Week 14 Millstream Chichester National Park

I am noticing the silences and spaces in WA. We drive for hours across open, empty landscapes and a line from a song my beautiful singer-songwriter friend, Sara Tindley, wrote has been on rotation in my mind: I imagine I can still see the traces of the people who loved this place the most.  

It’s ironic that we‘re travelling with our home on our back, with a hundred or so litres of water in the tank and food in the pantry, when the first people on these lands walked knowing where the water, the best food and shelter were. I haven’t seen any Aboriginal people traversing this land, either on foot or in a caravan or camper trailer. 

Early in the trip I read Stan Grant’s “Australia Day”, a powerful reflection on his mixed cultural heritage and his relationship with colonial Australia. In this investigation, Australia Day was central to the discussion. Should the date be changed? What would this achieve? What is his relationship between a date that commemorates the destruction of Aboriginal culture and the place he calls home? He raised some pertinent  insights about identity and the colonial Australia that we inhabit.

As we drive, I feel that the lands are empty. The original inhabitants no longer wander on their ancestral lands having been displaced by an empire. This is explored in Tasma Walton’s novel “I Am Nannertgarrook” which recreates the rich cultural and family traditions and connections of her Aboriginal heritage. It’s based on the story of one of Walton’s ancestors who was snatched from Nerrm (Port Phillip Bay area) and forced to live an isolated life with sealers off the coast of Albany, WA. Walton charts the violence that severed her ties with country, people and culture.

To be travelling these landscapes is an honour. We travelled from Karijini to Millstream Chichester National Park under more endless blue skies and cloudless days. It is another place with expansive bodies of water in an arid landscape. 

Our first two nights at Milyanha campground and the homestead gave us the opportunity to visit Deep Reach, a permanent pool on the Fortescue River fed by aquifers below the park. We paddled three kilometres up and back and saw black swans and honeyeaters, a dead bloated cow caught in a branch, stuck on the edge of the water and lots of paperbarks and reeds on the banks. 

Back at camp I dropped one of our little camp lights on the ground. When I picked it up, hundreds of tiny stones had attached themselves to the magnets on the back. What rich country this is.

But Millstream Chichester National Park came into its own when we hit Python Pool, another awesome swimming hole, and the area around George River. We swam at the pool by ourselves, a change from the much busier Karijini, and it is as impressive, beofre going to George River remote bush camp for two nights in the grand valleys between jump-ups, with great expanses of red layered rock rising from the remaining pools on the riverbed. High above us spinifex blanketed the plateau. Around us was nothing but silence and space. We were alone in a special place.  

I finished reading “The Daughter of Auschwitz” by Tova Friedman and Malcolm Brabant here. Was it an appropriate book for this place? Probably not. But what a reminder of the deprivation that people experienced in World War II. I read this book sitting by the fire which Jeremy used to cook damper and between chapters, I baked focaccia. We ate delicious meals. We enjoyed the freedom and serenity while I was reminded of the horrors of war. My life is sumptuous, full of food, space, beauty while many others do not have this luxury. 

After two amazing days here, our time in the PIlbara was over. We left for Broome via Point Samson and Port Hedland, where the car is booked in for a service, another 900 kilometre journey over a few days.

While we’re driving the huge distances between our camps through ‘empty’ landscapes, I think a lot about the silences and the many who once lived here walking, singing, celebrating, hunting, living. Activist and poet, Oodgerooo Noonuccal, sums it up best in her poem, ‘We Are Going’, first published in 1964.

‘We Are Going’ by Oodgeroo Noonuccal

They came in to the little town

A semi-naked band subdued and silent

All that remained of their tribe.

They came here to the place of their old bora ground

Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.

Notice of the estate agent reads: 'Rubbish May Be Tipped Here'.

Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.

'We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.

We belong here, we are of the old ways.

We are the corroboree and the bora ground,

We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.

We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal legends told.

We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.

We are the lightening bolt over Gaphembah Hill

Quick and terrible,

And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.

We are the quiet daybreak paling the dark lagoon.

We are the shadow-ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.

We are nature and the past, all the old ways

Gone now and scattered.

The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.

The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.

The bora ring is gone.

The corroboree is gone.

And we are going.'