Camping

The gear was packed into the 4WDs and off we set in our three piece convoy.

We made it 20km.

Flat tyre.

Imagine the scene. 10 bush newbies just out of their respective offices, have their first flat tyre, at 9am. In the Kimbly. In 30degree sun.

The convoy pulls over. The people in the affected vehicle all hop out to kick the tire as part of the universal tyre changing ritual.

-Right, where’s the jack.

-In the back under all the food.

-Ah.

The car jack was procured and the great elevation began. At this stage, there had developed a bit of a crowd .The other two cars were bored so everybody came to Supervise.

The need to call the AA was avoided and we continued on to a community called Beagle Bay. 

Beagle Bay was the home of a Christian Mission back in the day. It was here some of the stolen generation children were sent. The church which was the central focus of the mission still remains. Coming from Ireland, I was used to visiting churches that were dark, damp, almost oppressive. This church was different. The smell was the same but this church was warm. It was also brighter. And this is the best bit. The altar was inlaid with oyster shell. Upon setting eyes on this altar I was heard to exclaim, Mother of God, look at all that Mother of Pearl.

Now I didn’t really say that but I thought it sounded pretty funny. That smell brought me back to rural churches in Ireland.

Beagle Bay is now home to a community of aboriginal families. These are Nyul Nyul people. The term community is used to describe the living arrangements of a family or a few families in aboriginal Australia. They can range from 5-6 people to a couple of hundred. In the case of Beagle Bay, think of it as a little village.

This was to be the site of one of the projects for the Jawun programme. One of our flock was to stay here and work with the local town council. Well kind of.

They don’t have a town council. That ability was taken away from them in the past by the state government because the town councillors got a bit funny with the town’s money. The town went into receivership and here we are, The wounds have healed and the plan for Beagle Bay is simple. Self-autonomy. They want a direct say in how the town/community is run. Currently it is administered by the state government in Perth.

The road to autonomy is long but it has been set out and it is progressing according to plan. This is just one community. At least these guys have the benefit of having Jawun secondees. There are many other communities who are not so fortunate. Now, I may have made light of the explanation however the process involved with bringing about this autonomy is lengthy and bureaucratic. As with anyone on the planet, you don’t know what you don’t know. The residents of Beagle Bay are unfamiliar with Australian bureaucratic processes and the steps required to bring about self –governance. That is where the advisors come in.

As part of out tour of the town, we were also split up into gender diverse groups. It was explained to us that the ladies of our band were to spend the night with the local rangers, the custodians of the preservation of the flora and fauna on country as well as te conservation of the local Nyul Nyul language. There are male and female rangers and they also carry out reef conservation, controlled burns of the scrubland as well as cultural and natural resource projects to improve and enhance the unique biodiversity and cultural values of the region. The work for this night was to sit, in enclave, with the local elder women and record the language and the way in which they spoke. And, this, in line with the local traditions, was strictly women’s business.

This pissed me off. A lot. This is one of the things I wanted to learn in my time here. I wanted to know about the plants, the wildlife, the birds. I wanted to eat witchetty grubs. I wanted to experience how to live off the land. I wanted to throw a real boomerang, not the cheap knockoff in tourist shops, most likely made in China. And I was to miss out because of my obvious masculinity. (I was sporting a killer goatee at the time)

I am glad however that I didn’t express my displeasure. (Know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em.)

It was almost as if there was telepathy at play. The other half of the gender specific allocation of experiences for the day was being called out.

-       Tomorrow Gentlemen, some of you are going to the school to meet the children. Owen, you’re going out with the male rangers to go baiting the croc traps.

Excellent.

Following the tour of the community, we all headed out to an even smaller community. It revolved around one matriarch and her extended family. There were about four buildings and another beautiful, secluded, Australian beach. Following the camp cook-up we, the men, headed back to town. We left the girls behind to their women’s business which was due to consist of recording the elders speaking in Nyul Nyul.

Now, having already been introduced to the Australian “Swag” and it’s anticipated use with a mozzie net to gaze at the stars all night, we, the gentlemen, spent our first night camping in a “Donga”. The ladies camped under the stars.

For those of you from Australia, please bear with me. For those outside the Antipodes, a donga is a portable studio apartment, with terrible decor. It is a metal box with a bit of cladding, an air conditioner and a bed wedged in there. The high end ones have an en-suite. All of them have terrible phone reception. (Something to do with a Gaussian cage. Please contact me if your nerdiness equals mine and you want to know more), They also have a fridge. Which is for stubbies. (Again, message me if you want a translation)

I still got to lay out the swag however it was inside the donga. I toyed with the idea of camping outside, in the back yard, but two minutes into my walk to find a good spot, I was subjected to the concerto a la copulating donkey. There are wild donkeys that live in the nearby bush and two of them just so happened to bump into each other on the other side of the fence around the yard.

I went inside.

By the time I got back in from my reconnaissance mission, the only space left was under the air conditioner. And my sleeping bag was thin cotton liner. No insulation. Oh and I had no pillow.

Just my arm.

How to sleep in the Australian Bush

As part of the bonding process, it was decreed that we go camping together. Before I go into the details, I would like to add some extra detail to this scenario.

Contrary to the terminology used, and to paraphrase a great Billy Connolly joke, there is more than one bush outside of Australian cities. It's not like there is one shrub behind which all the Kangaroos, Wombats, Snakes, Spiders and Sharks are hiding, waiting to spring out on an unsuspecting tourist. 

"The Bush" is a reference to the collective area in Australia that is not urbanised. It is easily interchanged with the term "Outback"

Once upon a time, I used to think that a swag was something the Hamburglar carried around on his back. Turns out, in Australia, it means something completely different.

Aussies are world renowned for their love or outdoors. They are also known for their tenacity. So combining these two traits, they are not a people that would allow something as inconvenient as sleep from depriving them of their “Bush”, they have found a way to allow you to do both.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce The Swag Bag. A canvas bag and a soft foam mattress, rolled up for easy transport. You roll it out. You sleep on it. You wake up. You roll it back. You continue enjoying the “Bush.

Basically, it’s like a sheet for the ground.

When I was growing up, if you wanted to sleep outside you needed two things. A bed and a roof. The weather was so consistent it was pretty much a certainty that if you didn’t have both of the aforementioned requirements, what you were actually doing was swimming at night.

Not so in Australia. It is possible to put your sheet, I mean Swag, outside on the ground and you can sleep there, undrowned, all night.

However, being Australia, there are all manner of nocturnal creatures that may be interested in seeing who the visitor in the swag might be. Seasoned pros take all this in their stride. Novices, such as myself, need a bit of protection. This comes in the form of a Mozzie Dome. This is simply a mosquito net with bendy struts. Easy to set-up, not so easy to pack away.

I would also like to share a lesson I learned on my first Aussie camping trip. Pack everything away as soon as you wake up. Don’t do what I did.

The dawn light woke me up. I get out of my “Tent”, well sheet and net. Stretchy, stretchy. Yawny, Yawny. Go for a stroll. Go for a shower in the "Glamping" block. Come back refreshed an hour after the sun comes up and begin packing up. I then proceeded to spend the next hour fighting with the Mozzie net. You kind of need to fold and twist the bars at the same time to get it to pack away nicely. I didn’t get to pack it away nicely. When everything was finally stowed away in the 4WD, I looked like I had been wearing my clothes in a sauna. My nice beige t-shirt had become my wet brown t-shirt. 

Nice choice of t-shirt Owen.

Driving a 4 Wheel Drive

Has anyone ever driven off-road in a 4-Wheel Drive. I hadn’t. Until this trip. Day Two was the day in which we learned how to 4WD

We started off in the classroom. Now the idea of a classroom and learning theory turns most people colder than a summer’s day in Ireland.

However, this class was different. You know the class is going to be a good one when the guy comes in, dressed like Steve Irwin, drenched with sweat, ready to teach. Great. He introduced to photos similar to the following…..

After those awesome photos I was ready to get into it. There was some other stuff about checking the depth of croc infested river crossing by walking it. Yup Walking it. 

We all hopped in the 4WDs and drove out of town. We arrived at the beach and the instructor took turns with each of us going through the loose sand and an off road hill start in reverse. I just want to take a bit of time to describe the awesomeness off the Toyota Land Cruiser. Did you know that if you engage low wheel drive and the put it into first gear the car drives itself. Seriously it picks up if you're going downhill and slows down and it picks up if you're going uphill and puts the revs up. Seriously, all you have to do is steer. Now you're not going very fast but horses would have trouble with this type of terrain. 

Then we hit the beach but this time it wasn't with towels and sun cream. We let the tyres down and went drifting. We learned how to pull another car out after it had gotten stuck. Then the "Piece de Resistance". Gravel road braking. In order to show us what would happen should Skippy The Bush Kangaroo bounce out in front of you we had to get the 4WD up to speed then jam on the brakes, hard. 

I've never had to come to a stop from speed before so this was really good fun. This was the day I learned that it takes about 80m of skidding to stop from 100kph. 

Then we were ready for our camping trip. 

In the beginning.....

Here I sit, two weeks into my posting and I am finally beginning to write about what I've been doing. 

It has been pretty busy here. But first, let me fill in the details. 

In total there are ten of us. We have all applied to come here from our different parts of Australia. We represent banks, insurance, government, consultants, retailers and contractors. We are stationed in Broome and we are here to completely immerse ourselves in the organisations with which we have been chosen to work.

It is a full-on six weeks outside of our comfort zones, away from our families, with the intention of providing value to these local organisations. 

The first week is an induction week where we are given information, history, context and and a really good look around. We are introduced to our organisations, we are given a taste of how indigenous Australians used to live, how they now live and how they intend to live in the future. 

It is the fun week. Everything is new and shiny. We have a planned itinerary designed to allow us to see all aspects of the area and the people, to get to know each other and in a way, develop and grow the excitement and the enthusiasm we are already feeling for the days and weeks ahead. 

It starts off with a series of talks which give us a teeny peek into the organisations, how they began, what they are doing and the direction they want to go. Organisations like the Kimberley Land Council who are on a journey to return native title rights to the traditional owners of the land in the Kimberley. To give you an idea of the scale involved, they must prove, in court, that a group of people, with only an orally recorded history have lived on that land since before the dawn of colonisation by the European settlers. In and around the year 1850. No small task.

We were then offered a traditional welcome to the land by the NBY. This stands for Nyamba Buru Yawru, meaning "This Is The Place of Yawru People". I had to do a double take when a lady who looked of Asian origin to me, began speaking in the local aboriginal language. Now I didn't know what the local aboriginal language was but I definitely didn't expect to hear it from this lady. This was my first introduction into the vast cultural melting pot that is unique to Broome. I will elaborate on this later. 

The welcome took the form of a smoking ceremony where we had to walk through a cloud of smoke fed by leaves on a fire. This was to generate "Lian" good feeling or healing.

This day I learned about the complexities of a 40,000 year old civilisation. 

I just want to let that sink in for a second. The Aboriginals of Australia, of whom there are many, many groups, have been living on this continent for at least forty thousand years. The common belief is that the first civilisation began in Sumer, modern Iraq and Kuwait, SIX thousand years ago. They sprung out of nowhere if you will. Here are a people who have a history that is SEVEN times older. 

With this age comes a cosmology that is vastly different to our western world view. They look at the same stars in the sky and they see completely different groupings. They look at the constellation Orion and they see a Canoe which is called Djulpan. 

There are around 350 distinctly different aboriginal groupings each with their own languages. They might as well be different countries.  

I learned how people are classified into Skin Groups. It is a method of determining the most suitable pairings of couples. Having nothing to do with the colour of the skin, it is a highly complex method of ensuring the gene pool remains deep and varied. 

I learned of the deep respect each member of the extended family has for each other. Children are sent to live with their grandparents in their early teens so that the disciplining, if required, doesn't affect the relationship of the child and the parent. I learned that a man and his mother in law never speak to each other. They don't even stand in the same room together. This is because she has given him her daughter and his way of showing respect is not to taint their relationship with speech. I find this strangely beautiful and strangely bizarre. 

I must admit, had I not come here, I would have been completely oblivious to this world view and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity.

Then we went off roadin'

Broome, Western Australia

Broome is an iconic town with a rich and fascinating history. It has been a melting pot of vastly different cultures for over one hundred years. Now it is a tourist haven and it is still extremely beautiful. 

Ever since I moved to Australia six years ago, I have wanted to come to Broome. I did travel a few times with work, but these were flying visits where I think I had spent a grand total of 48hrs here.

I have now been given the opportunity to live and work and really get to know the place.

For the next four weeks, I am here to work with a local Aboriginal Corporation in a secondment scenario. I am joined by nine other people from different walks of life in Australia. We have all volunteered to come here and immerse ourselves in the location, the people, the work and the heat. Well...

This is done through an organisation called Jawun. They are an organisation that facilitates Corporations and Government departments in Australia to send people to live and work with Aboriginal companies, Organisations and Councils. It is a sharing, a collaboration of skills and knowledge. The local willing sponges take on board as much as they can from the secondees and in turn, the visitors are given an glimpse into the contemporary Australian Aboriginal way of life. 

Click Here to go to the website

In my opinion, it is the responsibility of the secondees to share what they find, to tell as many people as possible, to generate exposure for the Aboriginal People of Australia. 

This blog is how I intend to share what I have learned. 

Setting The Scene

I decided to call this blog Freeway to Freedom for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I want to explore the idea of freedom. What does it mean? Am I free? Am I not free? What does it really mean to be free.  

Secondly, because I am fascinated by people. I'm interested in what people do. I'm interested in why people do what they do.  I'm interested in choice and making choices. Why do some people struggle and some people excel?

So I want to combine these two, I want to share what I find on my explorations and if people can benefit from it, then that will make me quite content. 

If people can share with me, what they think and their own journey along their own Freeway to Freedom, that will make me really content.

And lastly, simply, I like how it sounds. 

I just want to go through my background. After College, I worked with a building company in Ireland for a couple of years. I then set off to see the world.

First stop was Japan. A friend had been teaching there so I got a really good immersion into the way of life there. Then I visited Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. I had intended to travel overland in a big loop back to Singapore. This did not happen. I didn’t really move past Vietnam, there my life changed forever. I met my wife Janette.

I then went to Australia. I took a Contiki/Tourbus and travelled from Sydney to Cairns. That took two months, cost $3,000 and added around 10-15kilos to my waistline. But, as the shampoo advert says, I’m worth it.

Then we worked in New Zealand for three years. That was a great experience. Unfortunately, I associated my difficult job with the country and not the circumstance so when the opportunity came to leave, I jumped at it. I have since learned the problem was not so much the place but the person experiencing the place, me.

Then we moved to Australia. I have been here for almost six years and that time has gone really quickly. One of the main reasons I am writing this blog is to document what I am doing now.

I have been given an opportunity to work with an Australian Aboriginal Corporation in a remote town for a short period. It is a concentrated period of skills transfer where I take all I have learned in the last 10+ years of my working life and try to share some of it.

This is what happens.

Well Here We Go

Have you ever gone for a long walk on a beach?

Have you ever got to the end and turned around and you could see back to the point where you started?

Well, in June 2015, that is what I did with my life.

I spent a week in the town where I grew up. I moved away in 2006 when I went off to see the world. I've been back a couple of times but this visit was after a gap of five years.

The place hadn't changed at all.

But I had.

I was able to see the life I would have lived. I was able to see that what started out as a backpacking trip for fun ended up completely changing my life.

I saw that I had set off looking for adventure but I had ended up finding something much more valuable.

I found myself.


This is my Freeway to Freedom.