Missy.

Sometimes, especially of an evening, this place feels like a bucolic hamlet in the woods. The sort of place where the same families have lived for generations, and only the most adventurous leave to 'seek their fortunes in the big wide world'. 

But sometimes it feels like a really harsh environment,  a tough frontier town, and that's what I've been experiencing lately.

I knew before I came that I would have to Toughen Up to live here. I saw it as Growing Up (finally).    I was dreading the process as well as looking forward to it.  After all, if I eat other creatures I should be able to face the means whereby they get from a happy life scratching around in the sun, to my plate.  I even feel squeamish at the now-nightly toad hunt, especially when they (in tightly sealed plastic bags) occupy the same little freezer space as the frozen passionfruit yoghurt I am trying to perfect (I think the secret is lots of bananas).

 I was envisioning challenges in the form of, as I have mentioned, the killing and eating of bush food- turtles and echidnas are both relished around here. I never imagine it would come in the form of this little poppet.

Every household here has dogs of course. According to Terry, the dogs here are well looked after in that they are fed, rather than expected to look after themselves. They wander round, occasionally fighting each other, digging holes, sleeping in the sun or in the shade, barking both day and night and getting yelled at for doing so, and chasing after me. A good life for a dog. If they ever wander too far in a pack, get in with a bad crowd ("dingoes") and chase cattle they are summarily shot, so I have been told. 

People here are fond of their dogs, and are often proud of them- proud in the way that leads to many of them not being desexed when the vet pays a visit for that purpose- but the dogs could not be described as 'pets'. This is true of most country dogs, I guess, but the attitude to animals in Aboriginal communities is definitely a challenge to an urban animal lover.

A while ago, I noticed a little girl who was a frequent visitor to the house, nursing a tiny puppy, with barely opened eyes, often holding it by one leg as if it were a rag doll.  Imagining that it had been taken out of the litter to be played with, and remembering how I had longed to cuddle my grandmother's cat's tiny kittens as soon as they were born but not being allowed to do so as they were too young until their eyes opened and their curiosity overcame their fear at being removed from their mother - I used to come home from school and sit by their box, watching them longingly, waiting for the time when they were old enough to be picked up by me without squealing in terror, and having to satisfy my longing with gentle stroking of their squirming backs- I told her to take the puppy back to its mother. That it was too young, its eyes were barely opened etc etc. She looked blankly at me, and I was starting to panic, until the teacher who lives next door came out, took charge of the puppy and walked the girls home, where, I imagined, there was a placid old dog with distended teats and a look of blissful exhaustion on her face as she suckled a litter of pushy puppies.

Of course, I realised much later that the girl had absolutely no idea what I was talking about (a common experience, as you may have gathered), and not just because of my syntax.

Then, on Friday, I was asked to look after a new puppy- "Missy"- for the weekend while its owner went to the Doomadgee Rodeo. It looked too young to be taken from its mother but seemed well enough, and Marj was a caring responsible young woman.  It, along with another two, including the one I had seen earlier, had come from a litter on an outstation miles away.

All puppies are gorgeous but because this one was too young to be taken away, she treated the whole world like a litter, pouncing and tumbling and playing and biting, and then suddenly falling asleep in a heap. She whined to be with us at night, and slept snuggled against my warmth all night, pouncing on my face in the morning, sucking my ear lobes and biting my hair.  She was completely entrancing, utterly time consuming, and I fell in love with her, as did everyone who saw her.  She followed me everywhere, until she got tired and had to be carried, and tried to catch my toes as I walked. She was really clean (I cleaned her with a damp washer, like mother dogs do with their tongues- you getting the picture of my besottedness here?) and she smelled lovely.

However, gobble as she might, she didn't seem to be able to hold down any food or water, and over 2 days became more and more lethargic and sick.  I was frantic, helplessly watching her starve, and longed for the luxuries of city life- a vet!- for the first time. After 2 days, the community nurse came to the rescue with an IV bag of 5 % glucose infusion and a syringe (by this time, the puppy couldn't hold her head up and sip from a bowl). A Google search told me that unweaned puppies can't tolerate the lactose in cow's milk-  no puppies can but they can eat other stuff once they are weaned (of course there was a vicious argument about this on an internet thread).

She sucked greedily from the syringe and seemed to pick up quite a bit, and I was able to hand her back to Marjorie on Monday, alive and wagging her tail. We also ordered a tin of puppy formula from the vet in Katherine, and it arrived the next day on the mail plane. But we soon heard that the other 2 puppies died and ours followed the next day. I was prepared for the worst, even though she seemed like  a little fighter and so full of life, but that night I absolutely lost it.

I lay in bed looking out the window at the huge starry sky and railed against the place - at the strain of trying to create a place for myself in a community that was indifferent to me, and to animal welfare (I should add that Marjorie was also very sad at losing her puppy); at the feeling that I had to gird my loins, so to speak, to leave the house and enter the community every morning; at living with people whom I didn't understand and who didn't understand me, and at the imbalance of the need to be understood; at 'their' ignorance of everything that I had learned at my grandmother's knee (of course I understood that I was totally ignorant of everything 'they' had learnt at their grandmother's knees, which was what they needed to know to live in their world, but at this moment being understanding was not a priority);  exhaustion at trying so bloody hard all the time, at having to tread so carefully, always; that this place felt so harsh and cruel and hard.

At the same time I felt uneasy that it was the death of a puppy that released this furious flood, when at the other end of town people live in extreme poverty and overcrowded unhealthy and dangerous squalor, and that many would not reach my age before they succumbed to chronic disease.  And this is a relatively healthy, functioning Aboriginal community.

After a while, with the help of my maningandya, I realised that life everywhere is harsh. The harshness is just better covered up in cities where you live in a group of people who think like you and reaffirm your reality, where death and the consequences of poor education and poverty can be kept at arms length if you are lucky and have enough money (until they can't any longer!).  Where suffering is hidden behind walls, guarded by privacy and anonymity and not-your-business:- walls of private houses, of abattoirs, of hospitals, of nursing homes. Here, it's all in your face.

And that's why we all need those young things in our lives, why we love them so unconditionally and crave their presence so passionately. We need their joyfulness, their freshness, their playfulness, their innocence- their lack of corruption and guile and cynicism- their softness, their trust and affection, their dependency. Whether they come from our bodies or someone else's, whether they be human, or animal, or bird, or even plants I suppose, new life gives us hope and the endlessly repeating promise of a better future.

I realise that this little story hasn't told you much about what's happening in the community, but I needed to get it off my chest before I could write anything more.  

Just to keep you  in touch with life here,  I've added a few random photos. (I still haven't sought permission to publish photos of people - it's complicated because the simplest way to explain the meaning of a 'blog' is to show them mine!  And that is not simple.)

This is a Gator. They can go everywhere and run on a dime, as they say in the country they come from. They are a big part of life here. They denote status (what ? cars denoting status? how peculiar!) They are the property of the community but are driven by team leaders (groan, even a thousand miles from nowhere I hear that vile term again and again), and Important White People. To be fair, anyone can drive a spare one if they need to. Everyone loves them, except me of course, and everyone seems to want one, both to look cool, feel important and to avoid walking. Sounds a familiar story, eh? 

Gators zap around from early morning till night (the completely unnecessary night patrol) and when you hear the first one of the morning you know it's time to get out of bed. The dogs wait for their owners in them, and they are usually filled with kids. I've got great photos of that of course, but first I have to find out who the kids are, then who their parents are, then explain what the internet is, then what blogging is and what it means..... etc etc. and so for the present you'll have to make do with photos of dogs. Don't know their names. One is Lucky I think.

I prefer these old machines which are dumped outside the mechanic's workshop.

These shadows are not Mimi spirits but us walking to the river after work.

And this is what you look into when you lie on your back in the river.

After having listened for weeks to my anxious agonising about leaving Sydney and coming to live up here, my daughter asked me the other day if I liked it up here. I answered without hesitation that I loved it. Explaining why required more thought. I love the vast  open space, the big red cliffs surrounding this little hub of human and non-human activity, indifferent and timeless. The huge sky, the big sun, the endless stars. And the freedom that comes from this indifferent emptiness.

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