Day 152

28 June 2013

Today we were up early to pack up camp, say goodbye to Kooljaman and head to our 1/2 day spearing tour at a nearby community.

We were a little too keen for the tour and arrived 30 mins early so had to sit and wait in the car outside of a pretty ordinary looking shop and lots of stray dogs lingering around. These aboriginal communities remind me of streets in Laos - streets of poverty... Dogs wandering around everywhere, puppies, rubbish everywhere, dirt roads, dirty houses, overgrown gardens, smashed up, rusted out old cars and children running amongst all of this. It's sad really considering we are a rich country; however this is their home and they have freedom to move if they want to live a different life...right?!

Anyway our tour was with Bundy who pretty much rules the roost in this community, if you want to do something on this land, ask Bundy! Our tour starts with a quick 4wd in the sand to a location near Chile Creek where Bundy jumps out of his car and proceeds to give us a history on the area.

We then start down towards the creek and as its low tide we can walk the whole creek as there are only patches of water. Bundy starts by showing us how to find pippies...

And then cuts down some tree oysters which will be cooked with the pippies on the fire a little later. Next he shows us how to locate fresh water in a salt water creek. This was interesting! Two things that tell you where to find fresh water....1. Look for animals drinking, they will not drink salt water, 2. If cant see animals, listen for bush birds (not sea birds) and if you can hear pigeons look for their prints in the sand, they will lead you to fresh water! Pigeons would not come to salt water area unless they were looking for water. Makes sense but I would never have thought of it! So fresh water found we start heading back to the cars to get our spears!

Bundy shows us how to attach the spear part to the wooden part.

And we are off to spear something, anything! Haha but not before Bundy tells us that there are 5 resident crocs in the creek but they should be up further! Thanks Bundy! Spears in hand we follow Bundy to some water, tide is just starting to come in, Bundy spears a fish and his spear is thrashing around in the water and he is chasing it, swimming after it, finally grabs it and the fish got off!! And unfortunately this is as close as anyone got to spearing a fish or mud crab which was a little disappointing but in Bundys defense, it was shit weather and the water was really murky!

Back to the fire with nothing to cook except pippies and oysters we had collected earlier. While they were cooking Bundy showed us how to straighten a piece of wood for your spear and make one from scratch. We then ate some pippies and oysters which were actually really good! Nice smoked flavour!

The tour concluded with a bit more history and Bundy sent us on our way.

After the tour we were off to Middle Lagoon to camp the night as we had been told to check this out by a couple of people. Again it is a aboriginal community and its nothing flash but was nice bush camping and you could have a fire which we haven't been able to do for a while!

Bundy had taken it out of us so set up camp and fell into the tent for a good nights rest.

Carly & Joel

 

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