The key turns in the ignition, but there’s no response – not even a click. We’re stranded just outside our destination – Wadeye. So near, so far. A push start in twilight after seven hours driving is not the best preparation for our first experience of Australia’s largest, and most infamous, aboriginal community. But it’s better than being towed. Fortunately, THE BENCH starts easily first shove, so we trundle down the modest high street under our own power. We negotiate the grid pattern of single-storey housing, and pass through the haze from the hordes of tiny evening campfires that keep mosquitoes and sandflies at bay. The aluminium panels of the Land Rover protect us from the first wave of culture shock, but at the same time make us as conspicuous as a harp in a heavy metal band.
Metallica, Def Leppard, Judas Priest, Slayer. It reads like the posters in the bedroom of a white American teenager’s bedroom circa. 1988, but this is the basic graffiti scrawled on the walls of the town’s buildings, on the bitumen roads, on the pavements. There are swastikas, too. I’m confused, even though I’d read about gangs and their affiliation with white heavy metal bands in this place.
Wadeye used to be called Port Keats, and like lots of places where the official name’s changed, old and new seem to be interchangeable. A further source of bewilderment is the pronunciation; we hear a newsreader on the radio refer to wad-err and other people switch between that pronunciation and the more obvious wad-eye. Port Keats Catholic mission was established here in the first half of the 20th century, and many tribes from the wider Daly River region were offered ‘salvation’ (and no doubt were bribed with food and shelter). Over time the town developed, but tribal rivalries die hard. They have mutated into what the Press call ‘gang culture’.
Sensationalist journalism has apparently concentrated on negative issues, so the reading up on Wadeye that I did before we visited didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy. Over the day and two nights we’re in town, however, there are few signs of trouble. We hear that the Post Office has been broken into, but I don’t imagine there are many towns with 3000 people, high rates of unemployment and numerous other social problems that don’t have issues with vandalism and youth discontent.
There is a tussle going on in Wadeye, though. Overcrowding, poor hygiene, Top End weather and pervasive dust mean there’s a never-ending fight against Scabies. It’s Tuesday. It’s Scabies Day. Every week. It’s not a celebration, there’s no party in Scabies’ honour. It’s a clean-up day intended to eradicate the nasty mite. I see a poster that explains that four people live in the average white Australian household, but 16 are crammed into a typical (read small and very basic) Aboriginal Australian’s house. On Scabies Day kids are kept home from school, presumably to help out, but activity looks patchy. Some yards are being swept and bedding is hung out in the sun, but it looks like this occurs in the best-kept houses only and there are others just next door that from the road don’t look like they’ve ever been cleaned.
We’re not in Wadeye just to drive around poking our noses into other people’s business, making flimsy judgements on the way people live. We’re here with Dennis – one of Darwin’s ICV Project Managers – to see if Wadeye needs any volunteers from ICV. It’s a subtle process of meeting people and waiting to hear if they have needs, but not barging in and suggesting ideas.
It turns out to be a tricky day to get hold of anyone and we don’t really have any luck in finding out about projects we might be able to help on. Possibilities fall by the wayside. Frustrated, we go for a walk in the afternoon, along the airstrip where we’ve seen at least three or four planes land and take off that day.
It’s hot and humid, and those who can tend to drive even the short distances around town. But taking a walk means we can actually talk to people, even if it’s just a nod and hello. A young lad in an AFL (Aussie Rules) shirt holding a plastic bottle full of marbles wraps himself around my waist and asks where we’re going. Before I can answer, he gets shy and runs back to his parents.
In the distance an immense Cumulonimbus cloud has gathered silently, but it’s beginning to crackle and, suspecting a downpour is imminent, we head back to our accommodation. This is what the ‘build up’ to the monsoon season is all about.
Big cloud
Cloud getting smaller ... quickly
Dennis gets permission from the town’s elders for us to drive out to the beach for sunset. The monster cloud has collapsed and dropped its load somewhere to the east so we take the 10-minute drive. It’s beautiful and deserted and we sit around for an hour reflecting on the situation in the town. We’ve only been here for a very short time, and while we feel comfortable, something isn’t quite right. We are naïve, of course, but there seems to be something here that is preventing things from happening. Perhaps it’s the wrong day, bad timing, or perhaps it’s just that there’s nothing that we can help with. No matter.
…
Getting to Wadeye was interesting. Dirt roads are always a lottery. Depending on the weather, the amount of use and the type of traffic that passes through, their condition varies tremendously. Rain washes out sections of the road, leaving tortuous ruts. Heavy use corrugates the surface so it’s like driving across a draining board – regardless of speed your brain rattles like a pea in a whistle.
On our way in we were in luck. For a while. Then there was dust ground fine like flour hiding treacherous potholes. Then it’s corrugated and we’re mimicking rodeo competitors. We drove dozens of kilometres like this, slowing down and speeding up as required, passing through a seemingly endless landscape of uniform height eucalypts coated in the rust-coloured dust from the road.
Scattered along the roadsides was the Dead Car Dreaming: improbably bent Kingswoods and early model Landcruisers relenting to the elements. Well, in moist clean air like this, who wouldn’t oxidise? I’d like to think they’re the local signage – mileposts and waymarkers – that make up for the absence of anything else. “Turn left at the first track after the Holden.”
The lack of road signs suggested that only local people travel this way, but as daylight began to fade a trickle of hire cars came over the horizon. White four wheel drive utility vehicles emblazoned with Thrifty and Sargent logos marking them out as worker’s transport. Among the few cars heading towards the sun like us was a battered red Holden station wagon. It was full of people, all the windows wound down and the windscreen cracked into a spiders-web pattern so the driver surely couldn’t see the way. A small flatbed truck was towing the sad-looking heap; together they were kicking up clouds of dust despite the snails pace. We overtook, and through the sandy air saw that the truck-driver looked out on the world through shattered glass, too.
It seemed like hours until we reached the novelty of official signs. A couple of ‘slow’ signs announced that a grader was operating ahead, scraping and forming the surface of the wide road. They might as well have said ‘fast’. The clean road enabled a quicker pace, and after all the swerving, weaving and braking it was a relief to hum along at a constant speed on a silk-like surface. Suddenly two more signs loomed up ahead: ‘stop’. Common sense said there was nothing on this endless straight road to stop for, but after hours of driving in the heat we were addled enough to start to obey and the anchors went on, until we realised that ‘stop’ was written on the reverse of the ‘slow’ signs in position for drivers coming from the other direction.
The last 20 kilometres were smooth and fast. We raced towards the coast as if we could reach the horizon and catch the sun before it dropped. We were tracking alongside a tall forest that must have been burnt out a few months ago. Below the patchy canopy cycad palms looked like ornate emerald wine goblets, bursting upwards, ecstatic at the opportunity for sun that burning provided them. We finally reached a T-junction just outside Wadeye and Dennis was waiting to guide us into town. It was then that I made the mistake of turning the engine off to talk to Dennis out of the window and THE BENCH wouldn’t start again.
It turned out that the bumpy ride on the way into Wadeye had dislodged a battery cable and that’s why the car wouldn’t start. All it needed for a fix was a few turns with a spanner. Once our time in Wadeye was over, we heading back up the road to another, smaller, community.
Dennis and Ella at Wadeye beach
…
Returning along a route previously taken is often revealing. Travelling in the opposite direction, you see the same landmarks, the same landscape, but 180 degrees around. Sometimes familiarity is disappointing, nothing is new and there’s the boredom of a repetitive scene; long straight dusty roads punctuated with imperceptible corners leading to longer straighter, dustier roads. But sometimes it’s exciting to see things anew; details slowly emerge from the green speckled dirt – tree-covered hilltops and escarpments penetrate the vast bushland, like volcanic islands poking through the sea. With the sun at another angle, we can see that some of the abandoned wrecks of cars are decorated in paint. And, most importantly, the grader has made good progress; it feels like a whole different road, giving THE BENCH and our fillings a bit of a break.
There seem to be more side roads off this smoother main road, and after about an hour we come to our turning. We noticed this track on the way in to Wadeye and tried to peer along it, but a tantalising bend in the road obstructed the view. We follow Dennis’s hire car, trying to take things in. There’s a new and shiny-looking abattoir on the right hand side, a football oval shortly after on the left, then what looks like a warehouse but turns out to be a shop.
Opposite the shop is a pair of new-looking demountable houses, raised up off the ground with a breezeway between them – it’s the accommodation set-up for the government employees that feature in all of the indigenous communities that the Intervention has touched. It must have cost a fortune to install them all over the Northern Territory, but we discover that many of them have been condemned because of the toxic nature of some of the building materials. It’s not just ironic – the overcrowding in indigenous communities makes them seem like an offensive growth on the edge of town. Flash looking accommodation standing unused but full of expensive white goods. Another government masterstroke!
Bitumen roads – a luxury reserved for settlements’ internal surfaces – lead around what looks like common ground. In the background appears to be a vast, almost luminescent green meadow, a welcome contrast to the dull ubiquitous grey-green leaves of the bush.It is in fact a wetland. An oasis teeming with birds. It reminds me of the billabongs we saw in Kakadu.
So, we’ve arrived at another place with two names. This is Palumpa. This is Nganmarriyanga.
Immediately we’ve cottoned on to a difference between this place and Wadeye. Activity. People are sweeping yards, pruning trees, generally keeping Nganmarriyanga spick and span. There are a couple of ancient and radically stripped-down 4x4s – roofs and windscreens removed, bodywork strengthened with thick steel supports like wrap-around bumpers and adorned with old tyres. The youth of Wadeye love their heavy metal, so is Nganmarriyanga the home of the Mad Max club?
It takes us a little while to find the people we’re here to see, but we find them eventually. A white troopcarrier full of men pulls up and a little tour begins. A small building that was part of the old abattoir houses the musical equipment – one of the guys has a go on the drums – then we head out to see the market garden alongside the river about 15 km down the road. Until a recent fire mangoes and melons were growing and supplying the local people and the shop in Wadeye. They’re hoping to resurrect it. We visit the school and meet some of the teachers who are planning a kitchen garden.
Over the day we find out what this place is all about. Families that were based in Wadeye moved back to the land they originally inhabited and set up a Cattle Station. The Station is called Palumpa, the community of 400-500 people is called Nganmarriyanga. There is no Mad Max cult, the strange cars are Buffalo catchers, used to round up the beasts for the abattoir. Brilliant!
This seems like a place where people make things happen and a place we could help. Most importantly the people want us to come. We discuss some ideas for projects and agree to go away to Darwin for a week to make preparations. Then we’ll come back and get things going.
Back in Darwin, we finally cracked. We’ve given in to the lure of air conditioning, privacy and the possibility of a lie-in and settled for a hotel. For the meantime, at least, there will be no more mosquito coils, camp stoves, tarpaulin. There will be no cooking by head torch, no treks to ablution blocks, no water fetching or breathing dust. Instead, the days have passed in a flurry of phone-calls, meetings, libraries, photocopying, printing and filing. Evenings have been even more novel. There’s been a cooker, a fridge, a sofa, television and even a bed.
The Bush is calling, and this time we’re going back with a purpose.
Empty accommodation
no fixed abode 