September, 2009

After spending a long time in the desert’s too-harsh-between-10am-and-3pm light it is a relief on the eyes to get into some comparatively soft northern lights, though of course the heat and humidity of a September build-up does always take some getting used to.

To me the call of the Yinkardakurdaku sounds like water flowing out of a narrow-necked bottle, a beautiful succession of fluid sounds ending in an almost joyous, crazy climax.

I’m sitting here in the “Balgo Hilton” waiting for someone to come back from where I’ve just been. We most likely passed each other on the road sometime yesterday as I struggled up the 530 kilometres of the torture that is known as the Tanami Track from Yuendumu up here to Wirrimanu – formerly known [...]

What is it that is so important and special about homelands for their traditional custodians and that underpins the successful outcomes of living in their small communities?

Birds, and birders, love shit. Or more particularly in Alice Springs, they both love the fact that in the driest part of the driest continent that the average daily household use of water is a profligate 1,500 litres a day.

It may just be because 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, but to me there seems to be a greater willingness to engage or a broader interest in Indigenous Astronomical Knowledge among the mainstream astronomical science community than there is in many other scientific disciplines.

The focus of “Ilgarijiri – things belonging to the sky” is a collaborative project between artists associated with the Wajarri Yamatji region and radio astronomers from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), based in Perth, Western Australia.

If you are in Alice Springs this weekend you can do a lot worse than go along to the Aralauen Arts Centre and catch the Desert Mob show that will be opening there Sunday – you might be lucky and see one of Nungarrayi’s paintings in the exhibition.

This was the first of the many hundreds of roadside memorials that I’ve seen over the years that concerned a death by misadventure at the hands of another other than by motor-vehicle accident.