise. Suddenly I heard the sort of animal I have not encountered since my youth in the farmlands of Western Australia, I turned in time to see a giant 60kilo boar with savage tusks walking within two feet of me. My reaction to this dangerous and often lethal enemy, which I had been trained to dread since a child, was one of fear. But it instantly dawned on me that the pig was paying me no mind at all and was followed by a sow and several younger pigs close behind. When I looked around for help to the people surrounding me in the streets, I realized no one had the least concern at all for the animals and they were perfectly welcome guests of this farm-like city! In my youth my father had travelled to India and brought me back the comic books with the stories of blue men with hundreds of arms and sacred cows. Young and impressionable, I was fascinated by them and their contrast to the comic books of my western life like Batman and Spiderman. Now to see their pagan identities’ being worshipped in practice was like walking in a dream. And as much as I was aware of the cast system of India (and as much as it is deigned to exist by Indians) it is still a shocking realization to see the early morning activity of the street-sweeper in his life-bound duty, the productivity of his vocation is a dubious quality though, as one of the by-products of his labour are vast clouds of dust, full of harsh and noxious irritations that draws the very water from ones eyes and reeked havoc on my sensitive West Australian nostrils, causing me to sneeze and snort at every turn. And it is no wonder that in Delhi every one spits. Desensitised by their constant need to be rid of the chaffing dust in the throat, there is never the slightest hint of hesitation or embarrassment from official, porter, policeman, beggar or school kid, to deposit their dusty mucus, mid conversation, right near your foot. I have seen the beggars before in Asia. In the Philippines they are the most ferocious, urgent and demanding. But here they are pleasant in a strange way; it is their job, their cast, their lot in life. They can never rise above it nor are they ashamed of it. It is of course never nice to see a beggar and this is how a beggar survives, by playing on ones conscience, but here I felt no threat on my person, no resentment at my presence, and no fear for my minority. All are curious and all are pleasant. Some are cruelly twisted and deformed some are just normal some even beautiful in dirty, dusty way. Our journey through the hustle of traffic on our way to Old Delhi was the same as most Eastern countries I have visited, chaotic and lawless. The same unwritten ‘tooting’ rule applies here, a quick few honks of the horn means you are coming up the side, a long blow means “You are in my way!” and a sustained blow means, “What the hell is going on?” The only difference here is the quality of the horns. Some are so loud I think I have lost several decibels of hearing in the one afternoon of peak hour traffic. Some are so ill-conceived they sound like dying animals and some are just so old that they could not be replicated by the best computer sound engineer, to the point of hilarious. Some buses even have an invitation to honk at them. A little sign on the rear saying ‘please honk’ (as priceless as the signs on the back of cars in Philippines reading “How is my driving?” with a phone number to ring and comment on) with arrows on either side indicating that it is the done thing if you are overtaking, to honk. An action that could bring down the wrath of road rage upon your head in any western city (or cause a fight at the next set of lights, or even get you shot in LA) is the common language here for a otherwise uncontrolled system of chaotic traffic. Somehow it all works out, but what’s most amazing is no-one gets mad. There is no anger in what appears to be the most aggressive driving I’ve ever seen. I saw cars colliding, followed by calm exchanges of examination to the damage. All the while the polite little heads wobbling side to side. |
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News for October
31 October 2007
News for 31 October 2007
There are now 4 sponsors for the other 9 children. We need another 5 sponsors or $1,250 in donations if VOW is to sponsor these kids (as agreed at our last Executive Committee meeting 27 October 2007). We need this by the 20th of November; all monies need to be paid and I will take it over with me. The CD is fully mastered and ready to be sent off for pressing. I have $500 pledged from VOW (as per the last meeting), I will put in $500 my self and I have one sponsor that has offered $500 towards the press today! Pro Copy have offered us some sponsorship and will give us a good deal and the bar code for free!! We need any donations ASAP!! I leave on the 20th November (all tickets booked) to shoot footage in So time is short. Now is the time we need donations toward the children or pressing. Any contribution is greatly appreciated. No donation is to small!! Also, Cole Clark Guitars has offered the band guitars at cost as a sponsor. Yours in Service Damien Thornber VOW Internationl Services Inc’ Chairman/Founder Mb; 0417 697 900 "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give!"-- |
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5 October 2007
5th of October 07
Hello all! Friends, family, sponsors, Committee members of VOW and supporters of DT & O’s,
I would like to give you a brief update of the trip to the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia that I have just returned from last week but firstly and most importantly YKIP (www.ykip.org ) have identified another 9 children that need sponsorship in the poor region of Karangasem (Indonesia) near where we have sponsored the 14 now in school. The list is attached above and if you missed out last time or are now ready and would like to help, please contact me immediately on my numbers below.
Last Friday I returned from a very productive 3 weeks of travelling and filming with the producer Peter Strain. Together we captured some powerful images. And stumbled inadvertently upon a story of unimaginable proportions: a political cover up and a world of untold, unnecessary suffering. The purpose of the trip to the In the back ground of our visit the trial of Joseph Estrada, the impeached ex-president, played out on the news and in the papers like a cameo stage show. While on the streets the busy hustle of the 12 million people of Roel, our guide, told of us another tip, “the one that is still active” he said. We drove out to it, still only an hour from the city centre an area called Payatas, but the guards would not let us into the area. They informed us we needed a permit to enter. After procuring the requested documents we were still denied access. But their refusal was our good fortune for our guide took us around through a village at the rear of the tip and we parked on a distant hill and descended by foot through winding lanes of crammed houses towards an ominous smell, while around us, life went on as usual. Fruits and goods were laid out at markets and children ran dirty faced with bottles of cool pop along side us in an excited procession, giggling and gesticulating at the strange appearance of westerners and the big cameras and equipment that fascinated them. The people where lovely, happy to pose for the cameras and there was no sense of hostility at any time, in fact quite the contrary. I stoped at the odd stall and bought fruits and drink to support their little business and was greeted with cheerful politeness and smiles every where. All the while the stench in the air was like a floating disease. Unimaginable and thickening. The further we descended the denser the pollution became and slowly the architecture changed from brick dwellings to tin sheeted shacks until, like a smack in the face through a clearing the fuming funnels of distant bull dozers and an endless procession of tip trucks loomed up into our view on the ridge of a giant mountain, like a scene from terminator, a waste land of destruction, the discard of 12 million people flowing onto a rising heap in a continuous stream of garbage. It was literally the plastic tide itself. Here, at the rubbish tips base, I met truly the most impoverished people I have ever seen. Brown rivers of sewerage like waste channelled out from the compacted mountain of filth and in its narrow beds children stood knee deep washing old plastic bags and hurling them onto the river banks for recycling. 80,000 people are estimate to live in this little city built of bed springs, cardboard and tin, strung together with wire and string. Little faces peered from behind dark doorways and adults walked down the paths in lines with giant baskets of assorted rubbish on their heads. One line of traffic bringing the rubbish out of the tip to be sorted and recycled, one walking back to get more. On the tip face hundreds and hundreds of people scavenged its sides wading through each new load dumped off the back of the trucks. I spoke with one man and his family. I asked him why he does this. His answer was simple, “If our whole family works here we may be able to educate our youngest son.” “What would happen then, if your son was educated,” I asked through our guide. “We would all be able to leave here,” he said, “we could afford to live in the city and maybe get better jobs.”
So that was it, this was a means to an end; these people live in the hope of a better day. The following day we went back again, but this time to shoot footage in the front of the court of Payatas where a political rally was predicted to become violent on the day that Joseph Estrada’s verdict would be read aloud on National television live from the court room. We watched in awe as thousands of police dressed in full riot gear armed with machineguns, shields and battens, forming barricades against protesters waving banners and screaming into loud speakers, most of whom had been paid by the corrupt ex-governments party 300 peso each to come and march for Josephs innocence. 300 paces (about $30aus) is probably more than most of them would have made in a week, especially those of the village we had visited in Payatas. But the shear number of the combined military forces smothered any desires of the protesters to retaliate. And the opposition fell on deaf ears. On our return we discovered that the tip we visited at Payatas had also collapsed in 2000 killing hundreds, most of the body’s where never recovered and the official number unknown. Joseph Estrada, the then president had sworn to close the tip for ever, obviously he was to busy plundering from his people. Needless to say, the tip was never closed and was soon forgotten about again. Not that closing the tip is a solution, as we see in the example of What a paradox that Estrada’s broken election promises, the very problem that his plundering was creating, was never addressed. In a cruel twist of fate it would be the poor people of Payatas that would present themselves that day to protest for the innocence of a man that had lied to them and cheated them for the pay check they so desperately need. Joseph Estrada was found guilty of plundering from the people and sentenced to life imprisonment. But that still doesn’t help the children of Payatas. Yours in Service Regards Damien Thornber Founder/chairman VOW International Services Inc’ Mb;
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13 June 2007
13th of June 07
14 Children From Karangasem, Indonesia get sponsors to go to school
The trip: I have recently returned from The whole process has been just amazing: the way we found these kids, the way we were able to sponsor them so quickly and the visible affect it has had on them and their village already. Initially we went to Karangasem to shoot footage for the video clip Time Flies but after being very shocked by the living conditions of one of the houses we visited in the village we made a decision to return. It was discovered later that there were 14 children in this village that were living in similar conditions. All fourteen were coincidently from among the 20 children that I had sit with me on the temple steps 3 months earlier singing along for the video clip! Attached is the photo of Sulendri, she is fourteen, after her father died she had leave school to look after her twins brothers, neither of which had been able to afford schooling (see photo 2). Since her fathers death the family has had no money and consequently none of them had been to school. At age fourteen Sulendri is very happy to be able to go back and finish school, especially with her brothers. It means employment opportunities for the future, immediate relief on her mother and hope for the Village. As you can imagine I was met with great ceremony and excitement. To see the gratitude of these kids was the highlight of my journies into So where to now: as we speak the debut album Vow of Poverty nears completion. The web sight for the band and VOW Incorporation are under way; the Incorporation has a registration in at DOCEP and awaits formal approval; funds and donations are starting to arrive; 16 committee members have volunteered their services to VOW; and several people have sponsored children thru Thanks: I need to just take a minute to thank the following:
Check out some of our tunes at www.myspace.com/damienthornber Love and blessings to all |
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11 June 2007
· 11th June 07 Synopsis of my trip to Jakarta Images of Jakarta Flying east-west along the northern coast of Winding like snakes from a wicker basket, dirty coloured rivers traversed the basin underneath me to the coastline, some of which appeared to wind and fold back on itself the whole length of my flight. Long, wide veins in a patchwork of land, brown, green, muddy, watery squares of rice fields. Outcrop after outcrop of villages appearing endlessly along concentrated areas of the brown rivers, bridge after bridge, town after town, flowing along the endless quilt work of rice fields and rivers. I saw what I imagined the Dutch East Indies traders saw when they first arrived here, safe harbours and protective bays along a volcanic and fertile land, but now I was to experience something they never could have imagined would be the legacy of a thousand years of occupation, trade, manufacturing, war, colonial rule and corrupt democracy……. an island harbouring one of the poorest nations on earth. Into view comes Flying into the haze was like disappearing from the earth’s reality. I was sucked in to the bustle of Jakarta airport like an ant in to a hole. My luggage whisked off by porters before I could decline. I scrambled around in the taxi bay trying to find a driver that spoke English, mission impossible, what I found was an angel to the rescue. It was a God Job no doubt and my gratitude would not be fully realised until I discovered just how deep I had put myself into the fryer. Ulay was the name of my angel. She was 28, dressed in a Muslim headscarf, made of black acrylic, (probably the lest appropriate material and colour one could find for this hot climate.) She explained to me that she was the only child of tea farming parents, after nearly finishing her third year at university, one more year away from a teachers degree, she discovered her parents were broke and had run up a huge credit bills to try to fund her education. She quit university and took a job in Saudi Arabia after finding an ad in the newspaper for cashiers; she was accepted because of her English skills, then she worked the last 3 years to pay off her parents’ debts. She was back in Jakarta now and was hoping to go back to school but now her parents were sick, and as she was the only child it was her job to look after them. Finding a job at the airport was a lucky break for Ulay. Now she wakes every morning at I asked her if she ever got a day off, she replied that she did on Sundays and liked to listen to music at home “I do not want to leave the house” she said “ or I lose half my day in traffic.” My feeling of gratitude rocketed to a new dimension for the ease and quality of life I inherited in Perth. No good management on my behalf, I am just the lucky. My mission here on my 7 hour stop over was to drive into the slum areas to get some photos. I wanted some images that would promote awareness of poverty and be a little confronting too. What I realised after a short time driving around is that Jakarta is basically an overcrowded slum city. The sites I was seeking do not have to be searched for. It is a city of contrast, pockmarked with opulent hotels and restaurants, guarded by barbed wire fences and compounded by security guards, an irony of the highest degree, where sewerage streams filled with rubbish and pollution lap against the doors of derelict houses, literally across the road. Tanned westerners and Japanese and 18-caret gold covered Indonesians lounge on deck chairs only metres from some of the worst living conditions I have ever seen. There is no slum area, there is just Jakarta, the poor lands, where suffering is part of life and life is suffering for the poor, where people hardened to adversity smile and wave at a the silly white westerner in a cab with his head hanging out the window taking photos. “What is he taking photos of?” they must be thinking, “Nothing abnormal here, we’ll just smile at him till he’s gone away.” Street after street canalled by open-air sewers, lined by house built on house built on house til the third or fourth level, tacked together with tin and cardboard it looked like it could to fall into the street below any minute. Washing hanging from every window, every spare street rail, every parked car or unused handle bar. Alleyways winding into dark, littered cracks in the buildings, merchants selling wares, water, food, fuel, window frames, building material, no rhyme or reason or shop names just random materials for sale on any street corner. Old men smoke and play board games in the back of shops while young men sleep on mats out the front, children squat and pee on the road, mothers stare blankly into space, old women toil over steaming cauldrons of boiling clothes or food or something, billowing blue smoke pours out of exhaustless bikes and battered buses overfilled with humans, chooks and goats, arms and limbs hanging out the windows. This is Jakarta. As we pass over a railway line I am amazed to see a line of shacks lining the track, I ask the cab to stop unable to believe what I am seeing and foolishly I run off from the cab, forgetting I an the only westerner I have seen anywhere around here, with a big camera around my neck and my laptop and bag in the back of the cab. I cross the railway line and start to fire the rapid shutter of my camera lens from the hip trying not to be noticed, as I got closer I am spotted but to my surprise I am called over, little tarpaulin houses line the railway track and inquisitive occupants begin to emerge, they are amused to see me there, and they laugh and call to each other, posing for the camera. A mother nurses her child by a cardboard door; I offer her a 20,000rp note and ask if I can take her photo, then I hear the sound of an approaching train, a gap of no more than 3 or 4 feet separates her front door from the track and she is completely unmoved by the proximity of the locomotive. They both smile for me as the train screams past, rattling and clanking obnoxiously within a foot of her cradled child. She looks at me innocuously, neither amused nor resigned; the train passes her every day several times. It causes her not even the least consternation. I am lost in the moment til I hear some one calling me, I look up, it is Ulay and she is panic-stricken, “You can not come out here,” she says, even she is afraid of being alone there, on the tracks. Back in the cab she explains to me that I had disappeared behind the train and she was cut off from me, a look of genuine fear on her face, I apologise and realise my stupidity, walking around with a camera and a wallet full of money I am an obvious target in the slums of Jakarta, once again my angel has watched over me, I open my wallet and kiss the photo of my late mother, I am not good at prayer and lost faith many years ago, but I am willing to believe in her, she was a loving soul and love never dies. Hour after hour we drive deeper and deeper into nowhere, a little boy dressed in a grubby super man suit dances innocently on a pile of rubbish, his fantasy overriding the truth of his conditions, he will never fly never be free, never escape his poverty, his childish innocence is his reprieve, evidence of an indestructible state of human nature, the virtuousness of infancy is unalterable. Every one is a child once; every one knows the joy of freedom from self, from shame, from judgement. But not every one will recapture it again in adult life. His story is a reflection of hope in a pile of hopelessness, joy can even be found on the rubbish tip. He is my hero, my inspiration. This is the true and most noble symbol of Superman. Better than the real one. It is these moments that I know I am being true to my calling, that give me the strength to carry on with the vision of VOW. I shoot my rapid shutter on him, as he notices me he grabs his sister and disappears into a shack amongst the rubbish, I feel a pang of guilt for interrupting his imagination; it seems a crime. Jakarta is an amazing scene, backdrops of high-rise buildings and neon signs for 5 star hotels decorate the horizon as a stark contrast to rubbish dumps like seas of plastic, covered in grazing goats and scavenging villagers that live and work in the field of litter. Brutal concrete roads and bridges, winding in an endless procession of peak hour traffic which seems to last 24 hours a day, spewing carbon monoxide fumes onto paddocks under by-passes where makeshift farmers water spinach and corn in a car park size field lost in time between two freeway exits. Marshlands that border the highways are held back by floodwalls while bare-skinned Indonesians fish with nets and wade through the open water. Cars horn each other, while a chaotic procession of lawless traffic some how manages to merge into two lane roads. Some bridges were lined with aerials jutting up from below, my inquiry to Ulay revealed that these are television aerials for the people that live under the bridges, imagine my amazement that people living under bridges would have a TV! I asked our driver to take us down and to my amazement not only did people live under the bridges but whole villages and communities built from scraps of tin and tarps had sprung up. Some of the houses where nothing more than mats spread on the floor around an old TV perched on a bookcase or old crates. As the bridge provided a readymade roof, bridge living was far better than some conditions I had seen today. As we drove back up the bypass onto the bridge I caught the eye of as a young women in a red blouse looking out of tarpaulin window like some kind of poor Juliet or Rapunzel. Her view was of a 3-lane causeway, steel mesh separated us, lining the edge of the road; she looks at me with no traceable emotion and drew upon her cigarette. On the way back to the airport I spotted it, it was some disused commercial land surrounded by old factories and warehouses, almost hidden from the road by a line of trees; a huge open field turned into a dumping ground. A small village had established itself amongst the rubbish. I asked the driver to stop but to find an exit off the freeway took us some place else, finally we passed it again going the other way, it took nearly an hour to find an exit and turn around just to cover a distance of no more than a mile. I asked him to pull over on the side of the freeway. Hazard lights flashing, I jumped the rail and leapt over a stream of green sewage. This brought me hard up against a brick wall level with my head. I tucked my camera into my shirt and leapt up onto the top. The smell hit me like a bullet, I nearly threw up, huge black blowflies with fluorescent eyes swarmed against me, smacking into my mouth and eyes. I leapt down on to a bed of plastic waste, how deep is anyone’s guess; how it got there I do not know. Men in long sleeve shirts waded through the stinking, festering, shifting, oozing mound of filth, prodding with sticks to find assorted materials which they put in large sacks they were dragging along behind them. Flies swarmed like thick black clouds, covering them from head to toe. I pushed a 10,000rp note into his hand and asked if I could take some photos, he nodded and moved on, not faltering for a second at my presence, it was as if I was just as likely a thing to find in such a place as a Kentucky Fried Chicken wrapper. There was no sense of shame or despondency about his life, he just continued on prodding and wading his way through his world of rubbish. I looked down under my feet, a veritable sea of plastic, I looked around me, completely overwhelmed, my senses not able to comprehend what I was seeing, in the distance to the left was a village built on top of the heap or into the heap or out of the heap, which I am not sure but I am sure it was there. Women cooked in big pots out side, children ran up and down, it was like any family anywhere only on a rubbish heap. Children are amazing they can play cops and robbers in any conditions. I was struck with compassion. Then I heard it again, I was being called back, this time by the police. The cab had pulled over in a no stopping zone. Two very disconcerted police with sirens wailing and lights flashing made threatening gestures and talked loudly to my cab driver in Indonesian, I pushed a 50,000rp note into his hand and jumped into the taxi and off we sped. I pulled down my genuine fake ray-ban glasses I had bought for $3 and cried at the thought of what I had just seen. No westerner I knew would tolerate those living conditions even for 10 minutes. My cab driver asked me where I wanted to go, I waved him on “truss, truss”, Indonesian for “go, go”, and sobbed all the way back to the airport. I parted with my little team and tipped them generously. I gave Ulay 150,000rp. More than she would make in a week. The cab fare for 5 hours of driving was 200,000rp approximately $30AUS I tipped him 50,000rp and was swallowed up once again into the airport. Like an ant into a hole. |
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30 April 2007
30th of April 07 I will be going back to |
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21 March 2007
21st of March 07
21st of March 07 The Story of Wayan and the Village of Below is an up date on my trip to I returned from I saw some of the worst living conditions I have yet experienced in The village we visited was not far from there but was better located due to its height in the hills and was surrounded by beautiful tropical forest The children from the local village were excited to see us and amazed by the camera and the proceeding events, some of them would never have seen white people before and this was definately the first visit they had had from a camera team. We shot footage for the music video of me sitting on some temple steps in the jungle with a bunch of children swaying and singing along with me. They were so cute. None of them spoke a word of English, so when we got them to sing "Time files" on the chorus, one little fellow was yelling out "chop chow", we were nearly all died of laughter. it was not till months later i discovered Chop Chow is a local dish, needless to say i have new nick name for him now! The truly amazing thing about these people is how incredibly happy they are with so little. They gave us a demonstration of their musical talent and the result was mesmerizing; all on instruments made by hand and with intricately hand carved and painted with Balinese designs: Gamalons, a Bamboo pipe drum and flutes made of reeds, and an amazing bass instrument made of a simple box to resinate the acoustic chime of some old sheets of railway steel. It was captivating and astounding. On the way home we stopped in on one of the homes, which could hardly be called a house, dirt floors with a thatched roof and some tarpaulins and tin around the out side. With the aid of the interpreter we asked the family how they lived. Three generation were living together in the one shack, 8 of then in all, they had a little lean-to where the women cooked some rice and vegetables for there daily meal. Every now and again they would have a feast or celebrate with one of their ceremonies by killing a chicken; they had one pig but that was to be sold for rice. The eldest daughter, the wife, and the eldest son, prepared, from local materials, a kind of rattan fibre that they then weaved into small baskets. Once a week an agent would pick them up to sell at the markets back in the touristy part of town. If they worked all day they could produce one a day. They were paid 5000 Rp. The equivalent of less than one dollar Australian. This, the whole family survived on about $7AUS a week. During the conversation we discovered that Wayan, the 10 year old grand daughter, had never been to school, as the family could not afford it. The local village charges 1,500,000. Rp for a school year about $214. Australian. This includes a meal a day plus all her school clothes and books. Can you imagine that?! for the equivalent of a good meal in Through the interpreter and with camera rolling we asked her if I could sponsor her to go to school. A few very emotional moments ensued, the excitement of the father and sheer amazement for young Wayan, that she could be so fortunate, shocked her. Even the camera man and producer had a tear in their eyes, and all the ladies, were visibly moved. What an absolute buzz. Imagine my enjoyment; I felt it was a great investment and possibly the best I ever made. My joy however was short lived when the realization struck me, there are so many like this, but I can not sponsor them all alone, I need help!! I had time to ponder this whole development while on the plan home, and I believe the course is now clear for me. Plans are now to finish recording the album, hopefully release about late June; register an incorporation and develop the web sites for this and Damien Thornber & the Orphans; finish the music video; and edit the material for the Time flies documentary; keep playing locally rehearsing new songs; another trip to If any of this appeals to you and you think you could help in any area, please contact me on the numbers below.
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