Ding the Dingo pup. Photo: Gloria Morales

This is what Gloria told me:

I don’t know too much about how this little fellow came to me but someone called from The Granites [a large gold mine 300 kilometres further up the Tanami Track from Yuendumu] about a week and a half ago saying that they have a Dingo pup that was very sick and was being sent down to me.

Later that day a bus with a group of young Aboriginal boys turn up at my house about midday.

The boys said that the little Dingo pup was very sick and had been left at the Granites Mine. They didn’t have much more information than that.

I got a box and made him a little home in our bathroom and gave him some water and food – half-cooked chicken necks are very good for small puppies.

At first he was terrified and  hid in a corner, shaking. After a while I got him out and sat him on my lap and gave him a cuddle and got the chicken neck and and put it in my hand.

He must have been a lot more relaxed being held by me because he he started eating like crazy and nearly ate my fingers as I was holding the chicken neck!

He was very skinny, with bones showing through his skin and I could count all of his ribs.

Later I talked to my friend in Alice and she helped me to find a good home for him. It was better for him to go to a new home as quickly as possible so that he could bond with the new person and create a connection with her instead of bonding with me.

I’d looked after him for two days and by the time I took him in to Alice Springs he had managed to start playing with the other puppies and had left the bathroom and gone into the bedroom and hide under the bed or under the side table.

At one time I found that he had dragged one of my pajamas under the side table and was sleeping on them.

By Saturday morning when I took him into Alice Springs he was already filling out, with not as many bones showing and he looked in much better condition and was less easily frightened than when he first came to me.

I’ll be keeping an eye on how he is doing with his new carers.

UPDATE – it seems that Ding’s first choice of carer wasn’t such a good one after all – the house he went to had a few orphaned Joeys and maybe Ding’s genetic hard-wiring kicked in and he started making very agressive moves not only at the Joeys (”lunch!!”) but also the hand that was feeding him…he is now at the RSPCA shelter in Alice Springs – I’ll keep you posted.

Another view of Ding - note the empty belly

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/29/camp-dog-of-the-week-ding-the-dingo-pup/feed/ 5 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/26/australias-shame-the-timor-sea-oil-spill-disaster-in-pictures/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/26/australias-shame-the-timor-sea-oil-spill-disaster-in-pictures/#comments Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:53:21 +0000 Bob Gosford http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/?p=2107 I am at a loss as to why this marine disaster has hardly registered on the Australian radar – press coverage appears to have been piecemeal at best, with little comprehensive coverage of the local, regional and international consequences.

The political response has been limited to hand-wringing stop-gap measures and to paying for a series of failed attempts to plug the spill and some apparently ineffective mopping-up operations.

Atlas West oil rig. Photograph: Chris Twomey, office of Ausralian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert

This is a disaster of not only local, but regional and international proportions. And, while the weather conditions in and around the Timor Sea are relatively stable at present, the impending arrival of the seasonal monsoonal cycle in the coming months will substantially change the nature and location of the impact of this massive spill.

The Jakarta Post reports today that the slick is already in Indonesian waters and is causing illness and will have a substantial economic affect on traditional fishers and harvesters on Rote Island:

Four weeks after the oil spill, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) submitted an official report to the Indonesian government mentioning that volumes of crude oil had entered the Indonesian Exclusive Economic Zone, some 51 nautical miles from Rote Island.

Traditional fishermen operating off Pasir Island found an oil slick resembling a pool around 20 miles from Tablolong beach in Kupand, or around 30 nautical miles from Kolbano, South Central Timor regency.

Last week, fishermen on the coast of Rote Ndao regency started complaining of illnesses as a result of the oil spill that had reached land and damaged thousands of hectares of ready-to-harvest seaweed.

“Seaweed, which is one of the province’s prime commodities, has been polluted. If the farmers fail to harvest their seaweed, they would incur losses of up to billions of rupiah,” said the West Timor Care Foundation NGO director Ferdi Tanoni.

And the Timor Oil spill has been picked up by East Timorese bloggers here and here.

The West Atlas oil rig in the Timor Sea, operated by the Thai-owned PTTEP Australasia, blew on August 21 and has leaked over 400,000 litres of oil, gas and condensate into the Timor Sea at a rate of reported variously as being from 300 to 1,200 barrels a day.

The Fairfax Press reports that Greens Senator Bob Brown believes those figures underestimate the true position – though no material was provided in support of his claim that:

The Greens believe anywhere from 10 to 20 million litres of oil has spilled into the ocean since the leak began on August 21.

Three attempts to plug the hole – by means of intercepting the pipe more than 2.5 kilometres below the sea bed – have been unsuccessful.

A fourth attempt had earlier been abandoned but was apparently to take place sometime yesterday, Sunday October 25.

Photograph: Debra Glasgow/WWF

As Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett told the ABC he is:

…confident everything possible is being done to stop the oil leak.

“The fact of the matter is, it’s a fiendishly difficult exercise – a little bit like threading the needle – to try to get this oil spill stopped,” he said.

And a fiendishly expensive one – estimates by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority given to the Australian Senate are that it has cost more that $AU5.3 million to date.

What 25,000 square kilometres of oil slick looks like. Photograph: MODIS/Terra/NASAS

The most comprehensive report I’ve been able to find on this oil spill is this article published last Friday in The Guardian by Toni O’Loughlin.

O’Loughlin’s article relies extensively on a series of reports by the World Wildlife Fund Australia.

Sea snake swimming in sludge. Photograph: Chris Sanderson/WWF

WWF are the only external independent agency to conduct a survey of the area affected by the spill.

WWF says that:

Dolphins, migratory sea birds and sea snakes were found in abundance in the area, in addition to marine turtles, and many of these species were recorded swimming through the toxic oil affected area during WWF’s recent expedition to Timor Sea…”We recorded hundreds of dolphins and sea birds in the oil slick area, as well as sea snakes and threatened hawksbill and flatback turtles,” said WWF-Australia’s Director of Conservation Dr Gilly Llewellyn, who led the team of ecologists.

Overall the expedition recorded 17 species of seabird, four species of cetacean and five marine reptiles including two species of marine turtle. At least eleven of the species were listed migratory and two – hawksbill and flatback turtles – are listed as threatened with extinction under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

On Wednesday, PTTEP, the company responsible for the oil slick, reported high levels of mortality among oil- affected seabirds. “Clearly, wildlife is dying and hundreds if not thousands of dolphins, seabirds and sea-snakes are being exposed to toxic oil. The critical issue is the long term impact of this slick on a rich marine ecosystem, taking into consideration the magnitude, extent and duration of the event,” said Dr Llewellyn. “We know that oil can be a slow and silent killer…we can expect this environmental disaster will continue to unfold for years to come.”

The true impacts of this most serious regional marine disaster will start to be felt – and recorded – in the Timor Sea in the coming weeks and are already having severe impacts on some parts of the Indonesian archipelago.

Just what will happen when the monsoon season starts and most likely disperses the spill over a greater area in the region – including back onto the Australian north-western coastline, remains to be seen.

But by then it may be too late.

You can see more of the WWF reports and survey here.

And more of the photographs collected at The Guardian’s Environment site here.

THESE PICTURES WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

Plastic cigarette lighters, bottle tops, fishing line, fishing lures, parts of shoes, plastic bags – just about anything we get rid of ends up here – in the guts of these baby albatrosses hatched and dead after a too-short life at Midway Atoll in the mid-Pacific.

And all this in a marine reserve, thousands of miles from any continental shore.

I came across these shots from a post by my very good friends at the Southern Ocean Seabirds Study Association (SOSSA) with whom I’ve had the rare pleasures on several occasions of sitting on a rusty boat thirty or so miles offshore from Wollongong with a half-dozen or so very large albatrosses sitting on laps on the wet-deck waiting to be measured, tagged, weighed and released – for the purposes of long-standing scientific research into these most magnificent seabirds.

I’ve written here before about why I take photographs of things that have been killed by human actions – in my case I mostly take photos of roadkill the victims of impacts with our cars that we drive too foolishly and too fast on our roads.

I take these photos because I want to bear witness and attest to the fact of their deaths and to maybe provoke at least one person to slow down when they see a group of large birds ripping into a kangaroo, wallaby or cattle carcass on the highway.

Or to stop and drag that carcass off the roadway and well into the bushes…

And these are the same sentiments that I suspect provide Chris Jordan with the motivation to do what he and his team do so well – documenting the monstrous impacts that the human animal has on this fragile planet.

These photos were taken in Midway Atoll, which the Midway Journey site tells me is:

…a collection of three small islands in the North Pacific, about halfway between the U.S. and Asia, and one of the remotest places on earth.

It is located near the apex of the Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling soup of millions of tons of plastic pollution. The islands are covered with plastic garbage, illustrating on several levels the interconnectedness and interdependence of the systems on our finite planet.

Midway Atoll, one of the remotest islands on earth, is a kaleidoscope of geography, culture, human history, and natural wonder. It also serves as a lens into one of the most profound and symbolic environmental tragedies of our time: the deaths by starvation of thousands of albatrosses who mistake floating plastic trash for food.

You can find out more about this remarkable trip by a team led by renowned photographer Chris Jordan at his home page here and see a whole lot more photographs, documentation and videos at the Midway Journey site here.

And these are true documents of distant and lonely deaths.

As Chris says:

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries.

Enough talk – look at these photos – and then tell me that you don’t care about the junk we pump into the ocean every day!

Now – it worked huh – feel like shit?

Want to do something about this – change your life?

Join the good people at SOSSA or go to Chris Jordan’s home page and donate to support the work they are doing.

Or stop buying plastic cigarette lighters, stupid plastic drink bottles and don’t ever throw your fishing lines overboard…

And please, if you have something to say – register and leave a comment here!

Miku Ganambarr-Stubbs

This is Miku Ganambarr-Stubbs, who is one of those rare creatures that lives such an absolutely charmed life that she has you in constant wonder when the charm might run out and she’ll get bitten hard by reality – or in Miku’s case – a bloody great crocodile.

You see, Miku has the rather unf0rtunate habit – for her at least – of taking herself down to the beach at the bottom of her backyard for a swim several times a day – a beach on a bay in crocodile country.

The photo above was taken as she was coming back from her regular morning swim.

Miku's backyard

Muku was bought as a birthday present for my god-daughter, Siena Ganambarr-Stubbs. On getting her home Siena’s parents realised that, as she had yet to develop teeth, that they might have been a bit premature.

So back Miku went to her mother’s teats for a few weeks until she was properly weaned and grown some teeth.

In order to make sure that they got Miku back – and not one of the several other cute little black dogs in the litter – they took the entirely sensible precaution of painting all of her toenails with red nail polish.

Hence her name of Miku – which in the Yolngu Matha language spoken at Miku’s homeland means “Red”.

When they returned to pick her up there were lots of dogs – but none with red toenail polish.

“Where is our dog?”

And, as proof of her qualifications to true campdog-dom, Miku – apart from her predilection for swimming in crocodile-infested waters – has a few other idiosyncracies.

Like most camp-dogs she loves an abandoned Kimbie (the generic term for disposable nappies) or three and she will bring home any abandoned toy that she finds in the street for a chew and a play.

But by far the best fun that Miku has with dead things is with the occasional Cane Toad that she finds squished on the road outside her house.

If she finds a newly road-killed Toad she will roll in its remains in an outburst of unalloyed joy – and comes back to the house stinking and in dire need of a good wash. If the Toad had dried out she delights in bringing it into the house for a good crunch and munch session.

Which usually results in more than a few screams and a firm and fast boot up the date immediately prior to a tumble down the stairs…

Weebill. Photo by M Seyfort © Australian Museum

This great shot is of a Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris), bird of the week here at TNM, at one of their little woven dome-shaped nests with a neat side entry.

In many ways they are the archetypal “LBB” (little brown bird) that causes no end of frustration for no end of the birders that seek them in their natural habitat of the open woodland and forests that once dominated the Australian landscape.

Like many small birds, just about the best way to locate Weebills in the bush is to listen for their distinctive call then follow your ears. To hear the sweet call of the Weebill have a listen here to a great recording by Fred van Gessel.

You spend a lot of time fchasing the many similarly-sized and plumaged birds to Weebills around the scrub but you will also spend a lot of that time looking at Thornbills, Pardalotes, Silver-Eyes and small Honeyeaters with which they commonly form mixed-species feeding flocks.

And just maybe the occasional Weebill…

Weebills, at an average weight of a mere 6 grams in weight and a diminuitive average of 8 centimtres in length are reckoned by many to be the smallest of Australia’s birds.

Both their common and scientific names come from the primary morphological point of distinction from the other LBBs around the place – the stubby little beaks that are ideally suited to gleaning their favoured prey of small insects from and among the leaves and branches of forest trees.

Earlier today I was on what hopefully will become a semi-regular gig on the local ABC Radio Morning Show broadcast out of Alice Springs with my good pal Alice Brennan.

We’ve shared a few tips in her previous role as a news journalist and occasional radio producer and now she has stepped up a grade or two and is presenting on-air for a couple of hours a day, five days a week.

From what I’ve heard so far she’ll do a great job!

Anyway, we had a great yarn about Weebills for a few minutes – she played the call that I’ve linked in above and we did a quick “What Bird am I” Q & A.

One item we couldn’t squeeze into the allotted time today was the following story of the Weebill, the Emu, the Porcupine (Echidna) and some Meat Ants.

It tells of how the Echidna got it’s spines and was told by Arthur Dodd, one of the last speakers of the Yuwaalaraay language from the area in north-western New South Wales around Walgett.

For more information about the Yuwaalaraay (which is referred to as a dialect of Gamilaraay or Kamilaroi) language have a look here. There are also a number of school programs that use these languages in primary and secondary schools in Gamilaraay country.

There are a bunch of great stories at the Yuwaalaraay and Gamilaraay language home page, Guwaabal  here, which is where the following story comes from.

I’ve removed the interlinear translation for ease of reading.

Bigibila wiyayl – The Porcupine’s Quills

Bigibila yanaa-waa-nhi, biyaduul.

A porcupine was walking along by himself.

Bulaarr badjin mindjarru yanaa-waa-nhi.

Two little weebills were walking along. [Weebills are small birds about the size of a wren.]

(Giirr yilaalu nhama mindjarru, bigibila dhayn gi-gi-la-nhi.)

(A long time ago the weebills and porcupines were people.)

Milan-du mindjarru-gu gayawi-y barran-du nhama, dhinawan nhama.

One weebill threw a boomerang at an emu.

Giirr bundaa-nhi nhama dhinawan.

The emu fell down.

Bamba ngaama bundaa-nhi

It fell with a crash.

Bigibila-gu-bala winanga-y, guwaa-y,

The porcupine heard it, and he said:

“Aa, minya ngaama bundaa-nhi?

“Aa, what fell there?”

Bamba nhama bundaa-nhi?

It fell with a crash.

Bulaa-yu-bala mindjarru-gu nhama guwaa-y, “Waal, waal baayamba. Waal, baayamba.”

But those two weebills said, “No, no mate. Nothing mate.”

(Giirr bulaa-yu nhama gayrrba-lda-nhi “baayamba”

(The two of them used call him “baayamba, friend”.)

Giirr-bala nguu gaga-y “Waa, waa, waa, waa maaynndjul dhingaa.”

But he called out, “Waa, waa, waa, waa, lovely meat.”

Guwaa-lda-nhi nguu dhinawan-di bigibila nhalay

He was saying this about the emu meat, the porcupine.

Giirr gaa-nhi nguu nhama dhinawan

Then he took the emu.

Yilaa nguu nhama yilama-y nguu nhama dhawuma-y

Then he cooked it, cooked it in the ground.

Giirr nguu guwaa-y mindjarru girran.girraa dhiyama-li-gu

He told the weebills to get some leaves

Giirr guwaa-lda-nhi nguu:

He kept on telling them:

“Ngarraagulay-nga yanaa-ya, girran.girraa-gu, dhawuma-li-gu ngiyani dhinawan.”

“Go over there for leaves, so that we can cook the emu.”

“Ngaayaybaay ngaan.gii.”

Okay! all right! mate? “Okay, mate!”

Bulaa-yu guwaa-lda-nhi.

The two of them were saying.

Giirr banaga-y-la-nhi yurrul-gu, nhalay badjin-duul.

Those little fellows were running around the bush.

“Nhalay-gaa baayamba? ngaan.gii?”

“What about these, friend, mate?”

“Ngaangaarran-gu yanaa-ya.”

“Go further on.”

Nguu guwaa-lda-nhi, “Yanaa-ya!”

He kept on saying, “Go!”

Nhama bulaarr dhurra-y ngayagay-a maalaabidi-dja.

Those two came to another tree.

“Nhalay-gaa ngaan.gii?”

“What about these, mate?”

“Waal, ngaangaarran, ngaangaarran-gu!”

“No, further, further on.”

Yilaa-bala giirr nguu barraay dhinawan dhawuma-lda-nhi

But then he was quickly cooking that emu in a hole.

Yilaa dhinawan dhawuma-nhi.

Then the emu was cooked.

Dhinawan-bala nhama-nga dhuwima-y nguu, dhinawan ngaarrma, nyiyarrma nguu-nga dha-lda-nhi

Then he took that emu out, and he was eating that emu there.

Mindjarru-bala nhama dhaay-nga yanaa-w-uwi-nyi.

Then the weebills came back there.

“Yaama-nga ngaan.gii!”

“Hey, mate,

Giirr ngali-nga maayrr dha-lda-nha.

We’ve got nothing to eat.

Ngaa, gana-badhaay ngay wuu-na.”

Yeah, give me the liver.”

Bigibila-gu-bala guwaa-y:

But the porcupine said:

“Waa, waa, waa, waa; maayndjul dhinggaa!”

“Waa, waa, waa, waa; lovely meat!”

Dhugay nguu ngaama guwaa-lda-nhi.

He kept on saying that.

Waal-bala nguu dhinggaa wuu-dha-nhi nhama bulaarr-gu nhama badjin-gaali-gu

He wouldn’t give any meat to those two, the two little fellows.

Giirr nhama ngiilay yanaa-nhi, nhama bulaarr, badjin-duul.

The two went away from there, the little fellows.

Dhurra-y bulaarr gadhuu-ga

The two of them came to an ant nest.

(Giirr ganunga-bula dhayn gi-gi-la-nhi, nhama buurrngan.)

(At that time the meat ants were people too.)

Bulaa-yu guwaa-y nhama buurrngan-da:

The two said to the meat ants:

“Waal ngaan.gii-dju minyagaa ngalingu wuu-rri.

“Old mate won’t give us anything.

Waal nguu minyagaa ngay wuu-dha-nhi.

He hasn’t given me anything at all to eat.

Waal ngay gana wuu-nhi, waal ngay gii wuu-nhi.”

He didn’t give me the heart, he didn’t give me the liver.

“Ngaayaybaay,” guwaa-y nhama buurrngan-du.

“Okay! All right!” said the meat ants.

Giirr nhama buurrngan yanaa-w-aaba-y, bilaarr-iyaay.

The meat ants all went, with their spears.

Ngaa, ngaama-dhaay-nga ganunga, buurrngan yanaa-nhi.

Yep, they went there, the meat ants.

Nyiyarrma-nga ganugu bilaa-yu dhu-nhi nhama.

There they speared that fellow.

Bilaa-yu dhu-nhi, bilaa-yu dhu-nhi, aawu, burrulaa-gu.

Speared him and speared him, with a lot spears.

Giirr-nga nguu guwaa-y:

And then he said:

“Nginaalingu dhinggaa, nginu dhinggaa, nginu dhinggaa.”

“This meat is for you two, meat for you, your meat.”

Giirr nguu dhugay gaga-lda-nhi, “Waal, waal.”

He kept on calling out, “No, no.”

Yilaa-bala burrulaa bilaarr nguungunda wa-y-la-nha.

[Too late] But now lots of spears were sticking into him.

Nhama wiyayl nguungu, giirr nhama bilaarr gi-gi-la-nhi.

Those quills of his, they were those spears.

Yalagiyu bigibila yanaay-la-nha wiyayl-bil, bilaarr-bil.

And now the porcupine is covered with quills, covered with spears.

]]> http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/06/bird-of-the-week-mindjarru-bigibila-a-yuwaalaraay-story-by-arthur-dodd/feed/ 1 http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/01/cutest-camp-dog-of-the-week-mr-fluff-farting-through-silk-on-millionaires-row/ http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/2009/10/01/cutest-camp-dog-of-the-week-mr-fluff-farting-through-silk-on-millionaires-row/#comments Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:52:29 +0000 Bob Gosford http://blogs.crikey.com.au/northern/?p=1819

Mr Fluff - Cutest little ex-camp dog in town!!

This is Fluff-fluff – or Mr. Fluff, of just Fluff – depending on our mood at the time.

He came over our fence at Yuendumu a few months ago as a very sick young puppy who we thought was going to die soon.

But he is a very tough bugger and survived and thrived to be a thoroughly delightful young pup who got on with all the other dogs and loved his daily walks through the bush.

Over the past few months a group called PAWS in Sydney has been taking a few of our young dogs for placement to local families – including the terrible twins Bobette and Colette, who now have a wonderful new home somewhere in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney.

PAWS describes itself as:

…a small group of self-funded rescuers and volunteer foster carers whose primary aim is to help lost or abandoned animals in NSW, Australia…We are a small, private non-profit rescue group that has no paid staff, no offices to pay rent on, no large advertising campaigns and no government funding. We rely mainly on word of mouth to promote our website, which features animals who are either currently in the Pound, or who have been rescued from Death Row and placed with a foster carer…By featuring their photos and stories on our website it is possible to save a life without the “emotional trauma” of visiting the Pound in person.

Parting with Mr Fluff was pretty hard and a few tears were shed – not only by the humans – I think Mr Fluff was more than a bit worried as he was put into the pet box and onto the plane for Sydney in mid-August.

So it was a profound relief when we heard that Mr Fluff had been accepted by a loving family in Sydney’s eastern suburbs a few short weeks after his trip to Sydney.

And just last week we learned that Mr Fluff now has a new name, “Mali”, and that he has achieved justified stardom as the winner, against some pretty stiff competition, of the Woolahra Council’s Cutest Dog Photo Competition judged at Puppies in the Park on Sunday 20 September.

Puppies in the Park is a new community dog event proudly presented by Woollahra Council providing dog owners in the municipality with information and advice on pet ownership and an opportunity to have some fun with your four legged friends. More than 400 dogs and their owners attended Woollahra Council’s first Puppies in the Park event at Rushcutters Bay Park.

And the prize – a $250 voucher for a portrait sitting and credit towards prints donated by Marc Gafen the Phodographer.

And right about the time that Fluff went off to Sydney to find a new home a dear friend who works with PAWS sent this email out seeking help with this great program:

Earlier this year I volunteered with my twin 15yr old daughters at Yuendemu. My girls helped at the Warlukurlangu Art Centre and I helped the vet Dr Honey Nelson and Gloria with the Dog control program.

In the meantime as a foster carer of rescued pound dogs for PAWS.com.au I am trying to find some homes for the dogs Gloria rescues.

So far I have homed 4 in 2 months and want to do more.

Is there any way you could think of supporting this venture? The dogs are all micro-chipped,vaccinated, de-sexed, heart worm checked and their new owners thoroughly inspected.

I can send photos of the dogs homed to date and the new ones.

So, if you think you can help the work of PAWS – or want to give one of their dogs a home – have a look at the website here.

And if you have any thoughts about or experiences of looking after camp dogs please feel free to register and leave a comment.

And here are a few more – doing one of the three things they do best – sleeping…except for the beautiful stumpy-tailed Ernie, who always has an eye out for the main chance – usually food – and is now also available for adoption.

Have a look at the list on the PAWS site to see his story.

And, courtesy of Gloria Morales, who is far more responsible for the rehabilitation of these animals than I, here are some earlier photos of Mr Fluff from his days at Yuendumu…

Pilbara languages map from Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre

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 as Balgo.

When I got here and asked after him they told me he’d gone to Yuendumu earlier that day and was expected back here tonight.

So I’ll try to catch up with him early tomorrow.

Meanwhile I’m going through my notes on Aboriginal bird knowledge from around here and the other regions of the north west of western Australia that I’ll be travelling through over the next few weeks.

As I was sorting I came across some excerpts that I’d found in Taruru: Aboriginal Song Poetry From the Pilbara by C.G. Brandenstein and A.P. Thomas and published by Rigby of Adelaide in 1974.

At 92 pages Taruru is a modest work but it is packed with song poems in a number of languages of the Pilbara – which appears, and have a look at the map above, to be one of the most linguistically diverse parts of the country.

To find out more about the language and cultures in this fascinating and far-flung corner of the country the website of the Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre is a great place to start.

Here are some of the bird song poems from Taruru:

BIRD’S CALL

Tjalurra in Jindiparndi, by Robert Churnside

Ku?urru murlawarnjgaa juurumarna karnalilila

ku?urru murlawarnjgaa juurumarna tarritogula

The Kurrugu bird-call finds his melody in the morning

Kurrugu bird-call finds his melody in the treehole.

THE CROWS

Tabi in Karierra, by Tjarndai

njalataianna pannina kudii nagunjuru

pilanmannaba takanna.

palakuru pala kardi?iriba pannigu

tinatingala juurra-manjulaba mirrunjgu

palakuru pala waarnarraba warnjga “kaa”

warnda murrumurru tanbatirriiba wurdanjga

They lurk and sit till they see a bone

What they can get, they grab

They hang around, eyeing something off.

Hopping about in the sun,

Conversing: “Kaa, kaa, kaa.”

Then its up to the back of a branch

One after another – what a crowd.

EMU SHOT

Tabi in Ngarluma, by Tjinapirrgarri

maguranagu tundunjarranpiru

maguranagu njali kangaragu

warnjgatinara karruluu padanna

warnjgatinara poolkarrinagu

ilinpinnuru karruluu padanna

ilinpinnuru poolkarrinagu

wibururuba marnjgula jirrgagu

karlinjkarlinjbala

At the bobbing head he aims,

At the bobbing head, at the upper neck.

The shots whistle, hitting the river stones.

The shots whistle, as it lies there riddled.

Feathers leap, hitting the river stones.

Feathers leap, as it lies there riddled.

The emu chicks run to and fro

Coming back again and again.

THE BULBUL BIRD

Tabi in Ngarluma, by Waljbira

Bulbul pannii nurdu,

Bulbul pannii nurdu

murii tinamanma, jabulkurruu karadilipanjuru

Bulbul pannii nurdu,

Bulbul pannii nurdu

murii tinamanma, jabalkurruu karadilipaia

jinda nuru pannii Pabamudunjgana

njaiin wirlimanma, kururdkakanma njuu

jinda nuru pannii Pabamudunjgana

njaiin wirlimanma, kururdaga.

Bulbul is here

Follow the stony creek, your track to northern shores!

Bulbul is here

This pool is “water throughout the year”

Stir my heart and also give it a rest

(rest is missing)

PELICAN AND HERON

Pundut in Jindiparndi

(traditional)

kandanjarrima pilarra!

tamanjgajini padarmarrijanju-peerl!  peerl!  peerl!

hou!

Leave your old leg-spear alone!

Let’s hurl fire-sticks at each other!

Kill!  Kill!  Kill!

THE PEEWIT AND THE WHITE COCKATOO CHICK

Pundut in Jindjiparndi

(traditional)

njaiimbaa karparna mungamunganina

wiluurumarna kardanpadimarna

pirdiranalu tida wadinjani

hou!

I then took it away and improved on it:

White and the neck striped,

Better than the white cockatoo’s chick

Which turned out rather badly.

I don’t have the right keyboard settings to enter some of the linguistic notations (there are several couplings of “n” & “j” (I’ve forgotten the technical term!) above that are usually represented by an “n” with the downstroke of the “j” incorporated into it. There are also several graves, acutes and umlauts that I’ve not been able to enter.

I’ve come across a fair bit of poetry and song-texts in the course of my research and I’ll post a few more of them as I work my way though my notes and research.

The poems from Taruru provide me with some interesting perspectives on how people imagine and record their knowledge of birds.

I struggle to understand the meaning of Pundut’s The Peewit and the White Cockatoo Chick, but a little research may provide some clarity.

Both The Crows and Emu Shot are beautiful and fine-grained descriptions of two common birds – one often seen as an intelligent and engaging pest, the other an important element in local economic and religious life.

And I’m looking for more in other material that von Brandenstein recorded in the north-west. If you know of any other Aboriginal poetry about birds please don’t hesitate to pass it on.

Alice Springs Waste Stabilisation Ponds - aka the "Shit-pits"

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 the average daily household use of water is about 1,500 litres a day.

As this graph below shows that’s over 500,000 litres a year – for each house!

And while much of that goes onto household gardens a lot of it ends up as “waste water” in what locals know as the shit-pits but that the NT Government’s Power and Water Authority more politely calls the Alice Springs Waste Stabilisation Ponds.

These large ponds are just to the south the town through The Gap and can be seen clearly from the air when flying into town – just look for the large ponds that some in the past have mistakenly identified as a local trout farm.

But then some people will believe anything.

Over the years I’ve spent many a happy hour at various sewage ponds around the NT and beyond and for good reasons – often they are the only large body of surface water for hundreds of kilometres around and they provide a valuable resource for local and and migratory birds.

And while I don’t have any empirical evidence (I’m sure someone will do the research one day soon – if they have not already) I’m pretty confident that that in arid Australia the local sewage ponds are a valuable stop-over, foraging and resting resource for the hundreds of thousands of shorebirds that cross the Australian continent as part of their annual migratory route – the East Asian – Australasian Flyway – from the far corners of a northern hemisphere winter to enjoy an Austraian summer.

Right now many of those birds are en-route and are already starting to make their first land-fall on the north of the country – in the next couple of weeks I’ll catch up with more than a few of them at the wonderful Broome Bird Observatory – one of a network of similar observatories dotted around the country and operated by Australia’s peak ornithological body, Birds Australia.

And more than a few of those birds will fly overhead here at Yuendumu – I’ll be keeping an eye (and ears – many cross the country by night) out for migrating waterbirds at our local shit pits over the coming months.

But anyway, I digress. Back to the Alice Springs facility – just this week the Power and Water Corporation and the very active and helpful Alice Springs Field Naturalists group have worked together to produce a birder-friendly guide that provides a map (see above) of the Alice Springs shit-pits and some guidance as to what birds you might see when you go there.

You can have a closer look at the Birdwatcher’s Map and Guide here.

Enjoy – and just keep a good nose out for where the wind is blowing from!

For me this couple of hours before dawn is the best time of day – the stars are at their brightest, the air is cool and clear, the Pied Butcherbirds get an early start on the morning chorus with their mellifluous calls and all the pleasures of the day wait ahead.

In two previous posts here I have explored the work of the Warlpiri artist Alma Nungarrayi Granites and the wonderful work in the exhibition of paintings by people of the Wajarri Yamatji language group from Western Australia’s Murchison region and their exhibition entitled “Ilgarijiri – things belonging to the sky“. Both of those posts illustrate the importance of the Seven Sisters – the Pleiades – in Aboriginal cosmology.

I want to wander through a few further links that I’ve found that reveal what I suspect is just small part of the enormous body of knowledge that Australian Aboriginal people have of our night skies and the wonderful things that live there.

As I’ve said previously – and this may arise from 2009 being the International Year of Astronomy – there seems to be a greater willingness to engage with, or a broader interest in, Indigenous Astronomical Knowledge among the mainstream astronomical science community than there is in many other scientific disciplines – and this could include my own area of interest of ornithology.

But back to the stars!

Questacon provides a popular entry point for the general public to a variety of areas of Australian scientific enquiry and research and has a page dedicated to Aboriginal Astronomy, from which this story of Barnimbir (Venus) the Morning Star from the Yolngu language group of north-east Arnhem land comes:

One day a yam leaf was blown across the warm waters of the sea, north of Australia. It floated from the east, from where the Sun and Morning Star came. A man named Yaolngur found the leaf. The yam plant was very special to him and he decided to travel to the country where it came from – the land of the Morning Star.

He made a very large canoe and told his wives to collect great numbers of water lily bulbs for food and fill many coconut shells with water for drink during his long journey. He rested that night in his home camp and early next morning he set out. He paddled for seven days, sometimes sleeping on small islands, sometimes sleeping at sea. On the last night of his journey he paddled and paddled – he could hear waves crashing on the rocks. Then the sky lit up, the Morning Star rose in the sky and Yaolngur saw land.

He had arrived at the home of the Morning Star. The island was the home of the spirits, home of the Mokois. He had arrived at the island of the dead. Because he was in a strange land, he wanted to make himself strong. By rubbing the sweat from his armpits onto his arms, legs and chest, he made himself powerful. He also rubbed his sweat in his spear thrower.

Carrying his weapons, he went to seek the Morning Star. He had only walked a short way when he saw the ghosts – so many in number that they stood shoulder to shoulder so many that there didn’t seem room for any more. The spirits looked at the decoration of sea gull feathers on his spear thrower and recognised him as a friend. He sang and danced and then said, “I want to see Barnimbir, the Morning Star.”

He walked and found the old woman Marlumbu, who kept the star. At first she didn’t want to it to him, but he sang magic songs and he assured her that he only wanted to see if it was the same as the one his group used in their Morning Star ceremony. Marlumbu took it out and showed him the parts made from seagull feathers and jungle yams. Yaolngur was pleased the Morning Star was the same as his people used.

He handed the Morning Star back to Marlumbu, who released it into the sky. She controlled the flight of Barumbu by holding the string and allowing the Star to travel all over the islands. She cried out directions to the Star to tell it where to travel. Suddenly the string started to hum. It was the sign that the Sun was coming up.

You can find more of the stories if the rich heritage of Aboriginal astronomical observation and story telling at the Questacon Aboriginal Astronomy site.

These stories can also be found in Questacon’s book The Emu in the Sky, a collection of Aboriginal astronomy stories from all around Australia that is available from Questacon for the bargain price of $AU4.30.

The Emu in the sky

Another widespread story is the popular and widespread story of the “Emu in the Sky“.

As this page at Wikipedia notes, the Emu in the Sky story is a:

…tradition that is widespread in Australia…a ‘constellation’ that is defined by dark nebulas (opaque clouds of dust and gas in outer space) that are visible against the milky way background, rather than by stars. The Emu’s head is the very dark Coalsack nebula, next to the Southern Cross; the body and legs are other dark clouds trailing out along the Milky Way to Scorpius.

Just north of Sydney, in the Kuringai National Park, are extensive rock engravings of the Guringai people who live there, including representations of the creator-hero Daramulan and his emu-wife. An engraving at Elvina Track shows an emu in the same pose and orientation as the Emu in the Sky. constellation. On autumn evenings, the emu in the sky stands directly over her portrait, just at the time when it’s time to gather emu eggs. To the Wardaman [people], however, the Coalsack is the head of a lawman.

Macquarie University Adjunct Professor Ray Norris runs a website dedicated to Aboriginal Astronomy.

In the overview to the comprehensive site he says:

The southern sky is striking compared to that of the Northern hemisphere, often dominated by the magnificent river of the Milky Way weaving across the zenith, crossed by numerous dust lanes. For those living in Australia before the advent of streetlights, the night sky would be an important and integral part of their understanding of the world. Naturally, they would notice that particular stars or patterns are seen only at certain times of the year. Furthermore, since many chose to travel in the cool of the night, they would quickly find that stars are useful for navigation.

Across Australia are many different rich and vibrant Aboriginal cultures, each with its own astronomy. But there are common threads. Many have stories of a female Sun who warmed the land, and a male Moon who was once a young slim man (the waxing crescent Moon), but grew fat and lazy (the full Moon). But then he broke the law, and was attacked by his people, resulting in his death (the new Moon). After remaining dead for 3 days, he rose again to repeat the cycle, and continues doing so till this day. The Kuwema people in the Northern Territory say that he grows fat at each full moon by devouring the spirits of those who disobey the tribal laws.

Some Aboriginal people use the sky as a calendar to tell them when it’s time to move to a new place and a new food supply. The Boorong people in Victoria know that when the “Mallee-fowl” constellation (Lyra) disappears in October, to “sit with the Sun”, it’s time to start gathering her eggs on Earth. Other groups know that when Orion first appears in the sky, the Dingo puppies are about to be born.

And you can find an interesting introduction to many aspects of Aboriginal astronomy, links to other articles,  audio programs and events at the ABC’s Big Aussie Starhunt page.

Further north in the Northern Territory, the fascinating accounts of the Astronomical knowledge of the Wardaman language group, who have country to the west and south of Katherine in the Northern Territory, are revealed in the book “Dark Sparklers“, written by Hugh Cairns and Bill Harney, with whom I’m doing some work on my project on Aboriginal bird knowledge.

I don’t agree with many of the statements that Hugh Cairns makes about some aspects of the traditional knowledge of the Wardaman people but notwithstanding those and other reservations the book represents the most comprehensive account of the astronomical beliefs of a single Australian Aboriginal language group that I have been able to find. Dark Sparklers also contains many wonderful stories of other aspects of Wardaman knowledge and belief systems.

A Wardaman rock painting

I’ll leave each of you to make up your own mind about Dark Sparklers but encourage you to forward any further information you might have on projects and research being undertaken elsewhere.

And finally, while it is mainly directed at teachers wanting to use Aboriginal astronomical knowledge in the classrooom there is a great educational resource entitled “Astronomy and Australian Indigenous People” prepared by Adele Pring and produced by the South Australian Education Department that is available as a PDF document here.

Don’t let the educational content put you off – it contains a wealth of information about Aboriginal astronomical knowledge from all over the country.

There is a lot more that I haven’t been able to cover here but I’d be happy to extend the discussion and would welcome your suggestions or links to further information.

Of the hundreds of highway death scenes I’ve stopped at over the years this latest would qualify as one of the worst and most distressing.

Ten days or so ago I was driving homewards up the single-lane strip of bitumen that passes for a highway in this part of the world and had pulled off onto the red dirt verge to allow a roadtrain to pass.

That truck was just one of the many 140-tonne, four-trailer behemoths that do the 1100 kilometre round trip up the Tanami Track from Alice Springs carting diesel fuel, cyanide and other essentials to The Granites mine.

You always get off the road for those guys.

One hundred metres up the road I noticed a common indicator of a recent bird killing zone – for 100 metres or so the ground and short grass alongside the road was littered with downy feathers,with a scatter of larger feathers blowing around in the stiff breeze.

I stopped, got out of the car and looked about me.

In the middle of the road was a large, slowly congealing pool of blood, with large splatters indicating that whatever – most likely a large kangaroo – had died here and had been hit by an inbound vehicle.

There was no sign of any kangaroo carcass close handy – maybe some caring driver or a hungry Dingo had dragged it off the road and well into the scrub, thus saving a few more birds from an untimely death.

As I looked at this scene more closely the true horror  of what had happened emerged. All about me lay  the scattered, shattered remains – here the severed head shown above, there a leg – stripped of flesh, next to the road another head, ten feet away a razor-taloned foot, wing and tail – this time of a younger bird.

An open-air slaughter house – whatever had happened here had been brief and incredibly brutal – two  Wedgetailed Eagles had been hit and torn – literally – limb from feathered limb, ground into paste on the road and left for the carrion-eaters.

The horror, the horror.

I can say no more – let my pictures bear witness and tell their own story.