Blog

By the time I reached Alice Springs, stop #4 I knew I was trying to schlep too much stuff.  My carry on was at the max weight (and they actually weigh them) which is 7 kg.  In order to keep it under 7 my checked bag was over weight by 3 kg. So far I have had nice check--in folks who have let me by but I am tired of hauling this stuff.  So I mailed a box home.  Had to make some difficult choices. All books had to go except kindle.  So I don't have Made the way by walking.  I'm going to try and get it on my kindle when I have good wifi to download.  Somehow I took out 6kg and it was still over weight and I have bought nothing.

In Uluru I learned how the people live off the land.  They use all the parts of most plants for food, medicine, plates, roofing material, tea, etc.  There is one plant they have found to be totally useless.  They call it Mala mala which means pretty but useless.  That is the same word they use for white people.  And when they say white people they mean everyone who is not one of them. They say they could put one of us in the outback alone and we would die quickly from dehydration, deadly animals, starvation, exposure.  But they can leave young children alone and they survive.  The aboriginal people respect the land and teach that to their kids.  They know about the animals, where to find water, what is edible.  They learn how to survive with their environment.  They know it means life so they take care of it.

Darwin has six men for every woman.  That sounded promising at first. However, most of the men are 18-32 and there is more beer consumed in the city per capita than anywhere else in Australia.

Darwin was devasted by a cyclone in the 1950's.  They learned from that and changed the way they build and where.

Darwin Bay is lovely but can't swim in it.  The water is full of salt water crocodiles and box jelly fish.  Have to settle for the hotel pool.

Everyone walks around with a mobile (cell phone) in use constantly and yet decent wifi is difficult to find and expensive.

The general population seems to have much more knowledge about the aboriginals and their history with the Europeans than the average American has regarding the native Americans.

First direct response to my question, "What makes a site sacred?" A place is sacred if it was part of the creating ancestor's journey.  It is also sacred if the spirits of ancestors rest there.

Those are my odds and ends for today.  The next two days are travel and then I am on an island with very limited internet.  May be a while before you hear from me again. Don't worry, life is great.

Share