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Hooker Creek
Whilst I was at Lajamanu I would sleep in a swag on the verandah of the Learning Centre, rise before dawn, quickly dress, then walk around the township taking photos before the early morning light became too bright. I usually ended up in the Hooker Creek area and wandering along the dry river bed as…
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Milpirri Festival at Lajamanu
A key reason for the roadtrip to Lajamanu was to see the Warlpiri’s large-scale outdoor Milpirri Festival, which is put on by the Warlpiri community in partnership with the Tracks Dance Company for one night only every two years. The one that I saw on Saturday October 15 was the seventh biannual festival. The rehearsals for Milpirri…
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the heavy weight of the past
The common interpretation of the frontier wars between settler Australia and the Aboriginal people is that this history is a case of a doomed hunter-gatherer people unable to withstand the agriculture, animal husbandry and machinery of modern capitalism. This downplays the history of the killing phases, segregation-by-incarceration phases, assimilation or absorption- to-the-point-of-disappearance phases, and the erasure-of-their- presence…
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landscape, Tanami Desert
Late one afternoon whilst I was at Lajamanu I went on a brief phototrip with Helga Leunig to take photos of the Tanami Desert landscape. We travelled a short distance along the gravel road that provides access to the local cemetery and rubbish dump. This road north from Lajamanu, which connects Lajamanu to the Bunting…
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Warnayaka Art Centre at Lajamanu
We arrived at Lajamanu at 2am Friday morning from Alice Springs via Yuendumu, having driven for 6 hours at night through the Tanami Desert along the Tamani Road, then turning onto the track to Lajamanu after the gold mine at the Granites (operated by Newmont Mining) and at Tanami. I wondering how mining on Warlpiri land, with…
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The Tanami + the Frontier wars
After meeting up with friends in a very green Alice Springs we set out on the 15 hour drive along the Tamani Road in Warlpiri country to Lajamanu. The history of this landscape is that of the Frontier wars involving a series of conflicts over 140 years (1788 to 1934) that were fought between Indigenous Australians and mainly…
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Pimba and nuclear trauma
Our first overnight stop on the road to Lajamanu was Pimba and the caravan park at Spuds Roadhouse. Pimba is just down the road from the Defence -controlled town of Woomera and the Woomera Prohibited Area, which has been closed to the public since 1947, when it was used for Cold War rocket and nuclear tests by…
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before and after Port Augusta
The landscape just south of Port Augusta (ie., after Port Pirie ) is quite different to the landscape north of Port Augusta on the way to Woomera. It is a study in contrasts: farmland and desert.
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on the Goyder Highway
Since the stops to take photos would be few and far between due to time constraints, I choose to sit in the back of the LandRover Discovery on the Mildura to Pimba leg of our road trip to Lajamanu. It was going to be traveling all day with an occasional stop. I sat in the…
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To Lajamanu: prelude
I accepted Judith Crispin’s invitation to join her and her friends to travel to the northern Tanami Desert to see the Warlpiri people’s Milpirri Festival.
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The Long Road to the North 