Sunday, October 01, 2006
Hunter Gatherer
An amazing day yesterday in Kakadu. We checked into this giant, crocodile-shaped hotel, where we moved our stuff to the lower right abdomenen room, next to the small intestine pool.The day was to be spent with the Animal Tracks tour, featuring a bush aboriginal guide. A dozen of us: Kiwis, Yanks and Aussies, piled into the back of a 4x4 van and headed off into the bush. Our first stop was to pick up Patsy, our guide for the day.
Patsy's house was a compound with various industrial scraps scattered amongst dozens of water buffalo skulls. Nothing says welcome more than rotting buffalo head. This certainly gave the group pause, just before Sean, our driver, pulled out three magpie geese with shotgun pellets through their breast. Our dinner later in the night.
The next few hours were spent driving around the never-never helping Patsy find bush food. Although, 'helping' might be a stretch, given that we were a bunch of over-heated, white-skinned, city-dwellers who had little idea what they were doing in the bush. We dug under tree roots for water chestnuts, picked trees for grub-containing fruits, harvested green ants and leaves for some flavoring, poked around bogs for eating turtle as an appetizer. Thankfully, no turtles were found, much to Peggy's relief.
In between each gathering spot, Patsy would tell stories on the van radio. Rambling and hard to follow, but full of laughter and vivid description, she would go on about different aspects of life in the bush and her surrounding family. When we were stopped at a break spot, Patsy mixed up some crushed termite mound and water, passing the cup around for us to drink. Tasted like dirt, but was supposedly a good anti-diarrhea bush medicine. She then started showing us her fighting sticks and spears, some used for clubbing animals, some for clubbing human. Patsy had almost applied the beat down to one of her sisters for dissing her Auntie when she was sick and dying. Patsy was a keeper of the old laws that one must respect their elders, and was willing to kill her lazy-ass sister to make her point.
But apparently, Patsy's dad was even more of a bad-ass. He once beat this guy's brains out with his whoopin' stick and took down a buffalo by jumping on its' back and slicing it' rear tendons. After these stories of unchecked tribal justice and violence, the group was a bit uneasy. My question to Patsy about whether there was a aboriginal fighting style was met with a hard stare and uneasy silence. I half expected her to kill the entire group right there.
Yet, goodness prevailed and it was tme for tucker. We were taken out to this peninsula at the edge of the wetlands just before sunset. There must have been a million mapie geese in these wetlands, all honking and hollering to one another. We prepared a fire and threw the geese we plucked and feathered onto the hot stones. Combined with some freshly-baked bread and water chestnuts, it made for a very unique meal. As we were messily gnawing away at the somewhat gamey but certainly fresh geese, the other million of its' bretheren took flight overhead at sundown. The sight and sound of this was amazing.
Today were going on a crokkie and bird river tour before heading back to Darwin, about two hours drive.
posted by ncawthon at 11:02 AM
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