Gambanan

Daniel reading with sunrise behind

The Ralhs' car on the tag-a-long tour

Daniel and Jasmine playing next to tents

We’ve had a couple of days at Gambaran now, and the Ralhs turned up yesterday afternoon which always makes it more fun. Yesterday we went to check out Kooljamun nearby, which is actually the local indigenous name for Cape Leveque, and where there’s a resort built and run by local indigenous people. It’s really hard to get into at this time of year (almost impossible) and mostly very expensive safari tents and cabins built overlooking the sea. It’s a big operation, has won countless WA and national tourism award, and seems like it’s run quite well by an army of lackeys (all white). You still have to pay $10/car to be a day visitor but you get to swim on the beach and use their showers and beach shelter to have lunch under – shade is so important in this weather. We were there at high tide and the swimming wasn’t bad, although there were quite a few rocks right on the edge of the water. There were smallish waves, the first we’ve encountered in quite a while, and the water was so warm that the kids even got in with us, enjoying bobbing around on top of the waves. They even had a shower there afterwards so it was a red letter day in that respect. After that we went to the community of Lombadina, a little bit further south to check it out. We arrived at about 12pm and it was dead as a dodo, no-one in sight except a few other anglos wondering what to do because the office was closed and there were signs saying please don’t wander around our community without registering at the office first. We went as far as the shop, realised that it shuts between 11am and 1pm and luckily we had lunch stuff with us, so we just had sandwiches outside the office until it opened at 1pm. That was the signal for the siesta to be over and everything suddenly started up and you’d never have known (very European), all of a sudden there was someone mowing lawns, the lady came for the key to the craft shop, someone started making noise in the car workshop, and we paid our $10 and got a map from the office about what we could see. It’s a tiny community of 70 people but I think it’s supposed to be an example of an indigenous community that ‘works’, in that people are employed, live in houses, there’s a little school, a centrelink office open on some days, a bakery open every 2^nd day, a little shop and a nurses station. There’s also an old church with paperbark roof which was quite nice to visit – apparently the town used to be run by a church mission and the community told them they wanted to break away and do their own thing, so they were given the town and buildings etc. We bought a few things we needed in the shop (including ice creams as we were melting away), saw the church, bought a few postcards at the craft shop and headed back to our campsite, arriving just as the Ralhs were setting up. The kids then had a great time playing under the trees between our two sites while we relaxed and set up – they’ve been hanging out in Broome for a few days while we’ve been up here.

We had also checked out the possibility of a tour while at Kooljamun, and they were offering to run a half day Hunters tag-a-long tour today which would include information about indigenous hunting, including spearing fish and mud crabbing. We’ve been wanting to do the mud crabbing for a while, having been told it was the best fun for the kids, so were quite keen and fronted up there at 8am this morning. It was run by an indigenous guy who was born in Broome and raised in Derby but his family is from the area – his great grandfather was an anglo guy who moved over here from England, his great grandmother a local aboriginal woman, and he also has a Japanese father interestingly enough. There was quite a lot of driving along the beach on the sand which was pretty fun, and he had some interesting information about how they used to catch turtles here, but unfortunately the tour was arranged at the wrong time so that by the time we got to the mudcrabbing or fish spearing bit (what the kids were waiting for), the tide still wasn’t low enough so the mud crabs’ holes were still covered by water. It was pretty disappointing since the tide times aren’t exactly a secret and it would have been better if they had changed the time of the tour to suit the tides (and because we paid $154 for it) but… that’s just the way it is up here sometimes I guess. He’s on the board of the resort so it was interesting hearing how that came about and how it has changed (to go from losing money drastically to now feeding about $100,000 each year into the various communities on the peninsula), and he was obviously a bit disappointed to say that no (or hardly any) indigenous people work there (apart from those on the board). He commented that they get young indigenous people who come enthusiastically and work for 2 or 3 months, then just disappear, implying that they’re not so keen on the actual work part. We had a swim there afterwards which was nice and refreshing (more dodging rocks which were now exposed by the low tide), and more relaxing back at the campsite. It doesn’t seem like anywhere is particularly good for swimming on the peninsula – not that we’ve been everywhere, but Koolajamun is supposed to be one of the better spots and it doesn’t quite rate with other places we’ve been. Tomorrow there’s a few more sights to see and Friday we’ll head back down to Broome for our date with the Cable Beach caravan park.