Yesterday was another big day. It was a case of being out of bed by 6.00 am and being on the road by 6.30 so that we were in plenty of time to catch the ferry for the 2.5 hour ride to Bathurst Island to visit the Tiwi Community there.
It was a good ride on a modern Sealink catamaran. I didn't think it was too rough. Certainly, I had no trouble walking around and even managed to carry two cups of coffee back to our seats without spilling any. Bev, however, felt somewhat nauseous about half way in to the trip and found it all rather tedious from that point on.
On the trip back we had the wind right on the nose so there was a fair bit of rocking and rolling. This time, I had to perform a circus act to get back to my seat with just one cup of coffee. The lady sitting next to Bev gave her a travel sickness tablet at the beginning of the trip and this made all the difference. This time she experienced a fleeting feeling of sickness and then it was "plain sailing" for the rest of the trip.
We spent several delightful hours with the Tiwi people. They are a particularly welcoming and articulate bunch who were more than happy to tell us something of their culture and history.
We started off at the museum where we were not left to our own devices which is usually the case in places such as this. Instead, our two tour guides gave us an explanation of the significance of what we were looking at.
We then had a quick look at the large workroom used by the disabled artists living in the community. The locals refer to the building as the "Sistine Chapel" for obvious reasons.
However, I am getting ahead of myself. Before we visited the workroom, we had a long stop for some morning tea, a smoking ceremony and a brief demonstration of some traditional dance moves.
Morning tea was definitely traditional Australian. Billy tea and damper. It has been a while since I had eaten damper and I really enjoyed it especially when eaten with golden syrup. The tea was so strong that you could have stood your teaspoon up in it. Great stuff!
While we were eating our damper, we watched some of the local ladies painting mud mussel shells with traditional designs. They later took us through a smoking ceremony. Smoking is about driving out evil spirits. The idea is that they smoke new comers to prevent their evil spirits from entering the Tiwi community. Not a bad idea. I think I'll try it the next time the grand kids come over!!
Our guides and the ladies then gave us a brief demonstration of three of their traditional dances. They made sure they wore their usual face paint designs representing their particular totem animals. However, they did not wear traditional costume and body paint.
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| This is Freddie. He is wearing the design of the bush turkey, his totem |
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| Patsy is about ten or eleven and she is learning her dance moves. As in most traditional communities, she learns by doing; by participating in each activity with the adults |
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| This is Patsy's grandmother. She struck me as being very wise. Her eyes look right into your soul. |
We also discovered that in Tiwi culture, brothers are required to cut themselves off completely from their sisters upon reaching puberty. After this point in their lives, they may never speak, look, or touch them again, ever. Given that they have given up other cultural practices such girls being promised as brides to old men at birth, I don't understand why they persist with this practice. Several large family groups were on the ferry for the trip back to Darwin. I watched the way the younger kids reacted with their brothers and sisters. I saw big sisters looking after their little brothers and big brothers putting up with their little sisters lying all over them. Clearly Tiwi siblings relate to each other as siblings in other cultures and these separations must be as traumatic for them as enforced sibling separations are in other cultures. Why do they persist with it?
Before we came to our time on Bathurst Island, we also learned something of Tiwi funerary practices and the famous burial poles, many of which can be seen in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. Tiwi funerals are as expensive for the families as they are in western societies, perhaps more so. The more knowledgeable and important the deceased is, the more poles are erected around the grave. The family has to employ a craftsman to make them and they can cost thousands of dollars. The immediate family are also required to make a payment to the in-laws. Nowadays this is a cash payment. One of our guides was telling us that in the last week or so his uncle had to pay out $23,000 in such payments to the extended family. Luckily he had a successful timber growing business on Melville Island and was able to make the payment.
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| These are funeral poles. If they had been erected around a grave in the cemetery I would not have been able to make them. They have been set up outside the Tiwi Design Centre, a commercial outlet for Tiwi Arts and Crafts. We left some money here. The people behind the poles are eating their lunch. |
Today is a rest day. We are doing nothing in particular, just chilling out. I think we have finished with the Darwin sightseeing, although I might venture into the city centre and take some more photos. I think we now rest up and get ready to travel down to Kakadu where we will spend four days. Unless something interesting happens, I will send my next post from there. In the meantime, here are a few more Tiwi photos.
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| Painting mud mussel shells |
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| The Water Buffalo dance |
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| The old catholic church. It has now been replaced with a modern, "air conditioned" church; it is louvred walls on all sides and is built flat on the ground so that the Tiwi congregation can dance. |
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| This is the radio shack from which the first warnings of the first Japanese air raid were radioed to Darwin. The first message was not believed and they had to send 3 warnings before anyone would listen |
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| The Sanctuary of the old church |
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| The high-rises of Cullen Bay and the city from the sea |
Glad to see you had a good day out, it certainly gives a fascinating insight into their culture which is so different from ours.
ReplyDeleteWe didn't see a 'Sistine Chapel' though, maybe it is new. I also note that the plaque in front of the wireless hut has been tarted up, it was just a concrete blob much like a grave headstone. Also, I can't help but notice that the Baptismal Font appears to be missing from the church, bit of a shame.