Miss Gabrielle...way outback

We had a cultural afternoon at school on Friday to try and encourage children to come to school. As we sat on the balcony, painting, the pungent smell of burning kangaroo skin was carried on a whimsical wind. The children didn’t lift their heads from their work but smiles broke out among them and they became more animated. When it was finally time to go down there, the burning skin had long been scraped away, exposing perfectly cooked flesh of pieces of kangaroo tail. The pieces of flesh were ripped into shreds and arranged onto bits of damper. The children pushed and hustled each other in the back of the line, but became perfectly calm the closer they got to the tin roof that covered a small block of concrete.

Within minutes eagles began to circle and dive, and as more approached they seemed to move into what looked like a holding pattern for aeroplanes. As one dived, and flew away they all moved closer to the ground and on by one dived for scraps on the ground. And like one would toss a scrap to a dog, the children absentmindedly flicked pieces away, some of which were swooped up by these magnificent birds before the scrap had become aquainted with the ground.

After the children finished, two old women, sitting on a blue tarp under splatterings of shade from a sickly tree, tapped sticks together and sang with voices that swooped and rose like the eagles. The sound was hauntingly beautiful and despite the breakdown of culture in the lives of our children, they grew quiet. They stopped teasing and listened. It was a feat rarely seen without the promise of soccer…the children became silent.

Some of them got up and danced with another old lady, stamping at the ground with measured severity, and moving their arms to imitate the animal that the song was about. There was one, where they stamped and moved around like they were aeroplanes, and seemed quite different compared to the other dances. One of the Aboriginal teachers told me afterwards that the dance had been a way of telling the story of an American fighter pilot, who, during WWII, lost control of his plane and crashed near Borroloola. The Aboriginal people rescued him and nursed him back to health before returning him to his regiment. This dance, was the embodiment of how recently the traditional culture was more or less intact. As they danced it together on the oval, under the shadow of the eagles, and with kangaroo tail still trapped in their teeth, how, possibly, some culture might still survive.

I spent an entire day by myself yesterday. I had minimal human contact and only left the house at 11.30pm because I was hungry and although i had turned down a dinner invitation from my neighbour, I was hungry and she graciously allowed me to come and get some leftovers to take home.

I did however make a new friend. I had gone to the toilet as one does...and as I flushed, out of the corner of my eye saw a little leg scramble back up under the rim of the bowl. I flushed again to see if it was my imagination and a little frog plopped into the toilet. I had a quick chat to him and went about my business. A few hours later when I returned to the bathroom he was there having a lovely swim. I waited as long as I could, not wanting to pee on my new friend, and also not wanting him to panic and jump onto my backside. Eventually I had to reach in and pick him up, then pee, and after flushing (the sound of which gave him a little fight) I put him back. This lovely interchange occured every few hours until I decided to take him for a walk. He sat with me as I typed some emails, and tucked his legs under his body like a newborn as I cooked some toast.

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I called him Greenie after my flatmate who just left Borroloola. She got the name when, on the second weekend we were here, she was wearing a green shirt as we went to a party. Due to the unimaginable stress of the first week of school, the fact that our belongings had not arrived and thus had nothing to cook with and had eaten cheese and crackers for a week and we were both beside ourselevs, we got drunk. After an hour or so Amandas face turned a little green, becoming more green as the night wore on and the drinking games began. After that she became known as Greenie. And now that she is gone...i have a new greenie.

I decided to go for a walk in the late afternoon, just as the shadows begin to creep over the planes, through the streets, their cool breath warning of a chilly night ahead. I put my i-pod in both my ears, though only the left earphone plays music. I walked brisky, my feet melting into the bull dust as i stumbled over the loose corregations in the bush road. Two toddlers wandered in the road ahead of me. On squatted down, her nappy just brushing the dirt, as she looked intently at a rock. Another, no older than three and also wearing a nappy rode around on a two wheeled bike. A younger child toddled naked towards me. I took my earphone from my ear and bent down to say hello, but her mother walked out and stared at me in a manner that told me to move on. I replaced my earphone and continued up the road. The dogs from the houses ran at the fence, barking and pacing, sometimes even running into it as if i was a giant walking hunk of meat, though it was somehow more flattering than when I would walk past construction sights in Mexico and the men would do the same.

I carried a rock in my pocket as protection so that if any of the dogs did get out I would at least have something ready to throw. I was just entering a rhythm of music and my steps when I suddently noticed the fast sound of moving sand behind me. I swung around, one hand on the rock in my pocket and one instinctively covering my face as a large dog, jumped at me. His foot caught my earphone wire, tearing them from my ears. The dog fell to the ground and as he was about to pounce again, I took the rock, lifted it above my head, and started to bring it down onto its skull when his tongue darted out and started licking my arm. I recognised a scar on his head. It was Chopper. He is the dog that belongs to everyone. If he was a man, he would have a wife, and 6 mistresses. All of them would know but he would be so charming and make them feel so special that none of them would really mind. Chopper, (who has also been named Wolf, Billy Bob and Dog by people who thought that he had adopted them) makes you feel like you are his long lost owner. He will faithfully follow you around, sit outside your house, eat your scraps and he never whines or begs. Then, just as you are getting emotionally attached, he will dissappear. Chopper followed me the whole way on my walk, occasionally running into the bush to chase something but as soon as I whistled he would come bounding back and lick my leg as if to apologise. I walked up to the top of tank hill, the one hill that overlooks Borroloola on one side and flat plains on the other. I could see bush firesgorging on the trees that blanketed a ridge in the distance then vomiting plumes of smoke. 

It had been a long week at school and was physically and emotionally exhausted. Frustration takes up a lot of energy and it makes me angry that parents just dont send their children to school. It not only sets them up to fail in life, but it also affects the other children. The children who dont come are not used to structure which means that time that should be invested into teaching goes to behaviour management. Children who dont come have lower levels of achievement which, if there is enough of them which there are, effects the general standard set for the class. There is no excuse for a parent violating their own childs basic human right to have an education. So I had been mulling over these things, watching the sunset and the fire in the distance, and had become so frustrated and angry and sad that I started to cry. Chopper was at the other side of the hill, and even though I cried silently, with a few tears dribbling down my cheeks, Chopper came running over, he looked up at me and, like a good friend who knows that sometimes nothing needs to be said, he sat at my feet.

I patted the corse fur on his head and, knowing there was nothing that I could do about the situation, I headed for home. I slumped down on the couch and two children knocked on my door. They had just came to say hi and that they would be at school tomorrow as they had been away for a week. I gave them a big smile and told them that I looked forward to seeing them there.

The transition teacher teaches a letter of the alphabet and its sound each week and this week was the letter N. The children did lots of different activities to consolodate their learning and one of them was making noodles. They made them, ate them and then copied a piece of writing that said 'here are my noodles'. They then had to draw a picture of themselves with their noodles. One of the boys, who was clearly confused by all this talk of noodles, drew a picture of himself...with his own noodle...prominantly hanging down. Oh the joys of the awkward moments of a transition teacher.

I got a letter this morning, and one section sums up what this week has been like for me. “Life keeps reminding us that it consists of both good and bad, but up there it is completely undeniable. Must of us cluster on the coast trying to make our lives all good, and therefore living in fear of the bad.”

Life up here is as wild as the land we all live on. We may be able to influence it but we can never control it. On Sunday night my chest began to feel like someone had placed a rock on my sternum. It was how I felt when I had pneumonia only a couple of months ago but I didn’t have a fever so I had some vitamins and had an early night.

On Monday my voice was croaky and I had begun to cough. The children asked me ‘miss, why do you have a rusty voice?’ When I woke up on Tuesday I had no voice at all, but with no sick leave and absolutely no one who could take my class I went in to school again. The day was a game with the children to see if they could interpret my sign language. They did a magnificent job. They read the big book by themselves. I had to act out words they didn’t know and they were overjoyed when they could guess them correctly. The one boy in the class who can read interpreted instructions written on the board ‘go and open your red books’ etc. Instead of asking me how to spell words they began asking each other. They worked together and supported each other. I was excited to see the shift from the beginning of the year where they fought with each other and called each other dumb if they didn’t know something.

The assistant teacher told me a fable about this. She said ‘a fisherman goes out to fish for crabs. There are white fella crabs and Aboriginal crabs. He caught a bucket of each but fell asleep in his boat. The white fella crabs crawled on top of each other and all of them crawled out of the buckets and to freedom. But every time an Aboriginal crab began to crawl out, the other crabs would pull him back into the bucket.’

My children were so beautifully behaved and I was proud of them. Just before lunch time one girl came up to me with her work. She pointed to each part, then to the blank part at the bottom and shrugged her shoulders. I pointed to the blank part and motioned for her to draw. She repeated my motion of drawing and then shrugged her shoulders again. I pointed to all her work and then motioned again to draw it all. Then she understood, smiled and gave me the thumbs up. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t deaf, I just had no voice but of corse I was unable. By lunch time, most of the children were signing to me rather than speaking. My room has never been so quiet.

I dragged myself to the staff meeting after school and went straight home to bed. By Wednesday I was feeling quite unwell and the novelty of another silent day had worn off for me and the children. I was grumpy and they responded accordingly, and became more difficult. One of the assistant teachers came and did art with my students. She made a giant paper mache turtle and seeing that I was sick she reached into her bag and pulled out some goo which she rubbed on my neck. I was a little alarmed at first but then I felt a heat radiate into my neck. She told me to put some on my chest and it felt like someone had poured warm scented water into my chest cavity. She told me shyly that it was bush medicine. Then she whispered ‘I don’t trust those white man tablets, not natural’. I was inclined to agree. She told me that she would come around to my house that night with a barrel of boiling bush medicine that I could put in the bath and bathe in.

By that night I had become feverish and was feeling very unwell. I decided to go to the clinic in the morning. I was sleeping on the couch when there was a knock at the door. I struggled to my feet, and opened it, ready to see this lovely large Aboriginal woman. When I opened the door there was a little, white, blond girl. My brain, slow on the uptake said ‘hi, come in’. Then I realized it was Christine Jauncy…one of my favourite people in the world. She is generous, fun, talented, big-hearted, and happy, all rolled up in a massive bundle of coolness. For a moment I threw off the blanket of fever and unwellness and leapt into her arms. We both jumped up and down for a while until I was overcome with a fit of coughing and had to sit down. She had driven all the way from Sydney, and had Borroloola as a stop just for me. She came with her flatmate and her 2 lovely children.

Amanda had been at the pub watching the State of Origin and had told one of the nurses that I was not well. Concerned, the nurse came to check my chest after the game. She diagnosed mild pneumonia and went to the clinic to get me some antibiotics and other medicines and instructed me severely to take the following day off work, not only for my sake but for the children which was fair enough. I took the following day off work and slept all day, leaving Christine to explore the huge metropolis that is Borroloola.

I got up from my sleep and went into work to finish my reports which were due the next day. I had been organised and thought I just had to check what I had done, only to discover to my great distress that I had not even begun the reports and had been working on something completely different. I had hours of work ahead of me, by best friend waiting at home for me, and lungs that had decided to conduct their own mutiny. Nearing tears I sat for a few hours on a tiny blue kindy chair, with parts of my buttock hanging off one side as I typed in information, cursing the day I decided to become a teacher.

I went home, climbed into my purple onesie that mum sent me, and trudged across the road to Ryans house to sleep as Christine and the kids were bunking down in my room.

On Friday I was beginning to feel a little better, and went to the sports carnival. I finished my reports, noting with each hour with tentative excitement that I was beginning to feel better. My voice began to return. I finished my reports and high fived the kids as they ran and jumped and threw their way through the day. Christine, Katch and the kids even sat on the oval with their red Barra shirts on. Perhaps a little different to what they had planned. I sent them off to Carranbarrini, a national park with amazing rock formations, and I stole more health back as I slept all afternoon. We went to the pub for dinner that night and I watched the teachers leave for the long weekend. I had long resigned myself to a lonely long weekend, but as Saturday dawned, I felt almost normal, and we all jumped in the car and went on a road trip.

We drove all day, the 5 of us, a car and a trailer. I had dreaded the thought of travelling 600km with a 5 and an 8 year old but they were brilliant. They were so quiet I had to keep checking that they were there. We got to the Barunga festival and went in search of the school bus with the teachers from school in it. When we got through the gates and saw how huge the place was we gave up and found a tree to camp under. Just as we finished setting up camp, and the sun had set, I realized that the bus we camped next to was the Borroloola school bus. We made an appatising meal of rice and potatos and then headed to the main stage. I didn’t stay for long before getting tired and wandering back to the camp site. Christine and I sat and chatted under the moonlight, with the slight smell of gas as the burner illuminated pale gum tree, with its sqiggly veins.

Once I stopped coughing, I slept well, cosy and warm in my purple onesie. We slept under a mosquito net, staring up into the stars and the full moon casting its silver shadow onto the camp.

We had breakfast, and after a foiled attempt to kidnap Christine and stuff her into the car, we left them there, waving sadly as we pulled out. She had come for a few days with 3 people I didn’t know, and they slotted into life like they had always been here. I missed them before they were even out of view.

I jumped into the nurses car with Amanda and we went into Katherine to get supplies. I bought 2 pairs of jeans, a belt and spent ridiculous amounts of money on food at Woolworths. I even treated myself to a current Sydney Morning Herald, which set me back $6. We headed back to Borroloola, stopping for a quick swim in the thermal pools at Mataranka before tackeling the 550km back to ‘the Loo’. 

And so this week has been…where life happens, where good and bad are so entwined that they are merely present, neither exists without the other, so neither should be singled out and sought. I felt so unwell but there were flickers of life, love and humanity that would otherwise have remained hidden. My children worked together to learn, a quiet Aboriginal woman opened her culture to me in a touch and the millennia of knowledge in her bush medicine, a nurse who was willing to come over in the middle of the night to listen to my chest, Christine who made soup, and Katch who beat mucus from my lungs. I will not seek good, nor bad, rather I will accept that they are twins in the womb of life.

We are making a giant turtle today in class and I asked the kids what they wanted to name it. We got the usual 'Rodger, Mavis, Abraham' and then one of the child said something that sounded like 'goodangi'. It was clearly an aboriginal word and I thought it was a great idea for the name for the turtle. When i said 'brilliant, sounds good', the assistant teacher gave me a concerned look. She asked me if i knew the meaning of the word. I said I didnt. She whispered to me that it means 'slut'. The kids unanomously decided to call our class turtle 'slut'. So of course I had to veto the name. He is now called Rodger.

We have to report on certain aspects of the curriculum. I hadnt been given these areas until after I had done all my programing so I had a few issues trying to assess my kids on it. I had to come up with some activities to teach and test them in a short amount of time.

One of the areas was the natural environment. Students had to work out if something was man made or natural. Now i didnt think this would be much of an issue but there was very little understanding.

'Miss, is the oval man made?'

Was it always there?

Yes

So it is natural

So the goal posts are natural too?

No, they werent always there

Yes they were.

Hmmm...

So this went on for about 30 mins. I took them outside and they had to catogorise everything they saw. Many of them were very muddled until on of the children said:

'So miss...when you say its natural, does that mean that Jesus made it?'

'Yes, you could say that'.

The girl then went and told everyone...'Its Jesus made or Man made'. There was a collective sigh of 'oh...why didnt you just say that?''

They had no issues after that.

Before I took the job to teach here I told my boss that I had to return to Sydney in week four for my brothers wedding. Everything was agreed upon. Flights were booked and all was good. Until the universe decided to conspire.

There is a mine which is an hour out of Borroloola and we use the mine flights to get back to Darwin but two weeks before the wedding the mine closed and flights were to be cut back, and possibly stop running completely. We called up almost every day to check if there were flights but they could not guarantee us a spot.

A week before the wedding, not only had the mine shut but the rains began to flood the area. I was due to fly out on a Tuesday morning flight and on Thursday night, the mine was still not confirming flights, and the road to the mine was underwater. With flood waters surrounding Borroloola on all sides there was no vehicle access in or out, not that I had a car anyway. I was beginning to panic. I felt like it was my last chance to get out of the middle of nowhere and if I didn’t get on a flight I may never be seen again.

So I called my ever trusty father. I had heard that there was a charter flight bringing  teachers into the tiny Borroloola airstrip on the Saturday morning and I wanted to get on that plane. My fear of flying shrunk into non-existence compared to my fear of being stranded in Borroloola.

Dad said he would make some enquiries on the Friday which of course gave us less than 24 hours. While I was teaching, Dad was bouncing around on the phone between several departments within the DET. At 1pm my class was interrupted by a very angry principal. My father had secured my escape from Borroloola, and the DET had called my principal to confirm my leave. Dad was waiting for the department to confirm, before calling me. I waiting for my dad to confirm it was a possibility before approaching the principal and the department wanted to confirm with the principal before confirming with my dad. I was not particularly popular that day but I had my ticket out and I didn’t know if I was going to return.

As I left school that day I heard that the flooding had worsened and that the road through Borroloola was unpassable. The road that separated Borroloola heights, where I live, with the airport. 

I went down to see how badly flooded it was. Rose was down there, bare footed, and with no shirt. She looked at the rest of the children playing in the water and came and stood so close to me that her skin was always touching some part of me. She didn’t speak and didn’t look at me, just came close. Then, I reached my hand down and took her soft little hand in mine. She looked at me in the eyes for the first time and smiled. We walked together silently towards the water. As we neared the edge I dropped her hand folded my skirt in my hand and waded in with her, praying that I had no open sores and that the crocodiles were floating elsewhere.

When we got as far as I was willing to venture, I let go of her and told her to go and swim with her friends. After some hesitation she did. She dived under the water and the insects that had been nestled into her matted hair floated away.

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I decided that even if the water failed to recede, I would still be safe to cross the next day. I would just have to carry my pack on my head, take some spare dry clothes and brave Mr Bombastic.

As I was finishing my packing and getting ready for bed, another storm broke. It rained heavily for 2 hours before I decided that there was no way I could cross the road the next day. Amanda and I went to Annas house, and then we also gathered Sheree. At 10pm, I put a red poncho over my pj’s and we went in search of a boat and a driver who would be willing to get up at dawn and get me across the river. We found Shelly, a chef from NZ who used to be part of the silverferns NZ netball team. As her home made spa bubbled away, she put a beer in our hands and listened to our story. Then she made some phone calls and within minutes had found a boat, a driver, and a 4WD to drive me down to the boat ramp. The only proviso was that I had to bring back a bottle of rum for both of them.

Although my flight was at 9am I was desperately paranoid about missing it so I arranged to be picked up at 7am.

The car was waiting for me as the day dawned, a day that was much too sanguine considering the foul mood of the weather the previous night. We drove towards the boat ramp but decided, since we had time, to look at the water level. When we drove up the water was just licking the edges of the bridge. We drove straight over, our tires were barely dampened.

I cursed and thanked the heavens at the same time, not sure if I liked the bipolar nature of it all, even when it did go my way.

When I got to the airport I found the pilot already getting the plane ready. I waited in the terminal which is a picnic table under a 2 sided concrete block.

Despite being told that the flight was at 9 the pilot had decided to leave at 7.30am so it was the one time that being anal about getting to the airport early paid off.

But then he lost his fuel cards and could not put fuel in the plane. He walked back to his trailer in the local guest house in search of these cards while I lay on top of the picnic table with my head resting on my bag.

Finally the plane was ready to go. He asked me if I had been in one of these planes before to which I answered ‘not really’. Then he took me around to the side of the plane to show me the emergency procedures. He opened a hatch and pointed to a yellow pack.

‘In there’ he said, ‘is some food, water and flares for if we crash and I die’.  I am not a fan of flying normally, having spent $1000 on a Qantas fearless flying course…but I was so desperate to leave that the threat of death, or surviving in the wilderness with only flares and crackers didn’t phase me in the slightest.

Borroloola was on the ABC news a few months back because the children had been tormenting a large salt water crocodile that inhabits the river. The children are convinced that the crocodiles can’t see their black bodies in the water so they won’t get taken when they swim in there.

The first croc they took as a pet was called snowy. He was a large albino croc and was easy to spot in the water. He became so famous that he was relocated to a croc park in Darwin much to the disappointment of the children and some locals. There have been many kidnapping plans hatched but stealing a large albino crocodile is not the simplest thing to undertake

Another croc grew and took his place. His name is Mr Bombastic and the children treat him like they do many pets. They stole some chickens from a farm and threw them live to the 17 foot croc. When they got tired of this, they found some of the camp dogs, and tied them to trees and watched while Mr Bombastic swivelled out of the water, took the dogs in one bite and slunk back into the murkiness. But as children do, they took it one step further and some of the older children convinced some of the younger ones to swing on branches above him so they could watch him erupt from the water with his teeth champing.

A lot of parents say that they love all their children, but they just hold different rooms in their hearts. I think it is the same as teaching. Every child in my class affects me. If they are sick, I worry about them. If they are sad, I feel it too. If they are happy, my own happiness is magnified. But it can be hard out here, where I am so aware of the living conditions, the social situation, the statistics.

Rose is one child that I have been particularly concerned about. She is withdrawn in class, doesn’t play with the other students and it took weeks before I heard her unsure voice. I often caught her watching every movement I made around the classroom, but she looked away before I could make eye contact. I often wake at night with ideas about how I could build trust enough for her to interact.