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Great fun, music, sport and culture under northern skies at the Northern Territory’s annual Barunga Festival. My report from day one.

The Bitch – and her sisters – will each carry cattle worth – at current values of $782 a head for export cattle – $112,600 from Brunette Downs to the yards in Darwin. Each load will weigh around 50.4 tonnes. Across the four trucks in this convoy the total value of this run will be around $450,000 with a weight of 200 or so tonnes.

AMSANT noted in its submission that it: “…note[d] that the many threats to environmental and public health that have been largely eliminated in the rest of the nation over the past century still blight many of our communities: urban, regional and remote. To this extent, the capacity of comprehensive primary health care to meet the needs of Aboriginal Territorians—to Close the Gap—will continue to be frustrated in environments in which fundamental public health protections are not available or unmet.” AMSANT was concerned at the parlous state of environmental health of many of the communities that its members serve, where: “Poor environmental health conditions in remote communities and town camps include inadequate sanitation, water supply, rubbish disposal and grossly overcrowded housing. Basic infrastructure in many remote communities is either absent, inadequate and/or poorly maintained.”

Is our landscape one shaped by humans and weather forces or might other agents – like birds – be in part responsible for the spread of fire across our landscapes? There are more questions here than answers…so far.

The Barunga Statement painting combined several clan designs from Yolngu country in northeastern Arnhem Land on the left with a large design featuring traditional Central Desert iconography on the right. As such it visually affirmed the unified demands of the Aboriginal people of the Northern Territory and the Land Councils that represented the interests of those who had already attained the first measure of self-management promised by the Land Rights Act (NT) 1976.

One easy way to pick a real ringer – rather than the wanna-be’s, usedtobe’s or nevercouldbe’sbuttryinghard’s – in a crowd is to look for the amount of cow shit stains on his or her hat – if it has a generous spray of shit from brim to brow then they are most likely a real ringer – or stole the hat off one.