There
are so many things I don’t appreciate until I’m at the end of a camping trip:
showering, wifi, cell range, electricity in general…despite this, this past
week, which I’ve spent camping on Cardwell Range (yes, its technically a cow
pasture…but a really pretty and woodsy cow pasture with a swimming hole) has been pretty awesome. In case you don’t already know or haven’t
guessed yet, this is not a typical semester abroad program. This week, class consisted mostly of hanging
out, swimming, learning how to live and work together, and listening to
campfire stories. To make the trip
legitimate and keep some impression of actually having class, the stories were
Aboriginal dreamtime stories, and were accompanied by talks about current and
past issues surrounding Aboriginal life.
Along with that, every day we did one “educational activity”: Monday we painted our own boomerangs; Tuesday
we took a boat cruise and went fishing; Wednesday we got stuck, rebuilt a
bridge to get out of the campsite, went to an Aboriginal museum, and visited Wallaman Falls; Thursday we learned how to throw spears; Friday we saw Aboriginal
cave art and saw another waterfall; and Saturday we learned how to make fire
the difficult way, and played an intense game of all my cows (guys vs. girls) on the two hour trip home. Rough life, right?
Along
with my classmates, program leader, and excursion organizer, we were also
camping with an Aboriginal elder named Russell, his son, Darren, and his
granddaughter Immagen. Uncle Rus (all
Aboriginal elders are called uncle and auntie) and Darren were the ones giving
us talks by the campfire at night, and they taught us a lot during our daily
activities. Immagen, who is a very mature
11 year old, was there to learn with us.
Instead of just taking one large shuttle bus, like we did on the
orientation excursion, we took three Jeep-like cars with extra back seating and
trailers attached. We were all a bit
confused until we started driving through the farm property, and we all toppled
on top of each other because the road was so bumpy. Naturally, we all started singing the Indiana
Jones theme song. Every night we cooked
our own food, which turned out shockingly delicious every night: stir fry,
curry, BBQ, Breakfast for dinner...we always ate by the campfire in the dark,
which means we all probably ingested a few mosquitoes, but not too many. Painting our boomerangs was fun and relaxing
and an awesome way to spend our first day of “class”. The boat trip was also fun, but almost lulled
us all to sleep (except when we saw a baby croc, that was cool). I was a little bit nervous about fishing as a
vegetarian, but all that happened was that fish ate my bait and didn’t get
hooked, so I felt good that I was at least just feeding them. One sad thing was that we set fish traps in a
river near our campsite, but unfortunately 9 turtles, and no fish, got caught
in the trap and drowned. The night that
happened it rained, and Darren told us it was because of the turtles. Uncle Rus, Darren, and Immi believe in a lot
of things I can’t convince myself are real: ghosts, spirits, and signs from
nature like rain after killing and not using animals.
The
first waterfall we visited (Wallaman Falls) was huge and beautiful, and we hiked all the way
down to the bottom. The trail was pretty
steep in parts, and getting back up was pretty rough, but seeing the waterfall
at its base was kind of worth it. Spear
throwing was pretty cool though, and was something we had all looked forward to
a lot. I expected to be pretty bad at
it, but I turned out to be one of the better girls in the group on the first
try. We were aiming at three cereal
boxes ranging from about 10-20 meters away.
Ironically, it was mostly us vegetarians who got close to hunting down
those cereal boxes. The only person who
hit a box, did it while aiming at a different cereal box (he also used to be a
vegetarian). I was also nearly
successful in fire making, which, again, I did not expect to be good at. I would have succeeded but my coal split in
two and lost enough heat to ignite the coconut husk.
We
had several random holdbacks during the trip, almost entirely caused by the
ridiculously bumpy road. Our trailer
broke part of the bridge we use to drive in and out of camp, and we had to
spend an hour rebuilding it ourselves. At
one point, we had to drive up a hill that was at least a 45 degree incline, and
our driver was not all that confident.
Consequently, when the car stopped moving forward, she put the brakes
on, and the car started sliding backwards.
Luckily, everyone riding in the car thought this was great fun (for the
record there wasn’t anything for us to crash into behind us), and we, of
course, sang the Indiana Jones theme song again. Then the Jurassic Park theme song. Finally, we got to the bottom of the hill
safely, and another driver replaced ours to get us up the hill. Surprisingly, the things everyone, including
me, was most worried about: no showers no bathroom no clocks (we were on “Murray
Time”), were the least problematic. We thought
we would miss the things we didn’t have, when, in reality, the things we
focused on were the things we did have: an awesome swimming hole, surprisingly delicious
food, good fun and adventures, guitars for campfire songs, etc. We swam most days which helped us not to
smell too horrible, we had a nice little seat over our hole in the ground, and
a tarp around it for privacy. Not having
to worry about the time was partially a relief, and helped us with our interesting
look into how Aboriginal life used to be.
Overall
the week was pretty great. We each got
an Aboriginal name which Uncle Rus gave us based on our personality, behavior,
and mannerisms. Mine is the Willie Wagtail
(called gingery gingery in the Aboriginal language), a favorite and friendly
bird of Australia. They mostly sit on
the ground and shake their tail feathers back and forth. Apparently, this was very fitting since I am also
“close to the ground”, and I think Uncle Rus noticed me fidgeting and twisting
around at some point while standing up, and, well, that was it, I was named
right then and there. Here are Willie
Wagtail videos for you to watch while you continue to procrastinate whatever you
are supposed to be doing right now, particularly the first one shows just how
awesome I am in animal form (look up intelligence of crows and it becomes even
more impressive):
A lot of other people got bird names, but there
were several other animals as well, and one girl was named after the
rainbow. Everyone’s names fit them, even
if just in a small funny way. My
favorite is our program leader, Tony’s name.
He is the Koala Bear, because, as Uncle Rus puts it, he is “big, cuddly,
and hairy”. Another cool part of the
camping trip was that we had to make our own fun, instead of sitting on the
internet all the time or watching movies.
We pretty much talked and played games and ended up acting like
elementary schoolers, because, well, it was more fun than acting like adults I guess. Through these games, especially the question
ball and never have I ever, we actually got to know each other a lot
better. It’s weird, because we’ve only
known each other for a month, but we spend all our time together, so we’ve all
been friends pretty much from the beginning.
It was sort of backwards from how things normally go: we were friends
before we actually got to know each other.
So,
after a fun week in the bush, I’m now back in Cairns, learning and preparing
for our next excursion starting Friday, where we’re going out to study the rain
forest more in depth. As one of our
projects, we interviewed Uncle Rus in groups about topics we were interested
in, and then created a survey to give random people in Cairns on the same
topic, so that we could compare. My topic
is on childhood, and we walked around surveying people today, which was
interesting. Some people were actually
nice and really interested in our studies though, which I found extremely
surprising. We got 13 surveys in about
an hour by just walking up to random strangers.
I feel like if I tried that in Boston, after an hour we would have had
no surveys, and a much harsher experience.
Unfortunately, we were only allowed two cameras for the whole group during the camping trip, so
check facebook for photos I’m tagged in.
Also, I might be stealing someone else’s camping photos and post them in
my album, so check for that if you’re interested.
