Walkabout

I remember standing where I had been told to in the note. A tiny brightly coloured hold-all at my feet, thorn-proof socks and boots with steel caps called Blunnies, a bright yellow gauze skirt and a James Dean t-shirt, thinking “how did I get here and where on earth am I going?”

A voice behind me said “You Chloe?” I turned round to see a young woman, certainly not Aboriginal, at the driving wheel of a small bus. “Hop in” she said and off we drove. After about 5 minutes, we stopped and four more people got in. Not an Aboriginal in sight. I completely disappeared into myself, confused and struck dumb. We drove for hours out into the desert. I tried meditating but it didn’t seem to work. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said “my name is Bob, what’s yours?” We chatted. It was all too normal after the extraordinary events of the past few weeks. I blurted something out about my father’s death in the hopes that would explain my reticence to communicate. Had I been deluding myself the whole time? Help …

Eventually we stopped, apparently in the middle of nowhere, and as I climbed out of the minibus I began to notice Aboriginals dotted about.  The driver took me to one side and said she was going to take me to an elder. There she was, camouflaged under a twiggy shelter, diminutive, wrinkled and dressed in different shades of brown so that she virtually disappeared into the desert, apart from her bright twinkly eyes. I felt huge, like a beached whale. I was abruptly, rather brusquely, pushed down in front of her and left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She just carried on smiling at me as I tried to adjust to where I was. I started to rummage in my bag and pulled out the little basket I had bought in Alice, together with the red cloth poking out of it. Inside was a beautiful crystal I had brought from home knowing that at some point I would be presenting it to someone important, lots of cleansing and dedication of the crystal had taken place. In fact the basket, cloth and crystal had been part of a daily ritual  ever since I knew I was coming to Uluru. I had given a lot of care to this ritual. Aware of that great care, with humility and reverence, I passed the basket over to her. She grabbed a corner of the cloth, the crystal spun into the air and disappeared into the wilderness. Naninja howled with laughter. Underneath her cackling I realised I was being scrutinised.  I became aware of “my self importance” being shattered and started to join in with the laughter. Here was my first lesson.

It was already twilight and, with no more ceremony, I was told to find somewhere to put my swag as that would be where I would sleep. I learned to  love my swag, a rather large sturdy sleeping bag, even though it was quite heavy and cumbersome . The sturdiness of a tent cum sleeping bag would make me feel really cocooned and safe. We must have had something to eat but I was too tired to remember. I had chosen to sleep between two fires, that much of ancient wisdom I trusted and knew was right. The only advice I was given was to keep my Blunnies and possessions inside my swag otherwise wild animals would steal them. Oh, and they did remind me of snakes and other creepy crawlies which most of the time would be invisible until too late. I was beginning to understand I would need to awaken my ability to use x-ray vision very efficiently.

I wriggled into my swag pulling the hood over my head with just my eyes and nose peeking out. It felt as if I was stuffed inside a kind of envelope where the flap didn’t quite close, but was reassuring nonetheless. Just before I closed my eyes, I prayed to the Universe, asking to be watched over.  If anything was about to attack me, through curiosity or otherwise, I also asked that I was woken up and given a chance to deal with it. Exhausted, I fell asleep.

 

 

 

Suddenly I was wide awake with a twitching nose against mine and, in a cross-eyed way, aware of two eyes staring at me. As I gasped, they jumped back. We assessed each other,  decided we weren’t a threat to each other and I   went back to sleep. The Universe had heard me!

I woke up just before sunrise, rolled up my swag, a task I eventually got quite good at. Washed with a little water I was given and, full of enthusiasm, decided to climbed up a hill to greet the sun before the flies woke up. In the middle of my ceremony, I felt two pairs of hands under my shoulders lift me off my stone and deposit me rather brusquely on the ground. “Don’t ever sit down on a stone without looking, especially one with a ledge. Remember where you are”. With that my rescuers, two Aboriginals, disappeared. Another lesson.

It didn’t take me long to realise I needed to fine tune my intuition. I wasn’t going to be rescued again and was reminded once more that I couldn’t take a no.9 bus and go home. We set off on walkabout that day and I understood that I needed to focus on every step that I took – no-one else could help me as they were doing the same. The Aboriginal women were not going to lose concentration taking care of me, taking tough love to its full meaning and beyond. We stopped at some point and Naninja pointed at some bushes to gather seeds. I bent down to gather some when I felt her literally climb into my body and pull me down fully using every muscle I had. Had I been approaching everything like a clammy handshake? I didn’t feel told off, just simply shown – this was not a place or time to faff about with self-consciousness.

Not far away, there were a couple of stones and Naninja showed me how to grind the seeds, mix in my spit to make little patties about one and half inches across. One of these was to be my breakfast and another lunch. To this day, I think they were the most satisfying thing I have ever eaten. We each carried a small amount of water. I was soon to learn that if you become thirsty you are already dehydrated and you need to drink before setting out topping up. I learned about where to dig for witchetty grubs that were full of protein, biting their heads off first so they didn’t crawl about in my body – no time to be squeamish, especially as they might be all that was available. Another important survival lesson was how to use a particular type of spider’s web to heal burns. The outside of the web was poisonous so had to be handled with care. I realised every moment was a life lesson.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After being with Naninja a few days,  the other people who had come with me on the little bus seemed to have disappeared in a mysterious way. They had almost become like ghosts that I would vaguely notice when we were in the camp. The only person I connected with when we  sometimes met at night around the fire, was a photographer for an airline magazine. He was very tall, very blond and very funny. Somehow he would bring me back to the world I had left behind, a bit like an umbilical cord so that I didn’t float away completely into the other dimensions I was experiencing.

I was learning so much going walkabout every day with the women. How we communicated was purely telepathic, which to begin with was very unnerving. Was I imagining it? Was I having a nervous breakdown hearing voices in my head? And yet I had no choice, I needed to listen in order to survive.  From the first time we rested during our walk, I realised we just sat where we were, which could be 15 to 20 feet apart, not together. I would feel a kind of tug in my head, would be drawn to focus on a certain woman, often Naninja, and would hear her telling me something. When we stopped they would plan our way by describing landmarks as part of a story. This way of journeying was familiar as I had learned this with Native Americans. I smiled when I thought that we had held on to this old tradition in England by describing pubs we would come across as we travelled. This way I started to learn the principle that wherever there was a poison, there was an antidote and the trick was to be alert enough to notice. I was to learn more about this. It reminded me of where there are nettles, there are dock leaves. However at a much deeper level it could mean life or death. I learned there was always something to eat if I looked around me with my whole body, using all my senses, and that less is more, like being sustained by the little patties. I began to appreciate that the wilderness was an amazing supermarket.

Each morning before we set off, we thanked the Universe for meeting our needs as well as having a good glug of water. Going walkabout in the bush was like going to the “supermarket” of the Universe. I found out later on that one of the ways the government in the old days had controlled the aboriginals was by forbidding them to go walkabout and as a consequence lose their independence and relationship with nature. Paradoxically this is what we have allowed to happen to ourselves in our own modern lives and Naninja was giving this natural gift back to me.

By the third day, as we set off,  Naninja thrust a smouldering log at me which I took without thinking and carried it whilst we walked.  It suddenly dawned on me that I should be burning and I wasn’t. But before that thought could take hold, I let it go from my brain, as by then I had well and truly learned I needed to concentrate on where I was going. Every morning after that I carried the fire and to this day I don’t fully understand why I didn’t burn, but I do know it was about mind over matter. The lesson was when we need to, we can do things we didn’t think we could.

 

One morning I became aware that we were walking on a different kind of earth, it had a magnetic quality to it and I could feel it pulling inside my body. When we stopped to rest, I felt a fierce tug in my head and was told to look at the back of my skirt, the bright yellow one. As I twisted it round I saw a small patch of blood, my period had unexpectedly come on and I was totally unprepared. No wonder all the women wore these dreary brownish clothes. Up until now we had been all women on walkabout and one of my lessons had been about the difference between women’s business, men’s business and business. In that lesson I hadn’t paid too much attention to the fact that men shouldn’t see menstrual blood. Now I did in a panicky way, especially with the thought of returning to camp later!

I pulled myself together, took myself off a bit further away from the other women and went down a dry river bed. I crouched down and tried to expel as much blood as possible. By the end of the day I had mastered muscle control I had never thought possible. I discovered this was normal for the tribe women. This obviously went on for several days and somehow I wished I had learned about this years before when I thought back to embarrassing moments. Carrying fire was nothing compared to this. Strangely enough the elastic on my only skirt had gone but I had a safety pin already holding it up so I rearranged my skirt so the blood was hidden as well as rubbing some earth into it so it wasn’t so bright any more. Fashion was not top of my list …

One morning we were joined by a group of young boys and their grandfather. This was a hunting trip for the boys, ranging from about five to thirteen. I understood that it was a great privilege to be included on this trip and apart from their grandmother, Naninja, I was the only other woman. I felt a bit daunted to begin with  and wasn’t at all sure what was expected of me. Once I had “got over myself”, such a recurring theme, I became aware that Naninja was keeping an eye on me as support. I was not alone! The boys wore loin cloths with red bandanas around their foreheads, had deliciously snotty noses and were full of laughter. The oldest one, although he joined in with the laughter, had a quiet dignity about him that set him slightly apart. Iligiari, their grandfather, was slight, wiry and very crinkled. His slightness in no way diminished his sense of authority or wisdom.

To begin with the boys were given the task of digging a very deep pit, most of the time with their hands, only the bigger boys using rocks and sticks. They lined  it with kindling, doing everything as a team, laughing all the time, but never faltering in their efficiency. Once  they were finished, they set off purposefully with their grandfather to hunt a kangaroo and eventually, with respect and grace, it was killed by Iligiari. I could see by their stillness and concentration that the boys absorbed every movement he made. He handed the task of preparing the kangaroo for the fire over to the boys. First of all they tied the back paws together, then the front ones, and attached the whole animal to a long pole hanging upside down.

Whilst the boys were doing this, I suddenly felt a, by now, familiar tug from Naninja and a telepathic instruction to place the fire log (yes, I had been in charge of it again) into the kindling and get the heat going. It was more a smouldering fire than a blazing one which I found a little puzzling. After a while, the boys hoisted the kangaroo over the pit to allow it to cook. I loved the way I could see women’s business and men’s business working. Our job as women was to produce the fire and I thought it finished there, so I relaxed.

After a relatively short time,  Iligiari gave the nod to the eldest boy and handed him a knife. I saw the boy hesitate and realised I was watching an initiation. The boy stepped forwards and slit the kangaroo’s belly open, pulled out some entrails which he sniffed then nodded back at his grandfather. He put the entrails to one side and immersed his face into the belly of the kangaroo. When he surfaced his face was dripping with blood. He then cupped his hands and filled them with blood. Before I could grasp what was happening,  he was standing in front of me. Naninja and Iligiari’s eyes were boring into me as it dawned on me I was expected to drink the blood in his hands. A memory of my paternal grandmother giving me a sherry glass of blood from the Sunday roast to drink as a child flooded my brain and I was able to drink – intuitively knowing this was not about hesitating or for that matter wiping my mouth.

Needless to say there was a metaphorical sigh of relief when he walked back to the kangaroo, but it wasn’t finished. He got his knife out again and was cutting something out of the kangaroo. By the shape, it appeared to be the liver. He started walking back towards me and this time, to my quiet horror, he cut a slice of the liver and in a bizarrely elegant way offered me the slice at the end of his knife, looking a bit like Dracula. If I thought his grandparents’ eyes were boring holes in me before, they now felt like spears of fire. No memory appeared this time, I just knew it was a vital part of his initiation – talk about get over yourself Chloe. Believe me, learning to eat raw witchetty grubs as my only source of food, a few days before, was a doddle compared to this.

Leaves were put on the ground and the kangaroo was carefully lifted from the fire and placed on them. I learned that the kangaroo hadn’t been cooked a lot because it would be reheated twice more and each day another part of the animal eaten, depending on it ability to stay fresh. So practical and logical and based on an innate knowledge of anatomy and science. The true sense of privilege of being part of this boy’s initiation took months to really sink in. The ritual of being bloodied as a young boy during a fox hunt seems to be a futile rite compared to this.

By now being with the tribe felt like home. Time was suspended and my life back in England had receded into the distance, except my children, who were like spirit guides offering their encouragement over the ether.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As I have said, every day I learned something relevant to our survival as human beings. I watched Iligiari as he farmed with fire. By scorching the earth, certain seeds would open in the intense heat. This made absolute sense as water was very scarce. Again I was reminded of the phenomenal understanding the Aboriginals had of their natural environment. Even Iligiari’s relationship with the wild camels had a magical quality. He was like a camel whisperer as they would help him with a difficult task, like moving heavy boulders, together. Then the camels would return to the wild.

My final lesson was understanding at a deeper level wherever there is a poison, there is an antidote 90% of the time. As we went walkabout, Naninja would periodically stop and get me to point out a poisonous plant, then find the antidote. Sometimes it would be a poisonous snake or insect and finding a plant that could help. There were also snakes where there was no antidote. She taught me to stand in such a way that the poisonous plant was on my lower right then look straight ahead, searching for the antidote. To begin with,  as her eyes fixed on me, it made me feel nervous and frightened I would get it wrong. I quickly realised it was my “fear of getting it wrong” that would contribute to my getting it wrong. The same solution repeated itself – “get over yourself Chloe”.

I was able to identify the poisonous plants because when I focused on them I felt sick or had unpleasant reactions physically. When I found the antidote, the symptoms would ease. I can now use this tool metaphorically, sometimes amongst a gathering of people – not a good idea to approach this person but that person feels a better choice.

It was only in hindsight I appreciated how patient Naninja was with me. I would love to say that I never got in my own way again. Of course I have but I get over myself much faster.

 

At the back of my mind, I could feel the time to leave was getting closer and there was an inevitability about it. It actually happened very quickly and I can feel the sadness as I write this. One morning it was simply time. As I woke I noticed the two fires I slept between had gone out and the original minibus was back in camp. In fact apart from Naninja and the people I had travelled out with, the camp was empty. I packed my little bag and stood in front of Naninja. Her parting message to me was “Remember you are going back to a world far more dangerous than this”. Then she turned around and started walking, shimmering as she became one with the desert. As I climbed into the bus, I had a familiar memory of my father, just suddenly getting up and leaving the house, not knowing when I would see him again. Tears rolled down my face.