Bush camps - the madness that makes sense

These past few days I've participated in two bush camps, one overnight, one daytime.

This is one of the few times I've been on camps out bush, despite it being the best way to get to know people! A good opportunity to spend time with community members, outside the normal spaces encircled by houses and community buildings.

This story is mostly about the Wednesday night bush camp, as today's day camp was also for work (and therefore a little harder to describe). There were, however, lots of shared moments, as kids disappeared into the surrounds, fires lit, and damper cooked gently on the coals.

So, on Wednesday night, we rushed back from a DCP meeting at Jameson to hurriedly change and pack our swags for a night in the bush with Warburton breakfast ladies and heaps of children.

The Shire bus was rolled out, a large 4WD monster that sits as high as a truck and heralds the promise of bush adventure.

After the usual waiting, one man wielding two axes, and various negotiations about which particular spot to go to (the answer being 'we'll just drive, we'll see when we start') we headed east out of town. Barely out of mobile range, we pulled off onto a small track and soon settled down at an open site, with lots of sandy flats.

Before I had our swag out of the car, two fires were light and groups of families began to cluster around with their swags and blankets. A third fire started up, as a new cluster gathered. Coals emerging to cook kangaroo tail, sausages and pumpkin in foil, and the ubiquitous damper.

The kids took off onto the flat, kicking balls, and rampaging through the camp with cartwheels and unburstable energy. I wandered around somewhat uselessly, until I mustered up the focus to collect a few bits of wood for our fire.

By 6pm, it was dark and we were tucking into bits of shared food. Children were fighting and laughing. Adults shouting to break them up. There is a particularly strident tone to this exchange, with the aim being to raise your voice so loud it pierces through the child's brain to force them into submission from afar. Kids started to settle, and adults extracted sand painstakingly from stinging eyes

At one stage, in order to settle the kids down too, one of the ladies dressed up as a 'mamu'(bad spirit) to scare the kids into bed. She sat by the edge of the camp ominously, then hobbled in at a crazy rollicking pace, scattering kids as she went.

Finally the children dropped off, and adult cadences rose and fell. The ebb and flow of shared stories and confidences. At one stage, in between the children sleeping and us talking, one woman cried out in a louder voice (and English) - hey you kids be quiet and let the big people talk! It made us laugh, a shared moment, as we slept in separate groups.

As the morning came on, the snoring echoed by owl hoots was replaced by small birds twittering the sun over the horizon. Eleanor's first words of the day: The moon! in astonishment as it brightly shone in the grey dawn light. Fires started up, water heated for tea, and yesterday's damper eaten with butter and jam.

Various prizes were found by the kids - bird's nests complete with little eggs and newly hatched chicks. A goanna. Sadly, all had a short life - it being hard to survive a bush camp morning with a pile of bush kids! While some white staff were a bit put off by the chicks, I've seen it before and am reconciled. I just choose not to touch the poor animals as they await their inevitable fate.

A lovely camp, albeit a bit dusty, a bit raucous and fatal (at times), but certainly a nice break to the flow of daily life.

And an aside for those policy makers who like to read this blog: don't ban going bush - it's the best way to start building relationships, an essential foundation for any work out bush. I was amazed at the madness of some organisations who ban their staff from taking vehicles on bush camps! A policy decision that makes sense in town, but none out here.

A day in the bush

Last weekend, I convinced Fred that it was a good idea to get up at 6am to meet a convoy going bush at 8am, and drive for 11 hours for the sheer enjoyment of it. This was last Sunday's big day out.

We don't normally set off for such long journeys for fun. Our usual jaunt to shake off remote cabin fever would be about 3 or 4 hours (max) - sometimes it's just up the road to 'Singing Rocks', so named because the stunning tumbling of rocks are not only artfully designed but also tunefully amusing. With a high iron density (or something like that), when you tap them with a smaller stone, the rocks of different sizes give off lovely notes of earthy musicality. It's the local tourist stop for a trip to Blackstone, and within 15k of town, it makes an easy trip out.

View from east of Gill's Pinnacle

By contrast, this was a bush adventure of another order. Inspired by the enthusiasm of the Warakurna coppers, we hoped on board and made the extra two hours of early morning travel to meet them on the road. On arrival at the turnoff, beautifully timed with 3 minutes to spare, we found the Blackstone nurse and her partner also waiting. When the convoy arrived shortly after, we were 7 vehicles in all.

The first stop was Gill's Pinnacle. A short distance away, a rocky entry, and a stunning view. The near permanent waterhole must have been a welcome rest point for the locals not so long ago. As always happens on these outings, my mind ticks over relentlessly, trying to imagine what life must have been like back then. Wandering through the bush from rockhole to rockhole, sheltering in caves or holes dug into the sand dunes in extreme heat or the summer storms. Following the ebb and flow of seasonal produce, meeting small groups and moving on, coming together for large ceremonies of real significance before bursting back into the quiet rhythms of family life. I know I romanticise, but from the little I've read of traditional times, there is a deep simplicity and connection to country in their lives then that is missing from all our lives now, to differing degrees.

Winding through in convoy

From Gill's Pinnacle, we set off in earnest. While Warakurna was a mere 50k to the west, we turned east and committed to the road ahead. 250k in total. Normally, this trip would take about 3 hours. On gravel roads regularly graded and maintained. The back road we took, once we left Tjukurla, was so overgrown as to almost disappear at one point. This was proved when we found ourselves winding in convoy through a densely overgrown area looking for anything resembling a track. The convoy slowed and parked in confused directions, waiting for our leaders to right us again. In that case, we had unwittingly veered onto an overgrown airstrip, with its faint raised edges (enough to give a suggestion of a road), and an old windsock pole (minus a windsock that would have helpfully identified it as an airstrip). This particular strip must have been made more than 20 years ago, probably for mining exploration, and was now so covered in low shrubs and bushes as to have effectively disappeared. If Fred had not identified the windsock pole, I'm sure we would have wandered out of there, like a disjointed caterpillar, none the wiser.

The stark beauty of the landscape, with its subtle variations, makes a long slow trip like this worthwhile. The hours flew by as we wove through the sand dunes, past groves of desert oaks, and into waves of spinifex. Small purple wildflowers, set in their foil of grey green foliage, break away along the edges of the road. Knarly trees brushing against the car doors, knocking flat side mirrors as if to assert their natural right to rule. The vehicles heave and jolt, like land-locked boats in the desert, pressing ever forward with the strange fervour of all battles.

Desert oaks in artful formation

And after we pass, the quiet returns. The animal rumble of mechanical beasts fades. The strange Sunday vacationers, with their packed lunches and spare matches are like a momentary vision of madness, and peace returns again. The twitter of little birds, the soft scurry of goannas as they scoot from bush to shrub, the quiet persistence of a waiting thorny devil, poised for action as ants make their last fatal journey past his flickering tongue. The faint memory of a road cleaved through virgin bush, slowly but steadily, reclaimed again.