IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE TJAWA TJAWA WOMEN It was the third day of September and we were heading south… down into the Great Sandy Desert…. It was two days later than we had intended but now that we were on the road time didn’t matter anymore. Eight vehicles, 38 people and a coupla-tons of filming equipment…. All committed to travelling the Dreaming Track forged by the Tjawa Tjawa Women Ancestors. This is a PAKAM led adventure: the Pilbara and Kimberley Aboriginal Media. Three times in the past five years PAKAM crew have joined us on our Dreaming Track Trips. This time we were joining them on their trip. This trip (funded by Screen Australia) is all about PAKAM documenting and recording a Dreaming Track (Song Line) that is under threat of being “lost”. The Tjawa Tjawa Dreaming is challenged because there are only now only two people who remember the stories and songs for the area south of Balgo Aboriginal Community: Kapululangu’s own Payi Payi (Bai Bai) Sunfly, and her younger brother Mark Moora. The Tjawa Tjawa women started their travels near Roebourne, Western Australia … and then came through our Country, before returning to their starting place… but that part of the journey in someone else’s Country and so it’s their story to tell. We’re heading straight for the site known as Tjawa Tjawa, otherwise called Point Moody by the once-present mining companies, and later pronounced “Payi Mauti” by the local Kukatja-speakers. There’s 108-plus tali (sand-dunes) to drive over … or through… before we get to our first destination where we’ll set up camp for the night. We’d originally wanted to get to Payi Mauti but it’s about 200 kilometres south of Balgo… and on this dirt track it’ll take a full day to get there … time that we no longer have given that our “early morning departure” didn’t start until 1.30 in the afternoon. The trees are encroaching on the track…. tearing at the sides of my Troopie… slapping themselves in through the open window (no airconditioner in this car). My travelling mate Claire Simpson – Marlpa (Companion, volunteer) extraordinaire – sits in the passenger seat involuntarily ducking to dodge the on-rushing branches. We laugh about our early start. “Where are we going to stop for the night?” she wonders. I answer, “Yakka Yakka. There’s nowhere else to stop on this road once you’ve started. No room among the sand-dunes for stopping or camping until we get to the outstation.” And I tell her the story of how Yakka Yakka was set up in 1991 as a haven for some of Balgo’s Kukatja/Ngardi people: Yakka Yakka translates as “Quiet Quiet” … a peaceful place. Yakka Yakka stopped operating in 2004, long after the government had abandoned the people there. It’s now a ghost-“town”. Just one of many abandoned “settlements” that, built during the height of the Aboriginal Land-Rights Era to enable people to live in their ancestral Countries, have long been abandoned … if indeed people had ever had the acquired resources (eg vehicles) necessary to enable to to move and live there at all. In comparison, Yakka Yakka had flourished for some time… with its own Store (shop), school and clinic. I’d joined in the ceremonial dancing for the opening of the Store back in 1999 – my first year of living permanently in Balgo (after my first sojourn there in 1992-93). In the desert one doesn’t gauge distance travelled in mileage, but rather in hours. It took us three hours of slow driving in sand through spectacular sand-dunes to travel the 70km to Yakka Yakka. We arrived there just in time to set up camp for the night before the sun dropped and the stars spread themselves boisterously across the dark dome overhead. We spread out our swags (bedding) and laid down to savour the cool night air. (Stay tuned for more exciting adventures on our Trek. For those who wanted to follow us while we were out in the desert… well, there’s no internet connection out there… in the deep red desert…so now that I’m back home in Balgo I’ll tell you what happened. ) Maybe you’d like to come on our next Dreaming Track Trek in April 2015. More info on our website at kapululanguculturecamps
Posted on: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 14:01:34 +0000
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