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You don’t have to go o/s to experience culture shock you know – it happens right here at home. If gossip was an Olympic sport the community of Walgett would be world champions. They would also be on the podium for the self-promotion, self-interest & self-serving triathlon. So be it – as Ive said before […]
When Aboriginal people come to visit we rarely discuss politics but now the personal has become political when it comes to skin colour. I don’t know when Australia will achieve total colour-blindness but for the last 2 centuries you had certain advantages in life if your skin tone was closer to Anglo white. Now […]
Although thousands of people are paid large salaries at our universities and museums & publicly funded bureaucracies like AIATSIS and the ABC none provide help & mostly don’t even bother to reply to emails. The exception is the NLA (National Library of Australia) that archives this website so the CMTs will always be accessible on […]
The anthropological Vs natural debate re trees growing in other trees is over – Jen Silcock’s soon to be released paper on the subject will remove all doubt statistically & I will remove it pictorially. This old bimble/ poplar box ringtree residing on the neighbour’s neighbour has an old standard type scar. Sometime ago someone […]
Since spending time hanging around old Aboriginal camps Ive noticed what is known as ‘post contact artefacts’. Mostly old kerosene tins with thick wire handles for carting water. Wooden coolamons, as useful as they were for carrying stuff, could not compete with the kero tin for durability and carry-ability. Tobacco tins, tin cans, horse shoes/nails […]
April is a very busy month here especially in wet years. The cultivation paddocks have to be prepared for sowing and livestock need to be moved back to the grazing paddocks so they don’t eat the emerging crop. Autumn lambs need marking, weeds need spraying, last year’s lambs need trucking, calves need weaning, roads need […]
Ive had lengthy conversations with a farmer living on Wuradjuri land around Orange in the central west of NSW. His father & grandfather were farmers in the conservationist mode as well. The 3 generations have acted as custodians of their land rather than conquerors. This farmer also has a passion for scarred trees but is […]
Raining here again so Im reading another interesting book and loading the new TinTs I found mustering in Avon recently. The book is called Sapiens a brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari and its excellent reading if you are isolating with covid or something – ”70,000 years ago Homo sapiens was still an […]
Out on Avon yesterday sampling Santalum lanceolatum aka wild plum or ngamumbirra berries which I find the yummiest of all the local bush tucker. I remember Freddie Walford picking some for the kids while we waited for the school bus years ago. The kids were pretty tentative & spat them out with much grimacing & […]
Late december brought temps In the high 30s and a dry electrical storm. The lighting struck in Myall which is a cropping paddock and the wheat stubble/ stalks caught alight. Only a few acres burnt because the Walgett fire brigade, our neighbour and our fencing contractors with the water truck put it out. La Nina […]