In mid-2016  after I’d  bought a swag 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 at Lajamanu.  The Festival is held every two years  on the cusp of the rainy season at Lajamanu,  and it is the result of a collaboration between the Lajamanu Community, the Tracks Dance Company and the Lajamanu School.

There were several photographers amongst Judith’s friends–Juno Gemes, Helga Leunig as well as Judith herself, who had published  her book The Lumen Seed. Judith had a keen grasp of Lajamanu as a dynamic place with a history from her previous visits. I only knew Lajamanu from googling photos on the internet. It was just a fixed location situated on a map for me.

I was the novice photographer on this trip. I intended to keep a low profile as I was very ambivalent about being a white photographer taking photos of the Wilpiri people in Lajamanu.

I had previously traveled parts  of  this  country on road trips previously: the Goyder Highway, Port Augusta and then on to the Eyre Peninsula, or to Woomera and Andamooka  in South Australia.  But I’d never driven  up the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs.   Though I’d travelled around Central Australia as a tourist in the 1970s I’d never been to Cooper Pedy, driven on the Tanami Track, or been to Lajamanu. I knew nothing about the Tanami Desert.