I know I’m one of the poorest bloggers on the footboot blogfeed. I apologise to those who have expressed a wish I blog more but the honest truth is that I don’t much like sitting in front of a computer screen. If I sit on the verandah I can see trees and mountains and all that stuff that just keeps staying the same and at my age that is very consoling. But it is now almost midnight and it is cold and dark outside and Keith is in Sydney so there isn’t much else on offer so I am blogging. Although I just spent the last two hours talking with a writer staying in our cabin who seems a helluva lot smarter than me so was worth listening to.
Any way, I have been working in a new job since February and I thought maybe I should write something about it as it is a pretty big thing for me and I like it. I still have my old job in sexual assault, but only two days a week. The rest of the week I go out bush. Every second week I go to Yulara and Mutijulu, the two communities either side of Uluru.. Most trips I find some time to do a bit of a walk beside Uluru and touch the rock. I always find myself asking myself, “How did I come to be here?” Most people visit the rock for a day or two and that’s that but I get to keep returning and getting to know it’s nooks and crannies more intimately. I love it more each time. I did not in any way try to manipulate my life to go there. It sort of just happened. I agreed to do some part time bush work and this is where they sent me. The first client I saw in Mutijulu lives in a house with a verandah that looks out to the rock. I saw her again this morning. We sit on her verandah and watch the rock and talk about the dramas in her life, and they are pretty significant, and the rock just keeps being as it always does. Yulara and Muti are different communities in the obvious ways- Yulara a white tourist place, Muti, an aboriginal community. But there is something in common that is hard to describe. Also, because I work as a counsellor, i see the bits many don’t’ get to see. The rock has skin over it, and it is so like an animal skin in its folds and texture, but it has deep gashes in it, wounds that break the skin and show cavities beneath, mouths, gaping holes, vaginas, however you want to see them. And the people that seem to get drawn to work in yulara have histories of trauma, and there are so many problems in that community. Then after i have seen a bunch of people in the busy community clinic there , i poddle over to Muti where there are aboriginal people whose ancestors have operated in that area for thousands of years and they are broken in many ways, and then there are also many aboriginal peopel from other part sof Australia pulled to the area for a a range of reasons. How did we all end up there? Because there is this bloody big rock there. Any way, i have some fascinating conversations with people in both communities, with people who have wounds as big as the gashes in the rock, but they are still there and the rock is still there and I keep going back and keep wondering how it is I come to have the privelege of regulalry touching this place, and also getting paid more than I have ever been paid in my life to go there. I have no bloody idea whether I do anything those who pay me expect me to do… I’m beyond asking those questions. But i feel so priveleged that some people want to keep talking to me. Not all do. In Muti, as in many aboriginal communites, this idea of counselling is a bit strange and I spend a certain amount of time running around after people who have been identified as needing counselling but those people just see counselling as another form of social control. In these communities I can never feel like I belong and my role is tenuous. I am out of my comfort zone well and truly. Each morning I pray that somehow I will manage to talk to anyone it would be good for me to talk to and sometimes I ave these very special conversations. Other times I wonder what the hell I am doing there. But then I go to the rock and know that something somehow draws us there and I am just grateful, as it is really a very sacred place, which is really why all of us are there. And then i drive back and get in late an Keith is away and I go and chat to this new writer in our cabin and before I know it, it is midnight. Thank God tomorrow is the weekend, I’m buggered.

an easter story

twas a good day this friday
but all was aflap.
the block decided
to camp ruby gap

there were cavenaghs, luffs and pauline as well
ryan and rosie were riding pray tell
its jolly and fun in the gap for a camp
as we made little fires with nere sight of a lamp

We decided to go to the pools for a swim
but the distance was long who for some was most grim,
so we worked out a way for the car to to assist
so all piled in for a drive with a list

all in all it was a jolly good time
spending time in creation is spiritually fine
the place is quite sacred
its a place John calls home
watching him be here

My new job

This year I decided to bring about a change in my work environment. Having worked for 4  1/2 years full time at Alice Springs Sexual Assault Service (SARC), I have started working there only 2 days a week and the other days I am with the GP Network going bush and providing counselling services to clients of the clinics in the communities. The above photo is of a note attached to my SARC boss’s computer. She had it there for many months. It gives a picture of her view of her staff. And we all felt it! Any way, I had a really tough year last year so decided to make a change. I am loving it with the GP network. I get to go to Uluru once a fortnigt to see people in Yulara and Mutijulu, the two very different communities beside the rock. The other fortnight I go to Hermannsburg, a comunity just down the road. The main challenge in this work is locating clients. They don’t just turn up at the clinic for appointments so you spend a lot of your time tracking them down to sit and have a chat wherever . I sat with my first client at Mutijulu on her verandah and we talked for over 2 housrs looking directly at Uluru. Helped me keep a perspective any way. It’s not easy work and I have so much to learn but it feels right for me and my new boss is so supportive.

any old saturday

Saturday afternoon started well. We’d sorted out a few wiring issues in the kitchen with the electrician and had now moved onto tea and chats with assorted people on the verandah. So a perfect day of some jobs ticked and lots of tea. It was now standard summer hot and I awaited the afternoon to re-engage.

On Friday I had seen an ad for an electric guitar on one of those café information boards. The ones where you don’t know if the ad has been there for ten minutes or ten months. Hoping it was the former I immediately rang ‘Alice’ the woman attached to the number on the ad. She told me someone was already coming around that night but if they didn’t want it she’d call me back. A text message came at about the 4th cup of tea saying the preferred buyer had passed up the offer. Being full of tea I thought I’d go and have a look as it was too hot to do anything else anyway.

I opened the case to reveal this exquisite semi acoustic electric guitar looking up at me. Alice agreed to exchange this beautiful creation for a relatively miniscule price which made the day get even better. Coveting is a complex sin. This guitar is a jazz guitar and is the sort I have coveted for many years but resisted because in the end the $3000 or so instrument would be largely wasted on me. But $500 is a perfectly sustainable covet.

To make the transaction all the more sublime this is a ‘Joe Pass’ signature guitar. Now only a very few people will know how much I have enjoyed listening to the great Joe Pass play guitar. A night in the Opera House with Janet and Joe and Oscar Petersen remains in my top 5 concerts of all time and maybe the most extraodinary for reasons that would require another blog to explain.

So I take ‘Joe’ home and fiddle with my sin fueled purchase for awhile and realise I have a lot of work to do to deserve him. Fallen I may be, mediocre talent most certainly, but happy I am.

The afternoon has lost its heat sting and full of enthusiasm I take to the lawn mower which is my implement of choice when I have an hour to kill. I really love cutting grass. A cross between major outcome for minimum effort and taking the dog for a walk. I start on this little area under the hill near the tearoom. I have eyed this spot to make a nice space there for something even though I currently have no idea what something will look like. First get rid of the grass and see what we have to work with.

There are a few rocks but I am trying to be nice to the mower (the mower could actually do with a separate blog as well come to mention it) I am making headway when I look behind me to see the grass on fire. In the first instance I cant believe this is true but the increasing heat brings a certain reality to the mental gymnastics around truth. I start to stamp on the fire to put it out but fairly quickly realise I havent spent the 30 seconds allotted for possible salvation very well. I am in a pickle. I decide to start running and swearing. Stella hears me and just dismisses the diatribe as one of my odd idiosycracies she has learnt to live with. I run past Tim and Jannah in the studio and they think I have cut my foot off.

The running is fairly circular as I basically don’t know what to do. After 1 minute the flames are heading up the hill and so a simple fix is well past. The water tank extinguisher which I bought last year will take 10 minutes to set up and the fire is already moving away from the flat area where you can tow the tank to. Maybe a rake. I run back and joined by Bryan try hitting it. The fire laughs at the rake but more hurtfully it is also laughing at me.

Probably 2 minutes have elapsed and Tim and Jannah have now got the drift of the problem as they look across to the hill on fire. My continued running in circles suggests to them that my foot is OK although I’m not sure they contemplated that it could have been the reason why I couldn’t run in a straight line. Stella too is starting to run around in circles. The Cavenaghs and all the kids all emerge from nowhere. There is now the opportunity to communally run in a lot of different circles till someone has a useful idea. My last thought is to fill up the 3 back packs I had acquired for just this purpose.

The circles start to slow as Tim and Bryan and I try to get up one side of the fire with the backpacks to stop it spreading Eastwards. I am a little self conscious of being the person who burnt the whole of the Ilparpa valley with a lawn mower.

The rest of the team start to fill buckets in the most impressive exercise of water moving you’re likely to see. John Cavenagh takes responsibility for dousing the trees after the fire has gone through. Stella, Jannah and Libby carry water and Schobie and Malley others are filling buckets whilst also looking after kids. The older kids are also carrying buckets up the hill and across the flat. Nick a nearby neighbour and his daughter (Jemma of course) come to add efficiency and then Leslie and David from directly across the road also turn up. The various roles change as people get tired but its just this amazing machine.

The base camp is doing an amazing job sorting the bottom of the hill when the fire brigade arrives. Theres always this immediate feeling ‘we’re going to be OK’ until you realise that the hose on their truck isnt going to reach any further than our hose and they arent planning to go up any mountain. They are volunteer fire fighters and It feels more like they have come to join the communal event rather than take on the role wise and efficient professionals. They settle in well filling buckets for more nimble people to carry them to douse a tree.

The fire has now reached the top of the hill and is heading for the Gap but it can’t really go anywhere after that. The Eastern side is now starting to look like it might hold but I have to say running up that hill with 16 litres of water is a might challenging. Thank God for Tim and Bryan.

After 2 hours its starting to feel like we might be winning although the damage a fire does to wildlife is pretty gut wrenching. The sense of relief that we only burnt a half a mountain is all a bit weird, but I feel relief, no doubt about it. The danger of the fire has now subsided and after three trips up the mountain I am spent. Tim and Bryan, Libby and Jannah though are not. They have a few more trips in them and in fact keep going up till its well past last light dousing trees that might be saved. So many trees here get a bit of fire in them and will burn out from the inside so if you can get some water in to them it is possible that they might live.

I am grateful to God the power over us all that the wind didn’t make the task harder than it was. I am grateful to wonderful people who gave their everything showing that they cared every bit as much as I did. That is very humbling.

They say that true mateship can’t be defined by words, it is defined by together living through unplanned crises from time to time. I think I get that.

We’re back!!!

Ryan returned yesterday and in a few quick seconds managed to get us back in blog world. He also showed me how to upload a photo so I will try to do more of that. Here is my first attempt……….

I really like this photo because it shows most of the wonderful people who live around Honeymoon Gap and who helped us put out the fire Keith managed to start on the block a couple of weeks ago. I know he wants to write about the fire so I will leave that up to him. But this mob all ran around like crazy on a stinking hot day with buckets and backpacks of water to ensure all the wonderful bush on our place didn’t burn down. They’re a pretty special bunch. Tim isn’t in it as he was still up the hill putting the fire out on a tree. Shobie isn’t in it as she was taking the photo.

This photo shows another really exciting event in our life! For those of you who know our kitchen, you may recognise a new fridge. Possibly a bit hard to see under all the postcards, but indeed there is a newer, bigger, more enrgy efficient fridge there. Alice Solar Cities has a program to get rid of old inefficient fridges so they paid us $400 to take away our old one and for us to upgrade to an enegy efficient model. We got this Electrolux and we’ve had it a couple of weeks and I still get excited every time I open it and can see things I need. Last night we had a bit of a welcome back BBQ for Ryan and all these people turned up with beer and containers of food and it could all fit in our fridge! It was great. Now we just need a dishwasher. As usual we spent about 2 hours washing up after the BBQ. Lots of people helped but it is still a big job. We are going to slowly upgrade the kitchen but hopefully keep it’s quirky rustic look.

Any way, I am in a really good space at the moment. I recently stopped full time work at the sexual assault service and am now only there 2 days a week and I go out bush a couple of days a week with the GP network. It is all new and I’m sure there are many challenges ahead but I feel so good to be out of the office I was in 5 days a week as there were quite  afew stressors there with the team there. We also have a new manager who is sorting out some of the problems. I feel like a huge weight has been taken off my back.

I did a course in sand tray therapy last week and that was really fun and has me thinking a lot about symbols. It inspired me to start writing down my dreams again which I have been doing and finding very curious. I sit with many questions at the moment and that feels OK. Wish I could show you a photo of my dream last night but I don’t’ think even Ryan could sort that one out.

Sad days

I’ve just spent the past half hour trying to upload a photo onto this post but didnt’ succeed. I’ve only ever managed to do it once. I’m feeling a bit frustrated because we have lots of wondeful photos but can’t seem to share them. Probably should talk to Ryan.

Any way, I was going to say that is now nearly a week since Mil, Martin and Nina left us. Day to day life without them is just not the same. I keep finding toys or books or things Nina loved to play with and bursting into tears. I keep looking over to their cabin in the evening and there is darkness most of the time. An era has come to an end and at the moment all I feel is an big empty hole here. We have another family moving in next year and that should be good but it won’t be the same. The nice thing is that after they flew off last Sunday, our aborignal neighbours, John and Mallie invited us over in the evening. We turned up and amzingly Mallie had prepared this wonderful meal. She had set up a  table outside with a table cloth and had cheese and biscuits and olives and sundreid tomaotes and good wine, and she had made vegie soup and pasta and garlic bread and there was cheesecake for desert. I was so touched. She had put in a lot of effort and prepared food she knew we liked. I was feeling so miserable and that meal cheered me up no end. She said she had promised Mil she would look after us and she did.  Those acts make so much difference. I think we can soldier on here.

A land of extremes

As  I write this a storm is slowly receding into the distance. It’s been all thunder and lightening and heavy rain for the past hour. And less than a week ago we were fighting fires just on the other side of Honeymoon Gap.  I didn’t do much but Keith and a few locals managed to prevent the fire buring on the other side of the mountain from coming over into our valley. When you live remote you find out that the fire officials don’t do a lot for you and you have to do it yourself. After this down pour I doubt there’s a spark any where near us.

It’s certainly a place of extremes out here. The last couple of weeks Alice has been covered in a smoke haze and the setting sun each night is a bright red. Not long ago there was so much rain and everything was so green and the rivers kept running. We get drought and abundance and then fire. And it’s all so in your face. Not to mention the frost only stopped about a month ago. And as soon as they stop the insects start building up. I just hope we dont’ get another mouse plague.  It’s not always comfortable but you can’t just forget the environment around you here. ANd there is alwys so much beauty. Even walking among the black fire ravaged bush with a red fire ball of setting sun is so dramatic.

We had a bunch of astrologers staying here a couple of weeks ago and they had these incredible telescopes to see the stars with. Despite the smoke in the sky at the time, we could see stars looking like such jewels through these telescopes. It’s always good to contemplate the stars. Keeps a good perspective on things. With a name like Stella, how could I do otherwise.

Fire and music

As usual, it’s been ages since I wote a post. I often have the thought, “Oh, I should blog that” but then life keeps going and it passes me by. Any way, we had a big day here at Honeymoon Gap yesterday so I thought I should blog it before that gets away from me too.  The day started a bit smoky as it has done for the past week because there have been fires nearby in the National Park.  They have been doing a lot of controlled burning to bring the grass down before summer, but unfortunately it got out of hand in a few places. Fortunately it has not been too catastrophic and the fires have mainly stayed at ground level, sparing the trees. The air is pretty hazy in the morning but clears as the day warms up. Any way, after yesterday our recently refurbished big octagonal room is now well and truly christened. In the day we had Magrida’s 9th birthday party and had a pretty ruthelss game of musical chairs, which was great fun. In the evening the amazing  Anna (one of our wonderful young people staying on the property) organised a music evening. She and her partner set the room up with cushions, couches and candles and created the best vibe and invited in some of the local musicans to perform, including a small choir. I’d say about 70 people came, from babies to grandparents, and a bunch of aboriginal people too. It was a pretty magical night. And everyone really helped out with all the work so it wasn’t too stressful at all.

turning 60 (odd part)

I am conscious of how our odd community has had a penchant for decamping to odd parts of the world inspired by odd visions and dreams. Whilst this odd behaviour has brought about some interesting and broadening outcomes it has challenged our ability to frequently meet as odd bods. So it was with some happiness that many odd bods were able to get together. There was also some sadness around the reality that its almost impossible to achieve 100% geographical proximate oddity in no small part because of the living out of odd visions or hallucinations in odd places on the globe.

However it was amazing how good it was to have all these odd folk together to play for nearly a week together. So whilst for me it wasn’t a birthday celebration as such it was wonderful to stuff around, oddly knowing that because I was momentously turning 60 people applied extra effort to the proceedings. So thank you all and one. It was one of the very very excellent weeks of my life. As a result I am planning to turn 60 again next year to see if we can come up with another odd ball scheme of fun. Or maybe someone else can turn something odd.

Month of Music

Well, it feels as though the past month has been totally filled with music for us. It started with the big wedding at our place which was a very musical event becasue most of the bride’s family are musos. Then Keith and I went to see Paul Kelly for part of his A-Z concerts he is touring the country with. He sings all his songs in alpahabetical order. We caught F-L. We kept encoring for M but he kept that for the next night. Paul is one of those great musos (like Neil Murray) who regularly come to Alice. Then there was Byron Bay Blues and Roots. I won’t say a lot about that as others already have and, to be honest, it didn’t all really come together that well for me. At music festivals there are too many decisions (when to go in, who to see, whether to stand or sit, whether to hang with others or go it alone) and I felt I kept making the wrong ones. Any way, there were some special moments - Gurrumul, Buffy St Marie, Kate Miller Heidke, Elvis Costello. But probably the most fun I had was dancing with Jem, Gem and Gassan to Raul someone-or-other,  a latin singer who was described as a combination of Roy Orbison and Los Lobos. Unfortunately for me, Bob Dylan’s performance was a non event as I was too far back and the bugger wouldn’t allow the screens to be used and he didn’t sound that good an you probably had to be a die hard fan really. After Byron we went to Sydney for a couple of days and saw Eric Bibb in the Blackheath Community Hall with Jem and Gem. That was a special night. There was this big hall, like any church hall, packed with tables and chairs. It was BYO food and drink – a  night of nibbles extrordinaire! The things the people at our table brought put our nibbles to shame. And Eric was amazing. He has such a wonderful spirit! It was the best vibe. And it was so comfortable to be able to sit and eat and drink and listen to music and be able to see the performer… unlike Byron where you had to choose which of these options you would go for. And then this week was the grand finale! We saw the Soweto Gospel choir here in Alice performing with Asante Sana, our local African style choir, and the choirs from 2 aboriginal commuunities. It was all wonderful. The vibrancy, colour and energy of the Soweto choir was something you just can’t describe. But the most moving part was when, at the end, all the choirs came together on stage to sing 2 songs together. I cried. There were all these shy community aborignal women up there with these totally out there Africans amongst the other choir filled with many people I know, and there was so much joy in it all. One older aborigianl woman on a stick was in the centre of it all and couldn’t stop beaming. It was such healing to my spirit after coming back to a hectic week and having a cold. Another nice little thing was that Keith is normally in Asante Sana but because of all the work he had to do for the wedding and going to Byron, he could not make the practices so he missed out this year. I was worried it would be a bit sad for him not being on stage witht he choir. Any way, we wound up sitting in the third row, right next to Ted Eagan, who normally stood beside Keith singing in the choir in the tenors. Ted told Keith he had missed out too because he had been away performing in various music festivals, as he still does (although not in Byron). Any way, Ted and Keith both knew the last couple of songs form previous years and could sing along together withthe choirs and feel part of it. It was kind of nice. But the main message is to all of you in Sydney – make sure you see this choir!! They are amazing! They dance as much as sing… and they do it with so much energy and passion and dignity and joy. Jane, Hannah would love it!!!