Good to be back

Ok so it has been a while... How’ve you all been?

I guess it has been pretty busy of late so I haven’t exactly been able to keep you up to date with my every move so this may be a bit of a montage of the past few weeks but I’ll make it a very visual experience to try and keep you happy and make up for my absence.

So chronologically, the first thing to mention would be the amazing full body baptism of our lovely student teacher friend, Sophie out at Sturt Creek. It was an awesome thing to be part of for myself and everyone there, especially Father John who was very excited as it was something he had always wanted to do. The water was freezing cold but Soph and John braved the conditions valiantly and although it was a trade mark casual Father John ceremony, it was a beautiful ceremony and something Sophie will never forget. After the ceremony, we had a nice after party of coke, cakes and throwing rocks into trees to get cool shots of the flocks of cockatoo’s flying away before we headed back home.

So Ant had the idea of a boys only, he-man camping trip out into the pound one Friday afternoon. Sure most people were busy and so it ended up only being Ant, Rick, Ale and myself, but nun the less, it turned out to be a really fun night. Naturally, not much can be said about this night but it involved Rick and I de-rooting a tree for firewood, a lot of guitar and harmonica playing, some dingo howls in the middle of the night and horse hoof prints about 2 meters away from our swags in the morning.

Rick's speech

Balgo isn’t a big place so the standard mode of transport is the old heel and toe but this can become time consuming especially in desperate situations such as when a 2^nd playstation controller must be obtained but it is located a good 200m away. I conducted a few studies and found a solution in searching an old shipping container for the remains of what was once a small BMX bike. It needed tire changes and straightening up a few things but after a while, it was ridable. The next day, wasn’t exactly the same story as I was riding with the rim of the back tire basically on the bitumen so I visited my good friend Jim, Balgo’s very own handy man and over the next few days we attempted to fix it up but due to the parts in the shed being over 20 years old, rusted and basically useless, we weren’t entirely successful. Since then, it has been fairly busy so the team project has been delayed but is set to continue on the other side of the holidays so if all goes to plan, my boy ‘Baby Blue’ will be back on the road very soon.

Half way through the term, a crew of us Balgoians headed up to Kununurra mainly to pick up Warrick’s replacement but also as a nice way to spend the June long weekend. The trip up which is meant to take about 8 hours took at least 10 hours because of the back door of the bus slightly opening about every 30 minutes along the Tanamai but luckily there was no delay between the opening and the “WOHW WOHW WOHWW!!!” from Ale to stop the bus so we were never in much danger. Our first day was largely used for shopping but then we went out to an awesome restaurant called The Pump House, on old pump station and I had what well could have been the greatest burger which has ever graced my sweet taste buds. This may have been based on my lack of competitors for the prior weeks but all I know was that it was good!

Ale at the Pumphouse

The following day we headed out pretty early on a trip to Wyndham which is further north of Kunanurra. The main reason we went there however, was the stop just before Wyndham where there was some amazing Aboriginal rock art. We walked along a fairly narrow ledge up the side of a cliff but I think I’ll let the pictures do the talking for the amazing artwork we saw.

Rick leading the way

Another stop off we made was at the giant Boab ‘Prison’ tree, again pictures speak a thousand words so speak my prettys!!!

We then headed up to Wyndham where we drove up a mountain to a lookout called ‘five rivers’ or something. We were told we were going here and you could see five different rivers meeting and I had this image in my mind of five straight rivers meeting in some sort of star formation... hence why I was a little disappointed when we could only see big masses of water joining up at different points. I mean don’t get me wrong, it was amazing but not quite what I expected (although thinking back, the star formation idea I had in my head I’m pretty sure is physically impossible...) We spent a while up there and watched the sunset before heading back to Kununurra at night. One very special thing happened when we were coming back down the mountain. We discovered we had radio reception and therefore, we heard the first new song since we’ve been away!!! Some David Guetta song called ‘Breath’ or something. It wasn’t until I got back to Balgo and looked at Kununurra and Wyndham on a map that I realised how far north I was. It was a little weird that I was basically on the north coast of Australia for the first time in my life and I had no idea.

On the drive up, it was iPods all round for the first half of the trip but once we got onto sealed roads, the car could take CD’s. Unfortunately, the only CD we had was one of Rick’s CD’s and although I really did enjoy the music on it, it began to get a little old the 4^th time around. I learnt from this mistake and as we were leaving Kununurra, I bought a 6 CD set of 101 greatest ballads of all time which proved to be a great decision appreciated by all in the car.

Another wonderful experience was the Pentecost Mass held out at Lake Gregory at a place called ‘Handover’ which was the first land given back to the native people after white settlement. It was originally going to be a camp out but apparently it was too cold so it was shortened to a Mass and bonfire all wrapping up by 8:30pm. When we first arrived, I was taken down to the lake by the children. I couldn’t believe there was such a massive body of water in the middle of nowhere! And I seemed to be the only one really impressed by the black swan’s in their massive numbers. I was then taught how to find ‘Bush Onions’, which are tiny little plants which look like little bulbs and taste like a mix between peanuts and lettuce. During the mass, Ale and I spent a lot of the time patrolling supervising the kids who were off making their own fires mostly just out of Spinifex which meant the fires were big, short lived and produced a lot of smoke which went right into the congregation. But talking to Sister Alice, she made the extremely true comment that the locals knew exactly what they were doing when setting up. They positioned the alter in really the perfect spot and organised fires among the congregation in a way that everyone was warm but almost nobody was affected by the smoke. I feel that I have to mention the mildly hilarious end to the night when Steph was lining up for the sausage sizzle only to remember after a while that she was at that point a vegetarian so had to settle for a delicious piece of bread.

For some reason I feel as though I have mentioned this in a previous blog but in case I haven’t, I have now been taken down to the ‘Jesus Cave’. If I have already talked about this, just skip the writing and enjoy the better picture. If not, I have heard a few different stories about it’s history but I know that it has spiritual significance to the local people and that the old nuns who worked in Balgo at the beginning of the mission often prayed and held mass down there. Its right near the lookout to the pound and after going down into a small hole in the ground, you end up in the dark cave where straight ahead you can see the old alter where there are still small ornaments such as candles and rosary beads. The cave then opens up to a really nice view out to the pound, right where the sun sets.

The reason I felt I should mention the Jesus Cave is because it was there I played tour guide and showed our program manager, James Camden and his now fiancé, Lindsey on their visit, as well as my fellow share the missioners. I had very much looked forward to James’ visit, mainly because of how nice it was to see a familiar face with news of the real world. While they were here, it provided me with a good chance as we took them out to Old Balgo which I still hadn’t been to. It was just awesome out there because Cathy, a very well respected lady in the community, went with us with two children she cares for and for most of the time we were there, she talked about the stories she had been told about the old mission from her parents and grandparents. Then on the way back home, we stopped at the dam where Cathy and the kids started a fire and cooked up some damper for them to take home.

As you can probably tell by my more mature writing style, I have recently experienced the anniversary of the day of my birth. I was actually extremely lucky this year, not only was I spoiled rotten with gifts but because of the time difference, I experienced a 26 hour birthday and was treated to a total for 4 cakes over 2 days. Slightly exciting I know. But I know that I will never forget my birthday in the middle of nowhere!

A few weeks ago, everyone at Luurnpa Catholic School was in major stress mode with the State minister of education and the head of the Catholic Education Office popped in for a quick visit. For the weeks leading up to it, there was mass cleaning going on and I did my bit by getting the mower and whipper snipper out and smartening the grounds up. It started as just wanting to get rid of the overgrown prickles near the oval which restricted my sport activities but then I thought I may as well keep going. Minor side track, again, I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before and if so, I apologize but the pool has been closed because of the cooler weather so I have now extended my job title to include ‘P.E. teacher/co-ordinator’ as I’m taking the classes in their normal swimming times and organising sport and physical activities with them which I am really enjoying. It is extremely stressful at times and can be very hard since I am leading the lessons but I feel as though I am gaining a lot of good experience from it and really connecting with the kids even better now than before.

Anyway, back to the ministers. So the school was looking very shmick thanks to classes scrubbing walls as afternoon activities and hard work by both staff and students. We put on a massive spread where we had a dinner with all staff of the school and BoysTown where the official party explained their purpose in coming to find out the needs of rural and remote schools and how they can develop better systems, especially in tracking children as they move between communities.

The children got very excited about the Eagle Cup which was held at Mulan where boys and girls from PRMD and secondary took on teams from Mulan and Billiluna in basketball and footy. I didn’t attend the event but was very pleased to see the teams come home with an armful of trophies after they cleaned up all the competitions. Photo’s thanks to Sophie, who I was just informed stole them from Anthony.

NAIDOC is upon us and this event is not taken lightly by the people of Balgo. We started on Monday when the children all got painted up in traditional fashion which they all got very excited about. We then held a ceremony raising the aboriginal flag before a parade from the school to the store where the rest of the community was waiting. Then the girls did some traditional dancing closely followed by a response from the boys. We then got some balls out for the children to kick around while a BBQ was being cooked. It wasn’t exactly the most formal and organised event but it was nice to have the whole community together celebrating their culture. Later in the week, locals came in and did storytelling with the younger students, sharing the dreaming stories of the local people. The final celebration was held last night when the police put on another disco while BoysTown put on a feed for the community. It was easily the best disco I have been at so far because it wasn’t just the children dancing and a few adults watching, everyone really got into it and there were dance offs, cheering and adults getting amongst it much to the delight of the kids.

So that’s about it from the past few weeks. Yesterday morning we saw off Rick, Anthony and the PRMD kids for their Melbourne trip, this morning we said a sad goodbye to Kane and Sophie as they head back to Perth and as soon as school finishes today, I’m off on my adventure around the top end, exploring for the first time Darwin, Kakadu and Catherine and then making a quick visit back to my old friend Broome before coming back for another big school term. I’ll be sure to let you know how that all goes.

Goodbye and I hope you didn’t miss me too much.