Little miss ...

I miss having a playground that is clean and functional. I miss my gym in Alice Springs. I miss the possibility of going to the movies. I miss going to festivals and events. I miss catching up with good friends for Sunday brunch. I miss the library. I miss catching up with friends in person.

There are a few things I miss. But mostly I can do without, quite happily, with  most of the things I used to do. Going out for coffee, wandering through the shops, seeing too many movies.

What I like about my current life is that it's pared back to essentials. A simple life is really the life I choose. When I'm too close to the centre of town, or right in the heart of the city, invisible tentacles of consumerism slowly creep and enclose. 

I think I have learned that I need to live just a little out of town, to make all the things that I do miss possible. The trick is leaving far enough away to avoid falling into the excesses of our culture. A little house, a little way away, with enough open space and nice flat bitumen road to town.

I'm not quite there yet, for I don't miss all those things enough at this point. But the day is approaching, and no doubt will be here quicker than I expect.

Specialising in failed service delivery

I like to think I could be a specialist in failed service delivery.

I certainly think I've had enough opportunity. After all, I've spent almost 5 years failing in service delivery roles in remote Aboriginal communities.

I know I do a great job at failing when I work for government. That's almost a given.

What I'm not so confident about is whether I can refine my skills even further.

To be a little less obtuse, I have mostly been working in a 'service delivery' way (even though my job specifications have largely been about working in a developmental, or participatory, way).

I'm a fantastic systems operator. I gravitate to systems. I love the complexity of systems. I search for simplicity in systems. I strive to project simplicity. I seek justice through systems.

And systems just love me back. Here, have some more work (we love the way you write). Here, represent us (we love the way you talk). Is there anything else I could do for you? I ask earnestly in return.

But the catch is that systems don't work. Programs don't work. Preprepared solutions don't work. Rules and regulations don't work.

We place enormous trust in systems. We devote enormous energy to systems. In fact, we need systems. But at a local level, and even more so in non-mainstream places, they don't work.

My response. Work harder. Be more responsive to the local. Be simpler. Be more culturally aware. Be more aware.

But that won't work (I know, I've done it).

Fundamentally, service delivery requires supplicants. It asks only that people access the service, or be prepared to be accessed. It holds attention but requires no thought. It asks questions to which it already knows the right answers.

Hence, operating as a service deliverer means I have failed. Spectacularly. Beautifully recorded, succinctly stated failure.

So the answer. Specialise in failed service delivery. Refine the skills of a craft of operating that is so different as to bear no resemblance to what I'm being paid to deliver.

And through real dialogue, real relationships, deliver.

How are you today?

I've recently bought myself a small start-up set of cards to use in therapeutic work with clients.

Well, that's the cover story.

As a student social worker, beginning to conceptualise exactly how I might use my future degree, I have been particularly drawn to the use of visual tools. I first came across these when we were shown Bear Cards last year in our training to teach protective behaviours on the Lands.

The little bears appealed to me straight away. In fact, I wanted a set just for me. To play with on my own, ruminating indulgent self-contemplation.

My Bear cards arrived last week. Along with a man in a bathtub out at sea (Ups and Downs), strengths cards for kids (I have Eleanor as an excuse to purchase these), the Cars 'R Us set (lots of fun on four and sometimes more wheels), some Lost in Normality cards (because that sounds like my existential dilemma), and a Growing Well set (who doesn't want that?).

I might have gone a little overboard... but hey, I have a great card that shows that feeling now!

Here's how I am feeling today, in bears:

What is a community?

Such an easy question to answer ... or is it? I sometimes struggle with this idea of community, as it seems like many view the idea of an Aboriginal community in static or stereotypical ways.

For example, well it's a group of Aboriginal people all from the same area who speak the same language (isn't it?) Or it's [insert name] Community, you know, about [kilometres] from [town].

It's not. And it is.

Just as I might identify as 'Australian' when I'm in England, or 'country NSW born and bred' when I'm in Canberra, what is my own sense of community identity shifts according to who I'm with and where I am. So yes, sometimes people will say they are from Warburton, or sometimes from the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, or sometimes Central Desert, but it shifts according to context.

Blackstone Community - from office up to the store

The really interesting thing though, is how the community works when it's just a conversation about what's happening in one place. What does it mean when we're thinking just about one community, like Warburton or Blackstone?

One of the early things I learnt about work out here is that communities are really collections of families sitting around the one bore (so to speak). As traditional life shifted to contemporary settled life, places developed in ways that gave the impression of just one set of related mob, but really it is more complex.

Family comes first. Family is the abiding connector. So when outsiders say "the community should sit down and talk about this", what does that mean? Very little. The community is a collection of families. And like any collection of individuals, they will face all the usual struggles of meeting, sharing, agreeing and deciding what to do next that any of us face in small communities all across Australia (suburbs, communities of interests, little regional towns).

Somehow, people assume that because community members are tied together by language, culture, remoteness etc, there is somehow a magical additional layer of cohesiveness and collective decision-making. There are culturally informed ways of sitting down and trying to nut things out, but there are exactly the same challenges in doing that as there would be anywhere else.

Karrku Community (now abandoned) playground

Yet, when things go wrong in Aboriginal communities, in ways we don't ask of mainstream Australian communities, "the community" need to sort it out. Ta da.

It's not that simple. It can't be that simple.

Really, we are united by our similarity more than our diversity!

What time tells us

I walked up to the police station from my little DCP house earlier this week. It felt like it was going to be a long walk, being almost from one side of the community to the other.

It took 7 minutes. As I arrived, checking my watch with astonishment, I remembered an early reflection I had when I first arrived in the community five years ago. Within about a week, I was driving distances that seemed absurd, yet going any other way than by car was inconceivable.

Like all things, we fall into the norm. By car. Even if it's just a few blocks. Very rarely do I see non-Indigenous people on foot around the community. Don't ask me why - my little expedition earlier this week confirmed that it is indeed not very far to walk anywhere.

This led me to ponder more broadly on the notion of time. How our mind conflates and expands time, making time a quality more reflective than objective. I remember how long my first year out bush seemed. It stretched on forever as my mind stretched to accommodate the endlessly new information it was processing.

Now it has slowed. Slowed to a pace I recognised also when I very first visited remote communities. Why so slow? Why can't people pick the pace up a little! I wondered, exasperated. My Canberra high-energy hat buzzing.

Over time, I have come to appreciate that slowed down quality. I'm still a little wary of the propensity to lethargy, but more often than not, I see that all things pass. Over time, only the most important things keep coming to the surface.

It reminds me of a favourite Dilbert cartoon, with the office dinosaur (literally) holding up his little hands in simple gratitude as he expresses to Dilbert that if you wait long enough, the people doing the restructuring leave and everything returns to normal. "I don't know why, but it works every time."

Turning the idea around again, I reflected on a recent lesson I learnt in a book. Pila Nguru by Scott Cain. A book I've started dipping into about the Spinifix Arts movement and Tjuntjuntjara mob native title early days. The author recounts another tale of time to blow our objective minds.

While visiting a sacred site, Scott left an old, sick, frail elder in the Toyota while he set out to follow the other men as they danced across a salt pan.

When they had danced the kilometre or so across the flat, they arrived to find the old man already there, keening in a deep trance, met by the men with simple acceptance not incredulity. In our world, a physical impossibility. In Anangu world, reality.

Time passes in different ways. Speed is not an objective quality of physical strength, but a character held by some according to cultural power and wisdom.

In that moment, the author believed that time is not as we believe it. More than just in our heads, or even our wrist watches. In our bodies, an untapped potential to change the world we are in by strength of connectedness.

Time, reflective and spiritual. Certainly not objective.

Share and share alike

Playgroup re-opened today in Warburton. Eleanor has been on the lookout for Anne (who runs the playgroup) for a while, and regularly comments as we go past "Anne's on holidays, she'll be back soon". Soon arrived at last, and playgroup started up again, linked to the school term timetable.

This post is actually about one 10 second moment in playgroup. A moment that speaks volumes about how people live their lives, and deeply embedded cultural values that pass on to children at a very young age.

As a pre-cursor to that moment in time, it might be worth mentioning that I spent a bit of time today secluded in the little cubby house. Eleanor was happy to have me in there, but fought off any other incursions with statements like "no, it's too crowded in here", or "we're already full" (it was just me and her), or "no stop touching the edge" (to a little baby just learning to stand, and having the temerity to put her fingers on Eleanor's cubby windowsill).

So the conventional wisdom is that children this age are developmentally not very good at sharing. I tried to encourage the sharing gene, with regular entreaties "Eleanor, they can come in, let's share" or pulling her hands away from the baby's fingers as she tried to prise them loose. At one point, I upped the ante by saying that I'd leave the cubby house if she didn't start sharing it. That sort of helped but it felt a little like emotional blackmail! The Aboriginal mums just laughed at Eleanor and remarked on how "bossy" she was. It was all good natured, but I do generally struggle with Eleanor not really playing well beside other kids. Still, it's an age and stage.

Or is it... so to 10 seconds of interest. Just as the morning tea and story was coming to a close, little Damiana - about Eleanor's age - burst into the room with her mum. Flash in her pink outfit and new shoes, she was ready for all that playgroup had to offer and morning tea was a good time to arrive. I'm not sure of the family connection, but little Tiawana (about 3 years), immediately motioned her to come sit next to her. Damiana sat down and looked about for something to eat. Tiawana moved her cup of milo closer to Damiana's knee. She didn't notice, so Tiawana tapped her on the knee and pointed at the milo. Without a word between them at any point since she arrived, Damiana picked it up Tiawana's milo and drank it, then looked around for what else was on offer.

This spontaneous unconscious sharing of your own food is something I have seen a lot over the past few year, but hadn't really thought about it until I saw it in mini replay. Cultural values so deeply ingrained that little kids Eleanor's age reproduce it exactly.

So is 'doesn't share well with others' really a developmental stage, or Western cultural values at work again? Is our propensity to own and hoard something that kids are in fact demonstrating in their 'playing beside' rather than 'playing with' behaviour? Developmental charts then become cultural by-products rather than scientific fact.

When you reach for a new cup to pour someone a fresh cup of tea (rather than sharing your own) are you in fact reinforcing cultural values of separateness and individuality. All part of the great Western way. Based on today's 10 second moment, it seems so.

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.

Spatial re-alignment

The unexpected lessons we learn.

Yesterday, as part of Easter Sunday festivities in the bush, we decided to drive to Jameson via a north-western back road. The plan was to set out on the Walu road, take a left at the first windmill, and wind across to Jameson. Speed home on the main road. Snacks packed, iPod loaded, gun in the passenger seat, off we set.

Gun. Yes. (Did you do a double take and re-read?) We don't normally take the gun. But yesterday, in one of those rare 'why not' moments, in it went. A little target practice for recreational purposes only. Fred is over shooting to kill, and I've never really been into it anyway.

In fact, Fred is currently tossing around the idea of a clay target shooting range on the Lands, which I think would go down great guns. After all, hunting is a local passion.

Guns are one of the few things I see people regularly engaging with whitefellas, and the broader 'law and order system' in general. Coming up to the police station to renew a gun licence. Shelling out for the relatively exorbitant cost of secure cabinet to store their gun at home. I guess it's the modern day spear.

So off we set, Jameson in our sights. We drove, turned left, and drove, and drove. Around washed out roads, across new scenic stretches. Small hills and tussocks, with a two wheel track winding through, no tyre tracks evident. Sensing the subtle enjoyment of seeing new country. Sensing we were nearing Jameson.

And then, with some considerable astonishment, we popped out at Walu.

Walu, for those not living on the Lands, is _not_ just near Jameson. In fact, it's centrally between Jameson, Blackstone and Wanarn. Which means we had been heading more north than west. By a long shot.

All that 'new country'. Seen it. Not that long ago either (probably six months). But just like those conversations you have where the world as you understand it has to spatially re-align, we suddenly realised our mental map was all wrong.

And so, re-adjusted, we sighed and turned back. Not quite what we wanted, but a good lesson all the same. That the world is not always as it seems. It's mostly what goes on inside our heads.

A working phone

View coming in by plane

Today, I flew to Tjuntjuntjara for work. It's one of the remotest Aboriginal communities in Australia. Unlike the Lands, which is a constellation of communities of varying sizes within 250,000 square kilometres, Tjuntjuntjara is an outpost in the heart of country like few others.

The journey by car is so far that, at times, there comes a moment when the ground is on a slight rise and all the world stretches before you. The curvature of the earth evident, proving that we are indeed a globe circling the sun. Proving also that land is so central to meaning that people will do what is necessary to make a return to country a reality.

The curvature of the earth just out of shot!

I do not know much of how Tjuntjuntjara came to be, save the few stories told to me by people who helped establish the community. I will leave that for others to recount or research as their heart desires.

What I want to write about is the meaning of a working phone. How the quality of community functioning can be seen in this (and other) small signs.

The common conception of remote Aboriginal communities is dysfunction, violence, drug use, sniffing, lawlessness. This is the media story we are told again and again, reinforced by strategic photos and a swiftly passing journalist with intent.

My understanding is the opposite. The more remote, the safer it becomes. The closer to country, the stronger the families. The more distant, the easier it is to resist alcohol and its destructive power. The harder to access, the more stable the governance.

Tjuntjuntjara stands out for me in the following ways. Old people, sitting out the front of the shop, watching the passing day. The houses and infrastructure, grown steadily and over time. Community staff who want to stay, who are drawn to community members' strengths, resources and determination. A shop that sells no lollies or chips.

And a working public phone. Out in the central area, which looks upon the community houses, the shop, office, school, clinic and women's centre, the public phone stands sentinel. The mobile of most use here is the young person who can get to the phone before it stops ringing. Beckoning over the intended recipient of the call.

I don't want to overly romanticise Tjuntjuntjara. There are the usual challenges of life remote, including boom and bust with money, jealousies and family disagreements, problems with getting a plumber, flies and a few too many dogs!

But what distinguishes it from other communities is that it's quiet, calm, 'no fighting here' as one community member (formerly of Warburton) told me today. Not as much anger, seen in the 'wild' moments when someone grabs the steering wheel of a car and goes spinning through the community knocking the public phone over. Or grabs a stick and belts it after a jealous fight. Or destroys it trying to get the coins out. Or rips the handset off to wreak revenge on others.

It's a safe community, a strong one, open and friendly. Welcoming strangers like us, and straight away starting to share their stories. When Fred and I first went there last year, we came back to Kalgoorlie buzzing with the experience. Friendly, helpful, welcoming. Prepared to take us as who we were and start from there. There's much that Tjuntjuntjara mob have to show us about how to be in the world.

Getting started

I was reminded tonight of some of the classic mistakes I made when I first came here, 5 years ago.

My fire engine red skirt that I wore to a meeting of community council governing committee. My query about why a community member had cut her hair off when it had looked so great before (and refusing to accept her shrug response). My direct questions.

All problematic. Ignorance of certain colours reserved just for men, rituals on the death of a close family member, ways of engaging respectfully.

Thankfully, I was saved by time. A genuine interest to engage. The gentle guidance of colleagues and soon-to-be friends. An inquiring mind. But most important of all, time.

Time on feet. Time in the communities. Time engaging with people. Time finding out more, asking those who knew. Time getting to know others.

Our Western world transacts our interactions with others with ferocious speed. Rules of engagement are clear. In most domains, it is not necessary to know much about the other person you are talking with. It's not necessary to know them at all.

I recently read an article on how to engage with Aboriginal people in a social work context. I skimmed through to the end to see what the conclusions were. I was relieved to see that it said focussing on the relationship, taking time, and engaging in 'self-disclosure' (letting people know who you are) was important.

Why exactly do we eschew this in Western culture? Why is knowing about the other person relatively unimportant in how we relate to them? In this highly individualistic culture, we seem to have lost the individual quality that enriches life.

Individuals. Me. You. Us. What we share together.