Kijana (12 page)

The day we arrived at Nhulunbuy was miserable. Rain drenched us and
Kijana
was leaning heavily to starboard, fighting hard against the wind to sail around the Gove Peninsula and anchor in the safety of Melville Bay.

We arrived in Nhulunbuy early the following morning. It was the only township on the Gove Peninsula, with a population of 4000 people. Despite its remoteness, it had a supermarket, post office, video store and facilities you'd expect in a larger centre. Its relative prosperity came from mining. In the early 1970s the mining and processing of a 250-million tonne bauxite deposit began in the area, despite staunch opposition from the local Yolngu landowners. Their concerns were relayed to the Commonwealth Government via the now famous ‘Bark Petition'. But they were no match for mining royalties, and the Yolngu case was lost.

I was nervous about what we were doing there. We wanted to spend some time with the local Aborigines, to experience something of their lives. But it couldn't be a token thing. I couldn't just rock up to a family and say: ‘Yeah, me and my friends are from Melbourne. We're on a huge expensive yacht anchored out there, sailing around the world with thousands of school kids following our adventures. We want to hang out, you know, get off the beaten track with you guys. Be seen to be multicultural and all that. Maybe you could show us some kangaroos and stuff. We'll take some pictures and put 'em up on the web. Maybe I'll buy a painted boomerang ...'

That wouldn't work – for the locals or me. They needed to respect us and we needed to show respect for them. I didn't want to do the usual tourist thing. I really wanted to get an understanding of their lives, how they lived and, possibly, the issues they faced. We really needed to go bush and live off the land with them. I was particularly determined to see what it would be like to survive only on what we caught.

The office had made a few enquiries on our behalf, so by the time we arrived in Nhulunbuy, I had the name and phone number of a bloke called Noel in my pocket. I gave him a call and we met in town. He was a white Australian who ran tourist and fishing tours out of Nhulunbuy, but he had a close Aboriginal friend who he thought might accommodate our request to do something ‘different'. Her name was Gayili and she lived on the edge of town. He gave me directions to Gayili's settlement, and told me he'd let her know to expect me.

The next day I hitched a ride in the back of a ute to the Aboriginal community, which was basically a cleared area along a beach, with dwellings haphazardly placed in odd locations. About 150 metres along the beach a huge pipeline jutted 100 metres out into the sea, with a service road built upon it. Apparently it sucked cold seawater to the mine and shot out the used hot water back into the bay. Children ran along the beach towards me as I headed to the closest shack, keeping a safe distance from the sick-looking dog that stood in my path. An elderly woman sat outside the shack, oblivious to my presence.

‘Hi there,' I said nervously, hoping she would understand me, ‘I'm looking for Gayili.' A loud stream of aggressive language erupted from the old lady, scaring the hell out of me. Thankfully, her abuse was intended for a man sitting beside a tree, who I didn't see until he responded with a similar onslaught. The lady then pointed to the next shack along the beach. I nodded in thanks and continued walking.

As I got closer to the next hut, I noticed a little girl sitting out the front fiddling with colouring pencils. She looked at me for a second, before looking back at her pencils. I asked if Gayili was there. Without saying a word, she went inside, then came back out. A minute later a heavy-set woman aged in her 40s stepped from the house, shielding her eyes as she squinted at the brilliant sun. She had strong Yolngu features and glistening dark skin. I immediately realised I'd woken her from a siesta, which, I figured, was not the best start to a relationship.

‘Hi, um, Noel told me your name because I'm looking for some help,' I said, becoming very conscious of what I was saying.

She said very little and was extremely vague, but she did acknowledge that Noel had mentioned me to her. I went into detail about Kijana, and what we were doing. All the time she appeared to be totally uninterested in what I was saying. I told her how we wanted to include her culture in our adventure, that we wanted to live off the land with her and her family so we could tell others what life in these remote communities was like. I couldn't help feeling she regarded me as just another tourist chasing some novel experience before heading back to suburbia. I probably would have if I were in her sandals.

She told me to come back in two days, with no indication if that meant yes or no to my request.

Back at
Kijana
I told the others we had no choice but to wait while, I presumed, Gayili was getting tribal approval. While we waited we all kept out of each other's way as much as we could, with Beau and Josh heading into town a few times, everyone calling home and Mika writing an update for the web.

At the appointed time, Josh and I returned to the settlement. Gayili was her same old understated self as she told us she would grant our request. She then, in her firm but friendly manner, told us what we would do. She wanted us to collect her and her family the following morning, then we would sail to the opposite side of Melville Bay for a week of camping.

‘No problems,' we said. ‘How many people will there be?'

She said she didn't know, but come the morning whoever didn't make it on the boat wouldn't be coming. I'd liked her way of thinking, but it didn't necessarily instil any confidence in me.

We organised to head back to town with Angela, a young girl in her early teens, and bought supplies for the camping trip.

We came back with flour, tea, noodles and salt and sugar. I tried my best to reassure Gayili that we'd like to attempt to live off the land, to make it a challenge and an experience as close to how her ancestors had lived as was possible. The food would be for the children, she explained. Then we headed off back to the boat to tell the others.

The following morning we brought
Kijana
around and anchored off the beach in front of the settlement. Josh and I took the dinghy to pick up Gayili and her family. Under a tree lay a heap of camping gear, while all around us energetic little dark bodies bounced about watching us move their gear. It was unclear who was actually coming with us, so we began loading children and equipment into the dinghy. Gayili, who was sitting under a tree, would occasionally yell: ‘Not that one, she's staying here.' It was very confusing.

‘Are you meant to be coming?' I asked one little girl who had perched herself in the very front of the dinghy. Her beautiful eyes stared straight back at me with no hint of reply. I looked around at the other children who appeared to be slightly older.

‘Is she coming?' I asked. This appeared to be the funniest thing they'd ever heard, and they fell about squealing. The laughter eventually died down, so I searched for a response from anyone. The oldest looking boy, who's name I later learnt was Cedric, gave me what appeared to be half a nod before fixing his eyes on the sand. I took that as a yes.

‘I'll see you back here for the second load,' I said to Josh as I helped him push the dinghy, which was loaded to capacity, towards the water.

Four trips later and everybody was aboard
Kijana
– two adults, four teenagers, four children and a dog named Cindy who was the only one to get seasick, spewing litres of liquid across the deck.

Once we were underway the introductions began. Due to the language barrier, the introductions between our ten guests and the crew were long and complex. We were shocked to discover that none of the eight children with us belonged to Gayili. As we began to understand the complex structure of Yolngu culture, this became clearer. In this tribe, as soon as a child was born it was given over to its ‘aunty'. It never again lived with its blood mother. But there was a more practical reason for this in Gayili's case. The influences of mining and an abundance of money had corrupted many of the local Aborigines, leading her two adult sons and most of their friends to become alcoholics and drug users. This left Gayili with the responsibility of raising her many grandchildren and plenty of others.

The three youngest girls were gorgeous. Keesha was still a baby, at only two years of age, and the other two, who were not much older, played with her endlessly. Salomi was the next oldest, at nine. She constantly hung around Angela, who she obviously looked up to. Angela, at 14, was old enough to act as a mother for the younger girls. Cedric was also about 14, but displayed none of the maturity of Angela. Instead, he leapt about with the enthusiasm and cheekiness of a teenager.

Ian and David were the eldest boys. They were closer to our age, yet were perhaps the most distant. They didn't get involved in the games we played with the younger ones, preferring to go off on their own.

The final introduction was to Banduwa, Gayili's husband. He appeared to be aged in his forties and wore a navy blue singlet the entire time we were with him. We found him a difficult person to get to know. When he spoke (which was rarely) it was a slow and steady process. A sentence would be left incomplete and I often assumed he'd given up trying to find the English word to answer my question. What felt like two minutes later a random mumbling would finish off the communication. I was left to desperately search my memory to fit the comment into our previous conversation.

We raised
Kijana
's sails and headed to a point of land on the opposite side of Melville Bay. After about an hour we anchored off a sand spit leading from the mouth of a nearby river. By the time we'd unloaded all the equipment onto the beach, David, Ian and Cedric had returned from the mangroves with a bounty of mud crabs. There were about half a dozen of them, and they were huge, about 25 centimetres across the carapace. The boys dumped them on the beach, where they began wandering around. Their claws had been broken off so the younger children wouldn't get bitten.

The high-tide mark was about 100 metres up the beach, so we carried everything to the top of the beach and began to set up camp under a weeping tree.

By the time our tipi was set up, it was late afternoon. Gayili sat under the tree with the children and started a fire. Banduwa sat away from the group, chiselling a tree branch he'd found, slowly shaping what appeared to be a didgeridoo – or yakala, as he later told us.

The sky was turning a beautiful orange colour, similar to the colour of the crabs sitting in a big pot of water. Gayili's eyes alternated between watching our every movement and monitoring the progress of the crabs. There was no doubt she was not only the mother figure, but also the boss. She also spoke English very well and was forthcoming enough to initiate conversation.

‘OK, they're ready,' Gayili suddenly announced as she leant over the fire to pluck out a crab by the leg. We each took a branch from what appeared to be a pine tree, placed it on the sand and used it as a plate for the crab. The crab was split down the middle and the meat around the legs was torn off. The taste was unbelievably good. I looked over to Josh, who nodded in agreement. Mika and Nicolette were up to their elbows in sticky crab juice, wiping splashes from their cheeks with their forearms.

I looked to Gayili, who had a leg sticking out of her mouth.

‘So this is traditional land?' I asked.

‘Yo,' she said, pulling another leg out. ‘Where we are sitting right now, under this tree, is all my people's land.'

‘And Josh said this is the first time you have brought whities here.'

‘Yo, this is the first time us Yolngu have camped here with Balanda.'

Balanda, we had learnt, was the word for white person.

I nodded to David and Ian, who were sitting next to each other, then directed my question to Gayili.

‘Can the guys show us how to catch crabs tomorrow?'

She smiled and said yes. Then, one by one, we headed off for bed, exhausted but very happy at how the day had turned out.

I woke next morning before the others. My stomach was a bit sore, having eaten nothing the previous day except for the rich crab meat. I wandered over to the fire where Gayili was sitting in the same position as the day before, stirring a pot of tea over the fire.

Not long after, Mika and Nicolette emerged from the tent together, closely followed by Josh, who walked towards Gayili and me. The girls, however, veered off in another direction. He sat down and looked at me.

‘They're going to the boat for breakfast!' he said.

I was astonished. ‘Really?' I said

He gave me one of his looks and I responded by shaking my head. We didn't want to say too much in front of Gayili. I was furious. It had only been one night, for God's sake. Did they even want to be on an adventure or not? I thought the intention was to only live on what we caught or harvested.

Beau, Josh and I decided to continue with our agreement to stick with that promise.

Beau walked over, clearing the sleep from his eyes.

‘Where are they going?' he asked.

‘Breakfast,' I spat out. ‘Let's go and catch some crabs.'

Josh, Beau, David, Ian and I set off with the drag net and three spears. We walked to the river that led to the sea a short distance from our camp. Mangroves lined either side of the river and the water was shallow enough that we could easily cross to the other side. Sitting in pockets of mud were big fat mud crabs. Spotting them among the mangrove roots was tricky, but if a crab was in the mud it was easy. It would dig its body into the mud and stick its claws into the air, threatening to grab any fingers that came its way. One snap of a claw and a finger would be turned to pulp. Not that it was a concern for Ian. He'd slam his spear through the body of the crab, hauling it into the air in victory.

If, however, the crab was in clear water it could move a lot faster and the spear throw had to be more precise. My first attempt at spearing a crab ended in failure. As I threw the spear, my hand knocked a mangrove, sending the spear off-course. By the second try I had the hang of things.