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September 20, 2001
Overland Australia - Update 47
September 20, 2001
Day 59
From Bel:
Tanami Desert Track, just outside Yuendumu community.
While the team and the truck were waiting, I cycled through Yuendumu
(looking particularly conspicuous because of the BOB trailer) in search of Frank Baarda, a friend of the family who I’d been told I could ask anyone in town for when I showed up, and they’d be able to tell me where he would be.
I found the Yuendumu Mining Company store (which Frank owns) with a little more help from the locals than was absolutely necessary; and had a bizarre, but successful meeting. We wanted to do some filming with an interesting person who could tell us the history of the community, and get an aboriginal perspective on land rights laws.
Our contact, Frank, was the one to point us in the right direction. In under an hour, six people were asleep in the Baarda’s kitchen and living room, and Frank’s wife, Wendy, was telling us the history of the town and finding someone to speak to our cameras.
When riding through the streets the most common sights are rubbish and
dogs. The people of Yuendumu take dogs with them wherever they go. Each
family group is followed by a pack which guards them. Many are sick and
lame, and all are flea-bitten and wormy, but none are strays – all have their place. People call hello and try to stop strangers as they pass, to ask them who they are and what they’re doing; or, to tell what they already know about them through the grapevine.
On my first visit to the Post office - which had been to track down Frank – I squeezed my way into the crowded room, and stood against the back wall, which I thought was the end of a queue. Soon, everyone in the room had turned to look at me, and I was ushered to the front and asked what it was that I wanted.
All of these people were simply socialising! I returned later with Git, to buy post cards and a map, and found the room empty aside from a dingo half-breed asleep underneath one of the benches. After waving to and chatting with several people who passed along behind the counter (and who, on reflection, I think were simply hanging around, and had no more to do with the council administration than we did) a woman approached and asked what we would like.
You can buy stamps at the Yuendumu Post Office, and post a letter if you
don’t mind it being read; but if you need anything else – envelopes,
postcards, maps – you’re in trouble. The postal worker told us that Spring had put an itch into the people there – sent them a little crazy. Because of the level of unemployment, finding something to do all day is a problem, and people lately have been amusing themselves at night by lighting fires. Cars, trucks, buildings – anything will do, just to watch the burning. “Half the town are back there,” she told us, pointing her thumb over her shoulder carelessly, and meaning in the jailhouse.
While Jason and Todd were interviewing an aboriginal man in the grounds of a building which looked for all the world like a ruin, I rode back to Wendy and Frank’s house to tell the team how we were getting along. Those who were not napping in the midday sun were petting a pair of baby emus, which had been trapped in the wild and were being raised in a grassy aviary.
Crister and new friend
Jamie, an aboriginal boy of about six years, introduced himself and his brother Jordan, and asked our names. “Have you seen my dog?” He pointed to a mangy looking beast a few yards away. “I have five others,” he added, holding up an outspread hand.
After spending two hours sending out a back-log of website updates by a reluctant Yuendumu internet connection, Jason Git and I met some young
girls who had seen the rest of the team at the Baarda house. They showed
us the remains of a small, though dangerous if provoked, King brown
snake, which the men had caught, then put in a bucket of petrol and set on fire.
As we have found in many places along our route, cyclists are an uncommon sight. The last cyclist who passed through Yuendumu along the Tanami was dressed like a desert dwelling Arabian, and was, apparently, not taken seriously. His story was hopelessly entwined with one Frank told us about a transvestite who had a delusion of a vision of god while on the Tanami Track between there and Rabbit Flat, which is a story for another time.
Bel
Posted on September 20, 2001 1:31 PM