Saturday 27th February
Planetera aboriginal workshop-Tully
Bus broke down
Cairns
Croc burger
Distance:
Total Distance:
Alarm set for 3:50am. Woken at 3:30am. Out by 4:10am. Bus slightly late, on at 4:30am. Get to train station. Check in luggage. Train late by 20 minutes. Bus driver takes us all to the local bakery.
He may have done this to spend more time chatting up to young Germans. And to give them a history lesson about their own country. And a geography lesson. And tell them all about what he wanted to do when he finally got to go to Germany-first up was going to Concentration Camps...interesting guy...
The train was cool. Like a plane but with leg room. TV, movies, music, tea and coffee, air con, great views. Well, mostly air con. Once we got far enough north, about 4 hours in, it was getting too hot outside. Components were starting to fail. There was a limit put on speed- making us increasingly late. The air con failed. Noooo!!!
Finally we got to roasting hot Tully. 37C.
We were here due to a charity that G adventures, our tour company, is in partnership with. They run community projects for local people's wherever they take tours. These give an opportunity for traveller to see more of local life, culture, history, and people. They also offer employment and finance to those who would otherwise be struggling. This is the case for many of the Australian Aboriginal. Not through lack of experience, understanding, or training, it can be made impossible for them to get any jobs. Australia does have something of a racist shadow to its international reputation. This is that shadow brought into the light.
That's the purpose of the cafe at Tully train station. To give local people a chance to run a business for themselves. Have a job and make it a success. They provided a lunch of sandwiches, fruit and cake, with juice, tea, and coffee. Then it was time for our lesson in history and art.
We learnt the story of how fire was brought to earth.
(I'm presently on a bus so I'll try fill you in on exact species another time.)
A giant snake held all of the fire. He was asked by a small black and white bird for some fire. He refused.
The small bird asked each of the birds which had fire-red in their plumage .
First the casawery (I can't spell) and the bush turkey went to get fire. They failed.
Then the red tailed black cockatoo and red shouldered black bird went. They failed.
The King Parrot was then asked. He has a red body and green wings.
He asked a white bird to help, covering him in ash so white would become a black-blue colour (without fire where did they get the ash from? I wasn't enough of a pedant to ask) and made him practice flying techniques like swooping.
The darkened bird crept in and managed to steal a hot coal. As it flew away the snake was enraged. He lashed out, splitting a local hill into two, and embedding one fang in a local river.
The bird, however, wasn't good enough at frying so as not to hit a few trees as he fled. Each of the trees that he hit became the sort of wood that is used in fire making equipment.
Each of us was given a boomerang. We did our best to paint in aboriginal style the story, as the natives did to remember their traditions in place of having a written language.
Here's my effort!
And Sid 2
I'd love to tell you that afterwards we just went into Cairns, had dinner and went to bed. But that would be boring.
We left on a minibus, waving goodbye to our hosts. It shouldn't have taken too long to get to Cairns.
Suddenly the bus slowed and came to a stop. We parked up by a beaten up old Holden car with peeling paint and an ominous look, between a field of sugar cane and a creek. As we did so two motocross bikes and an old ute crash off the road and down along an informal track at the edge of the field.
The radiator was broken, th engine over heated. Another vehicle would be coming to pick us up. Just a little while, wait it out.
We had a little explore. The disregarded look of the abandoned car increased as we found three bullet holes in the rear drivers side door. There was insurance paperwork on the drivers seat. Windows were cracked, but not broken. Someone was stupid enough to try a door. It was open. "Who want to check the boot for a dead body?"
Let's have a look at the sugar cane instead.
We'd been driving and taking trains past sugar cane fields since the day after Sydeny. Imagine how your lawn grass looks to an ant. That's what sugar cane looks like. The central stem in about the thickness of a broom handle. When ripe it can be snapped and the core is a fibrous sweet stick. I tried this 10 years ago when I was in Tanzania (10 years, where does the time go?!)
All this sugar cane is why Aussies eat Vegemite instead of Marmite. Marmite is made from the yeast filtered out during the making of beer. Whereas Vegemite is made from a mold that comes off the sugar canes. Weird Aussie ways.
New bus, trip to Cairns, out to hostel, slight mix up with out dinners but I got it eventually.
Crocodile meat!!!
It was a croc burger. Really nice. Flaky texture of fish but tasted like sweetened chicken. Couldn't eat a lot of it, but lovely as a burger.
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