Being an unquestioning eldest son of a devout Lutheran family I went to boarding school in order to become a pastor. Then puberty hit and where once stood a dutiful son, now you see a rabble rousing miscreant, constantly challenging authority and destabilising the good order of the classroom. Faith was not enough. But that is a whole other story and I won’t tease you with the details here.

Year eight was a smorgasbord board of subjects. You could try a bit of everything and your make firm choices next year. I just went with the prescribed program, choice never really entered into it, I would do Latin, Greek maybe Ancient and Modern History the obligatory English and Maths I and one other. That’s what you do if you want to become a paster.

Others were doing Chemistry and Physics and Maths II, learning about the physical world which in my world view at the time was simply a temporary state that required some careful handling if you had any hope of getting through to the next level. Girls could do the ‘commercial’ course, Pitmans Short Hand and Typing, which could be useful for those whose families had small businesses.

‘Commercial’ was somewhat frowned upon by the more scholarly types who were doing history and geography. Some would even venture into the boys territory of the sciences, Chemistry and Physics, and in many cases were very good at it but it left them rather over qualified if they were to be wives of farmers and truck drivers. They could of course be teachers.

Then there was music as an option, beautiful church music, as you would expect remembering the contribution of music to Luther’s Reformation. During that time all the iconography and artistic expression in the German (Protestant) Church was removed and music sung in the vernacular replaced the Latin Mass.

But then at around the time my voice broke and weird, incomprehensible and uncontrollable things started happening in my body I recall over-hearing some older boys talking about ‘valency’ as it relates to chemistry. Let’s think of it as the combining power of atoms. Waiting for meals, in the dining room, on the way to chapel, this word kept cropping up. It was an arcane topic that many struggled to grasp and the boys who ‘got it’ commanded the attention of those who had not.

Here, I began to think, we may have stumbled upon an incontrovertible truth not referenced in either old or new testaments. My ignorance brought forth envy. It seemed that those destined to the ministry would follow the path of sound reason and logic, based on faith in the Bible, while those on other paths were free to follow more creative subjects like physics and chemistry. It may seem strange in this day and age but you must remember that these were the days when thorny problems like, ‘whether hats and gloves should be compulsory for women during church services’ were being hotly debated and contested. They were at the tip of the theological iceberg which at the time of the amalgamation of the two Lutheran Churches in Australia ironically resulted in more splinter groups than before.

I’m not sure why this idea of valency was so disturbing; could atoms really combine with other atoms in a variety of ways, not just one? Theologically, it felt unsafe. It suggested ‘choice’ was a fundamental principle not exclusive to erring humans navigating this vale of tears. ‘Choice’, if if that’s what it is, at an atomic level would have serious implications for free will and original sin that would have to be reworked. And all this at a time when so many resources were taken up with bringing forward the argument, based on the second law of thermodynamics no less, against evolution.

So you really can see that ‘valency’ is the nub at the very heart of my teenage existential crisis awash with uncontrollable hormones. The idea that a set limited number of atoms, that were then thought to be or close to being fundamental particles, could combine in different ways to form completely different substances, every substance in fact. Could this be a Trojan Horse to the Creation Story of Genesis about to do it’s devilish work while the masses are of defending against evolution?

The second idea , if you are willing to accept the first, is that atoms are able to have different energy states; a resting state and a specific number of excited states for any given atom that cause them to absorb and emit energy.
In contrast, stories can be thought of as being constant. Take the Bible, for instance, where the interpretation arrived at by learned men can be considered singular, reliable and irrefutable, so long as this idea of valency and similar heresies don’t take hold. That, dear reader, was a long time ago but not so long ago as the creations stories of the central desert, and all over Australia.

I now know that stories have valency. They connect forward and back, left and right, up and down, inner and outer. They connect trans-dimensionally, through and across time, metaphorically, literally and poetically. A dreaming story, can be rendered as a cartoon or as a children’s book on the one hand or you can hear them in their intended state, on country, evoked by actual places, refined as memory bites into songs and offering multi level interpretations in various contexts, the same story informing language, country, kinship and ceremony. They tell us how to understand the world, ourselves and our place in it, how the world works and what we should tell our kids. Stories link to other stories not only as a chain but also as a net that hold country and consciousness together.

So when I tell you about arriving at the place near Atatjara, the story will light up and with numerous connections if you think about it with both imaginative and rational mind together, prioritising one over the other as the context demands.

I once witnessed someone, who was struggling to resolve once and for all whether a particular dreaming ancestor was a human being or the animal they represent, ask the question, were they ‘this’ or were they ‘that’. No answer was given and I never did find out what happened to the person asking the question, but I recognised it as a ‘valency moment’, a valency of zero.

The country in front of us was traversed by two sisters, the kind of women you might see walking that country today. They are also dreaming ancestors whose digging for game, particularly water snakes, formed Tjawarapitja Creek. Trying to catch a big water snake whose tracks they had seen at the entrance of an underground tunnel system, they built a fire and fanned smoke through the burrows so they could see where they might flush him out. Smoke came out in many places, near Pimba over 700 km away, back at Piltarti the waterhole at the head of this songline in the Mann Ranges and at other places.

Two Brothers, their husbands or husbands to be depending on when you pick up the story, are in pursuit of them and want them to come back and stay at Piltarti. They travel though, not as men but transformed into Wanampi, carpet snake, water snake, forming the underground water courses and seapages that link and refill the rock holes as do the women the creeks. You can see what is going to happen, can’t you?

Think of this happening not a long time ago, but in the durative realm, the eternal now, the Dreaming. Trying to put it on a linear timeline is fraught. Time is not what what we think it is but an abstraction of consciousness. If you wanted the theory I’d have to go into Quantum Physics, a subject well beyond me. Alternatively you could listen on country to the wisdom of First Nations Peoples where even kids and teenagers follow the drift with fascination.

I took this short video clip on my phone after Witjiti, Murray and me decided on the spur of the moment to go find Keith and go down to Atatjara. Keith's Tjamu, Richard, who was one of the kids when we shot Two Brothers Walking segments at Piltarti came along too. It was about a six hour drive for Witjiti, Murray and me in all. Murray suggested we tidy ourselves up a bit when we do the proper picture.

Tags: APY Lands, Pitjantjatjara

I arranged the night before to take the three youngens back to Adelaide with me. So when asked if I had a seat for an old man as far as Port Augusta, I said Palya. I was looking for another driver to share the trip. As it happened the joungens mum and dad decided they wanted to come after all so that would be extra drivers. I thought, great. As it happened, neither had a full license so once again, things never come out the way you picture them in your head. I used to experience this as a disappointment, a letdown; that things never work out the way I thought or imagined they would until it occurred to me after many years of trying to plan or anticipate better, that that is the way it is, not something you have to accept, but the way it is meant to be. All the old chestnuts: The best laid plans etc, etc miss one essential point. Plans are more like a rudder than a boat. I'd put a lot of effort into trying to build a better boat over the years when what was needed moment to moment was agility with the rudder.

It was dark when we set off thinking. There would be little traffic. I was particularly conscious of animals on the road, donkeys, camels, bullocks but the only animal we saw was what looked to me like a very unusual black rabbit darting across the road. Deep in contemplation of how such a thing had come to be, a black rabbit here in the bush rather than a suburban pet, I was coming up with some pretty convincing possibilities until it was pointed out that it was in fact a brown rabbit and what I had seen so clearly was the shadow in the headlights. My theories of the genesis of this black rabbit, a number of which in this very short time I was already becoming quite attached to, was about as substantial as the black rabbit itself, nothing but shadow.

If you are a practical type of person who loves learning by doing, that is, learning from experience, it's important to be happy to be wrong most of the time. Many things are rarely what they seem at first and how they came about is be different to what you think. My uncle had a saying that I first though was clever and later realised it was a piece of homespun wisdom. When asked for his opinion on some controversial matter, "It's anybody's guess," he would say, "but nobody would know!"

A crack of light was starting to form at the horizon, a couple of shades of grey difference. You couldn't make anything out in the low light but you could clearly see where it was. There should be a word for that, the sense of optimism that you feel in your whole body, a pure sensation, unsullied by content, an absolute assurance of potentiality. "Let there be light," comes to mind, a kind of light that doesn't make black rabbits.

As quickly as I notice the light on the horizon the vehicle is enveloped in a pall of dust. We have to slow down to that bone shaking speed at which the Landcruiser relinquishes its 'King of the Road' status and is is not better than any other rattle trap. Below a particular speed the vehicle faithfully follows the corrugations of the road like every other. I wonder who else is out on the road early like us. Speculation from the back seat, usually accurate, says it's the Mai Wiru truck, a tripple trailer road train that comes in to restock the community stores twice a week. Now there is a third driving hazard; the light, the shadows, the dust.

If you know the road well you can read it as you go and build on you prior experience. I don't and can't. I have to interpret, not remember what I see in this partial low contrast light. It's like this: If you put white text on a mid grey background, then you wan to see what black writing looks like instead you can change the colour. If you have a slider to take you through a continuum of greys from white to black, at the point the text vanishes as it transits for lighter to darker than the background. The same happens with colours. While the text might not vanish completely there is a range in which you can't read it clearly. The closer you are, the easier it is to see the boundaries.The further away you are the closer your are to the vanishing point.

A small region on the horizon turns the rosiest colour of rose I can recall. It is stunning. There is enough cloud cover to catch and hold the spectacular scene for us. The dust alternately drifts away and hangs over the road. After about 20 minutes we see that the lights of the semi seem to hang on the top of the next hill about a kilometre away. he must have pulled up to check his load or to let us past or both. Drawing near we see it's not Mai Wiru but a load of camels, the third one in the last two days. That's nine trailer loads of camel being trucked out.

The dust gone, we can increase to a more comfortable driving speed, but not too much because I don't know the road. The changes in the colour of the road from white to red are so abrupt that in this light that on this undulating country I sometimes interpret the colour boundary as road edge profile against the brighter sky. I should prepare for a sharp corner ahead. On closer inspection it is simply a change in soil colour and the road continues straight on. I should know this because there are no sharp bends on these roads only sweeping curves. My eyes and senses are playing tricks in the early morning light.

There's enough cloud in the sky to treat us to a spectacular display but not enough to shield the blast of the rising sun itself. We are travelling due east and a new choice presents itself. The changing light leaves us as blind as the dust. Keeping your eye on the edges of the very wide road is essential. It is the most distinguishable thing in the field of view at the moment. I understand now why leaving at four is so often talked about. It is so obvious to everyone else but I didn't have a clue, till now. But hey, had I known and we'd left earlier, we would have missed a feature sunrise.

By the time we reach the bitumen we have full daylight. As we hit it I have a pang of regret and a flash of fear that I will forget everything and fall back into city sleep. I search for something to hold on to, but there is nothing. Now is a new moment.

The rose red sunrise

offers a moment

to remember.

Tags:

I set my swag up on Murrays verandah. Actually I set up a little office there with a collapsable table and a couple of camp chairs. I've brought a lead to connect into his power supply to recharge my camera batteries, run my laptop for data wrangling and added a little gas stove for numerous kuppatees and cooking. I fancy myself as a bit of a cook whether it's the simple corned beef and potatoes we had with tomatoes last night or a pot of my legendary 'Greek Stew'. if we are camping in the bush or on the sand hills or perhaps at Mulga Bore, Witjiiti's homeland that I told you about last time and have waru (firewood, fire) at hand I like to use the camp oven for damper or anything really. Let me know below if you want a copy of my Greek stew recipe. It's as much a method as a recipe and can be used to cook what ever you have on hand.

I usually wake up a couple of times through the night when camping. If you don't you miss a lot, maybe a donkey, or what sounds like a donkey stampede, dingoes coming in looking for any meat scraps and bones and stuff like that. Sometimes it gets pretty busy when the humans are sleeping. It also means you can stoke the fire up a bit through cold night's, though I don't usually bother because my swag has a canopy zipped on. It's like a cocoon and one of the warmest beds I've ever slept in. One time, I gotta laugh, we were camping at Mulga Bore, it was freezing, the waru had gone out, and when I got up to make the early morning cuppa, I looked over to Murray and saw frost formed in his hair over night and his hair had turned into mini icicles. He prefers to sleep on a mattress roll with a couple of blankets.

Me, I like creature comforts and I want to take the opportunity to share one of my biggest tips for campers. It really simple, and people who have adopted this initiative agree. And it more for older people who don't do yoga and don't mind taking a bit of trouble for some extra comfort, It is this; a small mat beside your swag means you can take your boots of at bed time and keep your bed and the sand separate - take you boots off while your standing on your mat and step into you swag with clean feet. It might sound like a simple thing, but people who eat in bed, I don't understand the practise myself, can testify that crumbs in the bed and sand even more so, is the enemy of a good night's rest. If you implement the mat beside the sway initiative you'll never stop singing it's praises. People will immediate know that you are a practical person who lives by experience and not by other peoples theories and, AND you will have a ready subject for small talk with strangers who enquire. I've seen people leave that conversation with a sense of purpose that I hadn't noticed in them before. As for crumbs in the bed, my advice is don't do it. The mat method can help you there.

But I digress. It's about 1.15 am and hearing a noise, I look out of the swag to see that a donkey has wondered into the yard looking for feed. If you saw all the tussocks of bufflelgrass in the back yards you could be forgiven for thinking they come in for that. But no, there is negligible nutritional value in dry Buffelgrass. But that's not the end of it. Buffelgrass burns at a higher temperature than native grasses (that are nutritious) and bring burning temperatures onto the landscape higher than native grasses can't tolerate. It out competes native grasses, provides less nutrition and spreads very quickly. Being brought in from outside means it has no natural predators to keep it in balance and is a serious threat.

So the donkeys eat what they can find and depart. I'm surprised that the numerous dogs don't move them on earlier. I guess the more rambunctious ones have received the donkey's back hooves at speed and thought better of it. Later on a brumby came in which is quite unusual, so unusual in fact that when I reported it later some wondered if this city slicker could tell the difference between a horse and a donkey.

I went back to sleep, only to be woken a short while later, as it happened by a bad small. I say bad smell but that doesn't cover the half of it. PWAAAH! That was a first - being woken by a bad smell. It took some time to orient myself. It reminds me of when as a kid you wake up in the middle of the night upside down in bed with your head at the feet end and visa versa. You feel around in the dark and discover that the wall that you bed is up against had moved over to the other side. When you get up to turn on the light to find out what is going on, you can't find the switch because the door is at the opposite corner of the room to normal. The experience has been known to induce quite a panic until you work your way round to find the door, turn the light on and you see that everything is in its proper place and you wonder, what was that all about? I still do, so if you have any theories I would like to hear them.

So this smell has woken me up. It's like someone has dumped a kangaroo carcass under my nose. It is so strong that even now, days later, I have to hold my breath as I write about it so as to not wake the memory of that smell. Then I realise there's most likely a dog curled up on the other side of the canvass only centimetres away. The next thing that happens is like turning on that light at the wrong end of the room and It all comes home to me in an instant as I realise the true purpose of the special stick Murray said we should make and that I should bring to the APY Lands every time I come. I now think and you'll soon see why it rivals the mat as a most useful camping innovation, though it's utility is restricted to a short, intense time frame, while the mat provides a degree of comfort that lasts the whole night.

The stick has to be long enough to discourage dogs out of the smell zone from your swag without you having to get up. If you have to get up for other reasons that's OK, but it is pointless to get up in the middle of the cold night to chase a dog away from your nice warm swag. It just won't work. He'll wait a few minutes till you've gone back to sleep and sneak in silently again and once you realise it will be too late.

If they see the stick there where they want to lay, you wont even have to use it. They are clever animals and will work out the safe distance from the length of the stick themselves, though some of the younger ones resort to trial and error before they get the hang of judging distance.

I lay there contemplating how I wished the dogs would eat their meat in a fresher state before coming in for a comfortable nap smelling like rank carrion. Then I remembered I left my coat next to the sway last night, to make it more comfortable if I had to get up though the night that happens sometimes after too many cups of tea or ready for the morning. But now the dog had my attention quicker than finding the wall on the wrong side of the bed and in a greater panic, worried that the coat I would have to wear if it was cold when we arrive back in Adelaide around midnight tonight was polluted with the smell of carrion. I would rather that Carol was glad to see me when I got home.

I moved as fast as I could, as if it wasn't already too late. I reached out and yes, there was a dog there and he didn't want to be moved. A short altercation ensued and I was relieved to see that my coat had been spared and that he had curled up, a beautiful sight if the olfactory senses are turned off, on a pillow/blanked my mother made decades ago, bless her. She was handy with a sewing machine and made all her children this simple but ingenious travel rug that folded into twelve and had a pocket that you turned in on itself, thereby folding the blanket inside and turning the blanket into a pillow and at the same time revealing a handy carry strap for your wrist, altogether more useful for carrying stuff to the car for packing especially when you don't want to hold the pillow/blanket with your mouth for obvious reasons that I have just explained.

As well thought out as it was, the object did have one drawback, and that is that if your were using it as a pillow, you didn't have a blanket. I find that if you need a blanket you often need a pillow too though not necessarily the other way around. I would love to know your thoughts or solutions on this. Please let me know below. If you want, I could even provide you with a little sketch with measurements if you are handy with a sewing machine and like the idea. Just ask, because it is something I would probably enjoy doing if anyone was interested and it would save you from having to go through back issues of the Australian Women's Weekly.

You might be tempted to think that today's story is rather trivial and inconsequential compared to some of the previous missives. But if you were to do so, you would be wrong because these simple approaches to life are in fact a doorway into the profoundly creative thinking. Whether it is working out how to attach a cutting stone to the handle of a spear thrower using kiti derived from spinifex or acacia plants or mapping a navigational route with a story, it is all based on simple technologies that are well practised and applied in an inventive and creative way.

It's not like coding software, although now that I think about it...It's not like building in a two-cubit gate for a quantum computer, but is a critical way of thinking that can lead to profound observations. It is a way of thinking that leads to challenges and problems working themselves out by letting them push against their opposite and having a solution arise spontaneously from the tjuni, the gut, we might say, intuitively.

Take, for example the pillow/blanket example; logical, rational thinking brings us to an impasse, you can have one or the other, not pillow and blanket together. The logic about it is certain. When we look at this trivial example in context rather than with logic, my brain gets happy. I hope yours does too. I like to sit with a paradox and wait for a solution. It is a skill you need for using stories and songs as maps and linking things through neural nets rather than logical chain and a critical orientation in thinking necessary to reboot your brain in mythic rather than numerate and classifying processing.

Artists do it all the time and naturally, but most of all it is something that can be learnt. The western world heavily prioritises logical rational over intuitive mythic thinking. We may fall into the trap of thinking that the opposite of rational is irrational. It is not. The opposite is intuitive and something desperately needed in our modern world to find solutions to the complex problems of today. Problems like how to live well and in harmony with nature in a drying and warming landscape as first nations people did millenia ago.

I'm not saying we should go back to hunting with kulata miru (speer and woomera) but that there are ways of thinking developed by first nations peoples that are sorely needed today, ways that even the fastest super computers cannot model and solve but those same complex and paradoxical questions can have solutions in a moment with the right thinking. It's the difference between being clever and being wise.

I had intended to tell you about the trip home but you have already been too generous with your time so I will leave it to next time so that you can make yourself a nice cuppa and have a minute or two to watch your thoughts before you get on with what you have to do.

Tags: APY Lands, Pitjantjatjara

I dream I'm driving the Toyota down towards the Kunamata crossroads, Witjiti beside me and the other senior men in the back. He calls out, "Stop, Stop!. Back up, back up." I reverse back through a small depression in the ground along side a couple of trees close to the road that are rounder and a deeper green that all the others and with much denser foliage.

"See that line," I look to the west and then east perpendicular to the road and see that there is a slight depression, a swale running diagonally across the road where it dips to come back up again. The swale starts on higher ground out of sight on the western side and runs across the road continuing until it disappears in the grass and trees to the east. (People interested in permaculture will know the term 'swale' very well. It is a way to slow the passage of surface water through the landscape thereby rehydrating the country.)

"Those two brothers, that Wanampi came through here, see?" All through the conversation, he uses the terms, Two Brothers, the human form of the dreaming ancestors interchangeably with Wanampi, the same dreaming ancestor but now in the form with which he travels across country, also referred to as water snake. It is a poetic sensibility that comes into play here, too subtle for science to grasp. Earlier on I mentioned rebooting my brain into a mythic or narrative way of processing information. It is bigger and more encompassing than the one I use in the city, the one best for numbers, data and linear rational thinking, but about as useful as a stopwatch and hammer and nailbag full of nails out here.

In the dream I have the image of what Murray was talking about as we drove from Fregon to Nyapari. Do you remember, dear reader, I told you how Murray talked to me in one ear about the place names, geography, hydrology and passage of surface water during flood time, while Witjiti told me stories about the two women and the two brothers as Wanampi travelling across the country in the other ear. We had stopped during the drive to point out the positions of tjukala, rock holes, across the landscape.

"That one over there is a big one," you can get kapi (water) out with a bill can. At another time he might say, "That one you have to use a jam tin, billy can wont fit in. It never dries up." And he goes on to explain how the porous rock directs the underground water flow across the landscape and can be accessed where the rock has been opened up to form a crack.

I understand that this country is not what some think of as desert at all. Just underneath the surface is plenty of water and you can access it if you know the way the two sisters and the Wanampi travelled across the country. The story is your map.

In my dream, I feel the earth viscerally, the cracks full of kapi that have opened up to the surface as rockholes. I can feel it in my body, I'm part of the earth and that Wanampi is there too, in my guts, moving slowly in the same direction as the swale.

In a moment I am woken up by my own crying. I feel really good but filled to the brim and over flowing. The same thing happened when we were shooting "Two Brothers Walking" at the Laura Dance festival in Far North Queensland. It had been a long trip and I was tired from filming on the run. I came out of the tent for breakfast that first day and the ladies were laughing at me, in a sweet way, and said I had been crying in my sleep through the night.

I didn't remember then but now I know it is from feeling the deep connection, no not deep connection, but actually feeling a part of country, continuous with it. My body, country, same. We may all be made of stardust but it is the earth that has borne us. Earth is our mother and to her we will return. Scientific fact! But our spirit has altogether a different story.

Later on I call some of my good friends, senior men and check to see that it is OK to talk about this in a public way. In a conversations that goes for a couple of hours they say, "Palya, yes, it's OK." For some time afterwards, I have to choke down tears, not like crying from your eyes, but from your belly each time I talk about it. I really can't say what it is, but I am grateful.

Tags: APY Lands, Pitjantjatjara

I'm at Port Wakefield, the ritual stopping point for travellers north to and from Adelaide. Surprising how often you meet people you know here. It's a crisp winter morning, huge cloudless sky and ¾ moon. The first of the wattles are blossoming and I've settled in for a long drive. The sun is rising in expectation on my right and my thoughts wander to the re

cent coverage of the Apollo Moon landing that I watched so many years ago at boarding school on TV setup in a noisy dining room. From the reaction at the time it could have been happening world's away.

Pushing north from Marla the country becomes more sculptured with mini tabletops studding the eyeline like Braille spelling out – SACRED.

Tags: APY Lands, Pitjantjatjara

Tomorrow, I'm going bush, up to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands. I'll meet with custodians of Wanampi Tjukurpa, Rainbow Serpent Songline just south of the Northern Territory, border about an upcoming project to record stories, songs and biographies on and of that country. It's about 17 hours driving.

Tags: APY Lands, Pitjantjatjara