100 days, 50 posts, 6000 views and a whole lot of fun! Plus the adventures of this weekend :)

The weather in Balgo has seriously been jumper, scarf, thermals, beanie, gloves and super humongous and warm jacket worthy. It’s ridiculous! Sure, the dry season is meant to be cold, but paired with the large amount of rain we’ve had recently and the chilly wind, it’s almost impossible to go outside without about fifty layers of clothing on. However I am much happier since my care parcel from home arrived yesterday, filled with my scarves that I didn’t think were necessary to back seeing as I was living in the desert and more importantly, a pair of uggboots. Winter will be so much easier with these items! Oh, and plus with a year’s worth of decent coffee, I’m set to stay warm and cozy over the next few months.

Because the weather is so frigid, the camping part of Pentecost was cancelled seeing as no-one was really too keen on staying out by the freezing lake for the entire night. So instead, we all headed down past Mulan to Lake Gregory mid afternoon with the bus and about a hundred troupies in tow. Seeing as we’re on Balgo time, the plan was to leave the Parish House at 3pm, but didn’t end up leaving till about 3.30pm. It took a long time to cram everyone into all the vehicles and then we had to drive around Balgo chasing everyone down, with Cathy directing us all with her Kukatja/English dialogue that I could only ever understand a few words of but still managed to get the general gist of what she was saying. I love Cathy. She only has one volume; incredibly loud, but always manages to get the kids in line and we all have a great respect for her at school. She is so wise and willing to share all her knowledge with everyone else.

The bumpy Mulan road was, as always, a complete and utter nightmare. Sophie and I sat in the front bouncing with every foot of the road we travelled over and wishing we were there already. The only problem was that when we got to Mulan, we still had to drive to Handover, another 20 minutes up the road and this proved to be the tricky part. It was as if the road had never been graded so we had a few tense moments when it seemed as if the bus, which is far from 4WD would be stuck either in the soft sand or falling to pieces along the corrugation. However we hailed our bus driver and to Jim’s full credit, he got us through.

Handover is a special site to the Aboriginal people. It was one of the first pieces of land to be given back to the people in this area and as I discovered from the information there today, former Premier Dr. Geoff Gallop was a part of a special ceremony which involved sprinkling the sand of the site into the elders hands to symbolize the land changing hands. From what I read and from what the elders of Balgo have told me, it is incredibly meaningful. The local people call it Paraku.

Just some of Handover

The lake in the distance. It was full of black swans which all the non-Perth people were amazed by!

Setting up for mass in the afternoon light

The lake was incredibly full and seemed like an inland ocean, fuelled by the vastness of the water and the difficulty we had in seeing the horizon. I half expected to see ocean liners streaming past! As soon as we arrived, the kids all jumped out and ran to the water’s edge attempting to find all sorts of bush food and animals and we followed them moved by the beauty and serenity of the scenery. The afternoon light was stunning and with the sun setting over the lake, the whole ocean feel was increased. The kids gathered a lot of small bush onion like tucker that they said could be eaten raw or cooked and then ran off to collect firewood for our much needed bonfire and the smaller fires that proved to be essential in keeping us warm during mass.

Callum

Sina

Running to the water

Delina

Our Pentecost gathering

Corryanne

Issor

Mass was a beautiful ceremony, occurring just as the sun was setting over the lake and the air got cooler. Sophie and I scored chairs from Gerry (thanks Gerry) and sat back and enjoyed the proceedings while trying our best to stay warm. Every now and again the breeze would pick up the hot air from the fire and blow it in our direction, however when it just blew at us it was like an arctic wind splicing with ferocity through our long sleeve shirts, pants, shoes, beanies, scarves and jackets. Absolutely freezing! After communion we managed to have a few kids come and sit on us but I didn’t get much warmer and we ended up bailing and standing around the fire thawing out our extremities.

Mass

The girls and boys last night had a competition who could make the biggest fire. Not too sure who won but it was so funny watching them!

Jenny, Sophie and Shoneille

Dancing around the fire after mass

The Fire Dancing by the Church Leaders

Me and Sophie with our cool as headbands made by the Church leaders

Eva told us the story of Father John’s Cassock, made especially for Pentecost and absolutely beautiful. The people are so theologically strong minded and I love the Sharing part of mass where anyone is welcome to get up and say something. Susan, Lily’s mother really touched my heart by saying that no matter what Church we are from, our faith still brings us together. It was really lovely and well said.

Sophie took last nights mass under the stars to ask Father John if she could complete her First Holy Communion and Reconciliation. Being Father John, the priest who is never inclined to say no, her wish was granted and she completed both sacraments in a beautiful setting, presented by Jim and Jenny. It was a lovely experience for her and one she is glad to have completed in such serenity.   

After mass everyone rushed over to the fire pit where Jim, Michael and Gerry were cooking sausages and Jenny was handing out bread. It was difficult to resist the sweet meat smell and I stuck to my celery, carrots and bread having just given up red meat indefinitely. Henry used this as his opportunity to not only bully me into getting him another sausage but bring up the events of the other night when I instinctively, to annoy him, grabbed a piece of sausage off his plate that he had just cooked and put it in my mouth ready to chew before remembering a sausage was meat and spitting it out into the bin. Awkward! He has since gone on to remind me that my vegetarian stint of sorts only lasted three days and is looking forward to when I forget meat is meat again. I’m more afraid of the mystery bits of whatever I’m going to find in my food from now on courtesy of Mr. Jones!

Tegan, one of the Primary C students recently obtained a small black puppy and brought it along all the way from Balgo. It proved to be a novelty amongst all the children and I have no idea how it remained so placid been passed from one kid to the other with little care about the welfare of the tiny being. However, the weirdest thing that Henry pointed out was the fact that other larger dogs were there and we all wondered how they got all the way from Balgo. The dogs, however annoying or savage they may appear at times always make me laugh. Like tonight when we dropped Helicopter home. As soon as his got out of the car, about ten of his dogs just jumped up and ran around him, happy to have their master home. They are so loyal and it’s lovely how much the locals value them.

After the long drive back to Mulan we all treated ourselves at home with the best form of winter comfort food ever; 5 minute mud cake and custard. Seriously, the recipe is foolproof; if I can complete it anyone can! Just Google the recipe for a quick and easy treat. It was a great end to a lovely night and a good way to enjoy a Saturday; pig out on the sofa!

Angel, the Boystown dog that has adopted us slept over the past few nights. On Friday I forgot that Ale had let her in and was turning all the lights off in the house just before bed when I saw this massive black figure snoring on the couch! I freaked out and swear my heart missed about ten beats before realizing it was the ever placid Angel. She’s great to have around but annoyed me last night when I was doing the dishes, walked out of the kitchen for two minutes and came back in to find rice scattered all over the kitchen floor. Turned out she had gotten into the bin to try and find something more substantial than the Smackos Henry gives her to eat. Naughty puppy!

That used to be MY chair!

I spent a bit of the weekend helping Mindy decorate the Primary B classroom. He gave me a job to do, thinking that I was arty-farty and all that jazz but obviously he doesn’t know me too well. Anyway I had to make a numeracy tree from A4 bits of card an build it up to cover a substantial part of the wall. Despite failing Year 6 art I think I did a pretty good job, but I’ll leave it up to you all to judge. My favourite part is the owl in the hollow of the tree although I cheated and printed that out. But the rest I drew, leaves, trunk, branches and all!

I'm practically Leonardo da Vinci, except not a guy and minus all the weird bits about him

I just went and played basketball with Kiesha, Lily and Sherie but had to dress like an eskimo to play! Seriously, there were uggboots, jumpers, trackpants and scarves needed just to step outside. Absolutley crazy! And then Lily saw a shiny piece of hair on the basketball court and assumed it was mine because it was red. She's probably true. I said she could keep it but she said it wouldn't go into her head and attempted to place it on mine. Ah, funny times.

 

Today is the 50^th Blog post and the 100^th day I’ve been in Balgo. The epic-ness of this day is increased further by the fact that I have also had over 6000 views. It’s all very exciting! Thank you to everyone for constantly reading my blog and sharing in the adventures of Luurnpa and Balgo; it’s very much appreciated.