Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Broome - The Best Outback Experience EVER

Hi everyone! Really sorry I haven't written in a while, but I thought it would be incredibly boring to listen to me rattle off all of the boring school stuff I have been doing. From april 6-11, I was up in Broome, Western Australia, which is about a 2.5 hour plane ride north of Perth/Fremantle area. This town is in the West Kimberley, which is a northern region of Australia where many Aboriginal communities live. These are some of the experiences we had and the things we did so I can remember them all. This experience has positively changed my life and it is hard to put that into words so that isn't included here. 4/6: Today we left at 4:45 a.m. It was very early, and Steve and Brandon (people on my trip) went around waking up everyone to make sure we were up and at 'em. Our plane ride took longer than expected, because we stopped at this random place on the way to Broome. When we got here, Peta was here, being her usual self. She is one of the study abroad directors, and let's just say she is one of a kind. We went to the UNDA-Broome campus and stayed there for the night. During the day we went to this cool lookout pint that had dinosaur prints visible at very low tides. It was called Gantheaume point. While we were there, it started to pour! The group that was up in Broome before ours had a lot of rain too, and we thought that this must only be the beginning of our great weather. The first picture is one of the ones I got looking off to the side, and the other is one that Sara took. The red color of the ground was absolutely amazing, and the picturesque skies the whole trip due to our interesting weather conditions were so great! Reflecting back, it actually was great weather because then it wasn't as hot as it normally would've been. Broome is hot and humid compared to Fremantle/Perth, usually 10 degrees hotter, and very humid. We got really wet when we tried to run back to the shelter. Next we went to Cable Beach, where it continued to rain. It was one of the most fun days ever! We climbed over these rocks on the beach and then basically played on the beach for the whole day. This was really fun because our group got a lot closer. We were all down on the beach, all soaking wet, and we got to act like little kids! We played games in the sand, tried to get some pictures where we were jumping, watched a great sunset, and did some water aerobics! Here are some pictures of what we did that day: We ate some yummy pizza for dinner that night, and hit the hay. 4/7: Today we woke up early and made our way to the Morgans' house. They are our Aboriginal hosts. We talked about racism and dreamtime with Collin, and then we went on a camel ride! We were supposed to do this the first day, but it got rained out, and we were worried we wouldn't get to do this! This is one of the biggest tourist things to do in Broome. Here are some pictures from that: Our camel's name was Alice, and she was the newest camel in the train which we found out after we had gotten on her. It was really scary getting up on the camels and back down, because they basically sat down on the ground. They have an extra joint in their legs than humans do which was cool to see (for me at least). It felt like you were going to fall off though when we were doing this. We came back and hung out a little more after this, had some good spaghetti that Maria made, and I even got to play some guitar and digeridoo (can't really play that, but tried!) There were some good laughs and we all had a great time, and it was Alison's birthday! Maria gave her a cool print of some Aboriginal artwork that Bec did (Collin and Maria's daughter) which was pretty cool. After that everyone went to bed again. 4/8: Today we went out to a park pretty close to the Morgans' house in Broome. There we talked about the origin of humans and how the Aboriginal people see it. We also got to make and throw spears, which I was pretty horrible at. After this we went to the Broome pool and paid $3 to get in and swim for a half hour before they closed. We thought it was going to be a waste of money, but it was so refreshing after sweating all day. Then e came back and ate some food, had some group discussion and went to bed. 4/9: This was my favorite day of the whole trip. We woke up really early (6:45 a.m.) and got into our cars to head out on a 4-hour car ride to an Aboriginal community. This car ride was really bumpy and we felt like we were on an adventure ride! We got to the Bidyadanga Aboriginal community to pick up some locals, grab a quick snack, and then we headed out to this beach, which I believe is called Missile (or Mission) Beach. This is on Aboriginal grounds and one is only brought out here by the local Aboriginal people. We pulled up on this FANTASTIC beach that was incredibly gorgeous! Here are some examples, of the picturesque skies (that we enjoyed the whole trip if you can't tell already) and some shells we found. There were shells everywhere because this beach is not public that were so perfect. When we first got there, we were introduced to the land. We had to take a mouthful of ocean water and spit it back out. While here we did a lot of fishing, walking in the soft sand, and enjoying life. Tony from our group was nicknamed "Mungaroo" which mean "man who is like woman." He spent a lot of time talking to the Aboriginal women elders and making bread etc. with them, they thought it would be funny to give him this name, and he really connected with the Aboriginal people. Shane said that he would have done what many anthropologists have been trying to do for years. It was really nice of these local Aborigines to bring us out there; we were some of the first white people to be able to visit this site, with less than 50 seeing the site before. On the way back from the beach, Collin shared with us stories about spirits. He was very convincing, and I think I really believed what he was saying. We got to bed soon after arriving home to a wonderful dinner that Bec prepared for us at her house. We got to meet Collin and Maria's grandkids who were SO cute! CJ is 18 months, and Kendra is 3. 4/10: Today was Kelsey's birthday. We got up early and drove out to this beach with mud flats to go crabbing. This was not my favorite experience of the trip. After sinking into the mud on numerous occasions past shoe level and nearly losing my shoes each time, I fell backwards after losing my balance, sinking my butt into the mud. I then gave up crabbing soon afterward because this was a very unpleasant feeling. My butt was wet for most of the day, and then the mud hardened and was very uncomfortable. However, this did not retract from the rest of the day so much once I was able to get over that. We walked back to the gazebo we had set up for the day, and I endured a few laughs from Collin, Mark, and Ben about the condition I was in. The tide came up rather quickly and we went to wash off the mud from our skin. After that, we had some good talks and Bec made some awesome art and Colin carved a "boab" nut. He gave this to Katie at the end ouf our trip because she helped Kelsey out most of the trip. Kelsey fractured a bone in her foot playing footy and has been on crutches for about 3 weeks at this point. I talked more with Mark an everyone had a good time. Brad caught a shark while we were there, that was probably about 2 feet long, and also two salmon were caught which was unheard of in this area according to Collin, fishing from the shore anyway. We saw a bunch of stingray jump up in the air as well trying to catch fish, and even one big shark! After this we went back to the pool for a longer time, and then we went to a different area by Gantheaume Point to watch the sunset. I had another discussion with Mark who was really an incredible guy. This is what it looked like at sunset: That night back at camp we thanked the Morgans for everything they did for us and Collin had a discussion about spirits, similar to our car ride, with the whole group. Some things we talked about were the abilities to feel and see spirits, the spirits that he saw at our rest stop and from past groups, and his experiences with bad spirits. 4/11: Today we woke up and packed up our tents and belongings. We had another little chat with Collin about Stolen Generations and oter things. We then had our own chance to make Aboriginal art! I will post mine later when I get it back, however mine is not the greatest. We then bought a piece of Aboriginal art for $100 which is really great and will remind us of our trip forever. We got to the airport and said goodbye to the Morgans which was really sad, and took a group photo! I will really mis the people I met on this trip, but am very glad for the experiences I had. Here is a photo of Emily and I with Collin:

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