9.11.08
“I’m an adventurer, I’m an adventurer”... when things get a little tough or start to freak me out, I repeat these words to myself over and over... “I’m an adventurer”... just to remind myself that I really want to experience new things. To remind myself that, no matter how rough or gross or god-damn scary, I’ll feel more alive at the other end. Once it’s all over and I’m in my air-conditioned room, lighting scented candles and lying on my Sealy Posturepedic, I’ll feel like I’ve really lived. Take the past week and a bit for example...
First there was the Goanna hunt with an old local lady. She took us out walking through the desert scrub from 9am until 2.30pm. It was hot, I was burning faster than a pommie tourist, tripping on spiky tufts of Spinifex and constantly shooing flies out of my mouth. But I saw an 80 year old Aboriginal woman dig into a mound of dust and find gooey honey from the honey ants. I watched her knock down a nut from a dead old tree and open it up to show the water inside. I saw her follow animal tracks and with her heavy crowbar she carried the whole way, dig into holes, hoping to scare a goanna out. We scraped sap from a tree, ready to boil and drink as “bush medicine” in case anyone got sick. It was a long trek home, in the hottest part of the day, and we were without our prized goanna, but I saw so many amazing things, it was all worth it.
Next we hit the scary part. Last weekend we packed up the troopie and some boys took us way out of the town, up steep rocky tracks, to show us the “giant’s footprint” and his den. It was the end of the day, getting dark and to add to the eerie feel of it all, a dust storm was blowing in. Standing around the large footprint in the rock, they told us, with the utmost sincerity, that this giant had lived thousands of years ago, and was killed by the tribe after it attacked a heap of the Yapa (Aboriginal) people. They took us to his den, a massive hole in the side of a hill. They showed us where people had tried to escape from the den, scratch marks from the fingernails of victims etched into the rock. As we were inspecting the horrible hole, a wall of hazy red dust was taking over the sky, like “the nothing” from my fav childhood movie “The Never Ending Story” approaching. We jumped into the troopie and sped off, at times unable to see the road ahead for all the churned up dust. Made it home just before the worst of it. Phew.
Oh yes, and what would adventure be without a little bit of a gross-out? The kangaroo tail, although a common delicacy out here, looked, and smelled quite fowl to me. It sat on our kitchen bench, covered in fur, waiting to be thrown in the fire. To cook it, they singe the hair off, and then wrap it in coals until ready. Sitting up at the kitchen table, the roo tail was served up with mash. Normal enough, I convinced myself it was lamb shanks and removed the meat from the bone. It tasted delicious. I enjoyed it immensely until I choked on a bit of fur. Mmm, don’t know if I could do it again, but at least I tried. Such an adventurer.
