Trying our hand at ochre painting

Yesterday I set up a table outside under a tree so we could have morning tea there and do art (without making my classroom/living room look like a bomb hit it). It is Reconciliation Week so we made our own pigments out of ochre rock. It made some amazing colors. We mixed the rock dust with white paint and water and it actually stuck to the paper quite nicely. Traditionally the rock painters use kangaroo fat and blood, but I wasn't going to go that far for a school project. We traced around our hands to replicate the traditional cave art and painted them using our own pigments. Angelina put nail polish on hers. I’m not sure that’s very traditional.

Visitors from the APY Lands

We have some central aborigines from the APY Lands visiting today.  They have a huge native title area that straddles the border between Northern Territory, Western Australia and South Australia.  They want to set up a similar aboriginal wilderness camp on their lands two hours drive from Ayres Rock.  They have come to see how it's set up here to get some ideas.  I was quizzing them by the fire last night about their communities and their artists.  Nice folks.  They have to buck the expectations of their culture in order to get ahead.  In the aboriginal culture, what's yours also belongs to anyone else in the community who wants it and asks for it.  Everything is shared.  So there isn't much incentive to get ahead.

Dingos and bush tucker

In the last week we've had a pack of wild dingos in heat around the house. They howl for hours at night. You also hear the occasional bark, which means there are domestic dogs amongst them. Dingos can't bark. I woke up to them howling this morning. They seemed very close - I would say within 200 yards of the house, but these things can be deceptive. It's very atmospheric. I saw some dingo/mastiff crossed dogs at the aboriginal camp down the river. Mean looking things. Who would want to breed extra wild and uncontrollable traits into a mastiff?

When the dingos are around, we let Ida Dog sleep inside. She is still so tiny. The family had a dog a couple of years ago . . . . a fluffy little poodle thing . . . . that ran off with the dingo pack. They think she would be the alfa female by now, but I think they just said that so the kids wouldn't know she had been horribly torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.

I also collected my first harvest of bush tucker. Behind my kitchen window is a patch of rosella shrubs. It's like wild hibiscus. You take off the petals and dry them and make them into tea. I've got my drying near the window. If it works, I still have a huge harvest. I've tried some that the family made last year. It is very yummy.

The shark incident

The folks around here had always told me there were bull sharks in the river. I guess I wanted to go for a swim, so I chose to believe they were pulling my leg.


We went fishing on the river yesterday and Angelina (who is five years old) caught a shark!! It was as big as her. She was very proud. The family isn’t allowed to eat shark because it is a family totem (and it gives them gas, which they pragmatically take as a sign that they spiritually shouldn’t be eating it). Maybe I should adopt cabbage as my family totem.

Meeting the legends

We got a lift back from the school camp with some aboriginal tour operators who were coming to the camp for a meeting. All the aboriginal tour operators from along the river had teamed up to create an association to promote the area and cooperate with marketing.

Around the table were some of the area’s local legends. One was considered “the father of Kimberley tourism”. He was one of the “stolen generation” and was taken from his aboriginal family when he was three years old. He spent his youth working as a cowboy on one of the large cattle stations before starting a tour business that took people into the remote areas on the Kimberley long before there was anything but a few dirt tracks.

Around the table he told tales of taking one of the aboriginal elders back into his childhood homeland. The indigenous people stopped living their traditional lifestyle many years ago, but this fellow was old enough to remember his youth living the traditional hunting and gathering life. He was able to explain the mysterious squares made out of stones that were presumed to be fireplaces, but were actually the foundations for the traditional bark huts. He had also shown them gallery after enormous gallery of untouched rock paintings. Huge areas where everywhere you turned was a rock painting. Areas that are so remote and untouched now, that they are rarely (if ever) seen.

It was really an honor to sit at the table and listen to his tales of the Kimberely.  He now has an OBE.  I found that out when I googled him after he left.   Such a sweet guy and happy to talk to a lilly-white new-comer like me and answer all my odd questions.

School camp

Once a term the School of the Air has a camp where all the students come in from the distant stations to socialize and the parent and teachers get to meet, do professional development and team building.


This term the camp was in Broome at Cable Beach. A wealthy benefactor had donated the land for the camp before the real estate became so valuable. It’s right on the beach and right next to the poshest resort in Broome.

Bush kids tend to be sweet, unaffected and self reliant. They really are a lovely bunch of kids. They are also super excited to have so many people to play with, so the atmosphere is very jolly. This camp included a visit to the Crocodile Park, a visit from an Astrologer to look at the night sky and the passage of Venus and an early morning camel ride down the beach. The parents and home tutors also enjoy the company and share endless cups of tea, teaching tips and gossip.

I finally got to meet the other home tutors (or governesses which is old fashioned term that is mostly used around here). They seemed to fall into two categories. The very young girl from the city who was on an adventure into the wilds of the Outback. Or the local girls who were barely out of school and were teaching younger siblings or a family friend.

A group of seven of us governesses went out for a drink at the posh resort next door. Half of us decided that two cocktails were enough and headed home. The others went on a spree and ended up getting thrown out of a nightclub in town at 1am. I have to ask myself, what does a person have to do to get thrown out of a nightclub in a mining town?

The bull incident (aka "I decided it was mud")

We got back to the camp on Tuesday but the generator was officially buggered. Without electricity we really can’t stay out here, so after only 24 hours, we decided to drive back to Broome. It took the whole day to pack up and get back on the road, so it was nearly 8pm before we left camp.


About 120kms outside of Broome we hit a bull. There are cattle all along the road and you see road kill all over the place. It’s dangerous during the day, but even worse at night. The bull paused at the side of the road, looked like it was going to run away, then at the last minute turned and ran right across our path. We hit it pretty hard, but we swerved enough for it to take a glancing blow down the drivers side of the car. If it had been two steps forward and we had hit it head on, it would have been a lot worse.

We pulled over to the side of the road to inspect the damage and the husband (who was following behind in another vehicle) stopped to help. The vehicle was still running, but there was a lot of damage to the front and the headlights were scattered all along the road. The bull had landed in the middle of the road and was literally laying across the dividing line. There was quite a bit of traffic on this remote road (maybe one car every five minutes) and it is mustering season, so huge road trains barrel along it at all hours of the day and night. We couldn’t just leave the bull as a hazard, so we turned around to tow it off to the side of the road.

It was scary enough being on a remote stretch of red outback road with the huge expanse of starry sky dwarfing the surrounding bush. It was very dark and we were being eaten alive by mosquitoes. We had to stop in the middle of the road to tether the bull to the tow bar and flash our lights wildly at the oncoming traffic hoping that they would see us and stop and not slam straight into us in the dark.

We were about 5 meters from the bull shining our headlights to on the animal and flashing wildly at an oncoming car. The bull started moving. It wasn’t dead after all. It was lifting its head and making slow efforts to get to its feet, blood dripping from its nose and mouth.

The oncoming car didn’t slow down at all. Just as the bull lifted its head, the car struck it with a sickening thud, right in front of us. The car didn’t slow down, didn’t stop, didn’t want to find out if we were okay. It just continued on its way.

We have been considering what sort of idiot (or bastard) wouldn’t stop if they saw an accident on a remote, isolated road in the middle of the night. We decided they must have seen the movie “Wolf Creek” (a horror movie filmed in the area about a psycho who kills people who are broken down by the side of the road - based on a true story).

Anyway, we hitched the (now dead) bull to the back of the car and pulled it to the side of the road. A tour bus stopped to help. The car was a rental that was on loan while the family car was in for repairs. We decided to pick up the headlights from the side of the road. It was dark. I picked up the shattered headlights and they were damp. I spent the next two hours driving into town wondering if it was mud or cow’s brains on my hands.

ICPA at Expo

The mother is the chairperson for the local ICPA (Isolated Children Parents Association). They had a booth at North West Expo so the whole family went to man the booth and potter around the expo.

Of course, I just went for the freebies. Woodside Mining had such lovely hats they were giving away. I decided it was best to avoid getting ostracized for appearing to take the wrong side of the development/conservation debate.

Poor, lonely bustard

We were driving along the dirt road on our way to Broome when the father spotted a poor, lonely bustard near the road and decided to put him out of his misery.

Bustards (also known as bush turkey) are huge birds that mate for life. If you spot one without a partner, you know they are going to live a pretty sad life. And they look very plump and juicy. One bullet dispatched the bachelor and we swung the bird into a tree and plucked it by the side of the road.


Ida Dog (the family’s new puppy) wanted to get into the act and was spattered with blood. Pictures of Ida covered in blood from her “first kill” are below. She’s turning into a savage!

Reclusive Neighbours

I heard today that we have some reclusive neighbours.  They live just beyond a grove of trees near the house.  Considering how remote we are, it’s strange that we have nothing to do with these Belgian recluses.  Their 27 acres of property is completely surrounded by our 3,000 acres.

Ten years ago this property was bought by the government and handed back to native people of the area.  The family I’m living with are the custodians of the land and the father is a prominent member of the local indigenous group.  When the family first came to live here ten years ago, the Belgians came to the door and in an angry confrontation said “You remember, we were here first.”

The family thinks that was hilarious.  But obviously, they aren’t planning on asking them over for a cup of tea.