Stone Country Festival

crossing the East Alligator river to Arnhem Land

Masks made at Stone Country Festival

Trying to cool down with frozen mango cups

Chocolate covered banana

The 'scared kangaroo' target

Spear throwing competition

Norforce display

Dancing Daniel

Sunrise over Stone Country

We left Kakadu for 24 hours yesterday and dipped our toe into Arnhem Land across the East Alligator river. We had been told and seen posters about the Stone Country Festival which was on yesterday in Gunbalanya/Oenpelli, so decided to see what it was like. Usually you need a permit to go into Arnhem Land, and I gather most people go on a tour, but they waive it for this festival. It’s a community on the western side of Arnhem Land, quite big I think (compared to the other ones we’ve seen as it has fair sized primary and high schools. The East Alligator river that you have to cross to get over there is tidal, so we had to time our crossing (more wild croc spotting!), and it was either get up really early or cross at lunchtime, which we chose. It meant that we missed out on a few things at the festival (including spear making, which was a pity) but there were still things to see. The drive there winds through impressive looking big rock piles (hence the name Stone Country I think) and then you get to the community alongside a river, with cows alongside. A few AFL teams had come over from Darwin and surrounding areas to compete in a competition which went most of the day with a grand final at the end, there was also a womens’ basketball competition, a running race (which we missed), and a spear throwing competition at the end which we saw. They had made a big papier mache ‘scared kangaroo’ for people to aim at, and passed around a spear thrower too so it looked pretty cool. Unfortunately the wind made a mess of a lot of the throws but one guy got close enough and won the $150 prize! One thing I found hard was that it was 36 degrees with hardly any shade so I was wilting after a while – everything was quite spread out over the town so it involved lots of trudging around between things feeling hot hot hot. The few drinks stalls that there were ran out of cold drinks pretty quickly so it was lukewarm water or softdrink for a while there. While walking around we came across a display from the Army’s Norforce unit, which covers from the Gulf to Broome along the top of Australia. They take any opportunity to try and recruit indigenous people I think, so in order to attract people they had a set up of a few real guns which were like a magnet to our boys – one had a grenade launcher! We had a look through the art gallery there which has mostly woven baskets and paintings done on bark, sort of xray style like the rock art around here. Later in the day there was also some traditional singing and dancing by three different groups. The first group, local I think,, managed to convince their elder women to get up and dance with them (sort of like backup grannies) but they only lasted about 3 songs before they refused to go any further and walked off – it was just too hot (even for them!). The middle group of guys from Croker Island were great, really energetic, and the final group even got as many whities in the audience as they could (including Nick and the boys!) up to dance with them, and even the grannies came back for this.

We set up our trailer in a field and then headed back for dinner – kangaroo lasagne was for sale, as were a few Thai dishes, so we sat on the oval eating them while we watched some of the many bands playing, that in fact went until midnight!  Conor and Nick had chocolate covered bananas grown in the community’s market garden, while Daniel had a dance in the dark. This morning we were up to see a beautiful dawn coming across the mountains/rocks with a mist lying on the ground (it is winter after all, even if it is 36 degrees during the day!), crossed the East Alligator again and had breakfast at the picnic tables on the Kakadu side. Now we have one more night here at Gunlom before beginning to head South then East.