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'