Savouring Sublime Sunsets
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An Indigenous friend told me that the Arnhem Land Yolgnu have a huge body of knowledge about sunsets. That idea captured my imagination. I’ve never quite let it go.
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Festival of the Breast
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Why wouldn’t you want to have your breasts tenderly and thoughtfully painted with ochre for inma (ceremonial dancing)? And feel a connection between your breasts and the earth around you? Our bodies all come from our mothers’ bodies and breasts and the earth is our continuing mother.
Read MoreCactus Youth
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Whether slim and brown, pale and gothic or covered in overdeveloped muscles, nerdy glasses or gold jewellery, young people need to find a way to identify themselves, to the extent they know themselves. In mainstream society, we have nebulous rites of passage for our young people — getting a driver’s license, travelling with friends, drinking alcohol ’til you’re sick.
Read MoreThe Sweet, Warm Winds
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In the cool piriyitja mornings the flowers are full of honey. Even at the height of the day the flowers cover your fingertips with abundant syrup if you touch them. They are bracingly delicious. The Anangu kids call them lolly flowers.
Read MoreHard for the Money
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I tried to change my mind about Tuesday. I did not succeed. In fact, I’ve given up trying for now. I like where I live and work and I like my routine, except for that lumpy bit at the beginning of the week.
Read MoreTo Have a Carer in the World
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Insidiously, the work undermines a caregiver’s self-trust and self-love. This is a danger inherent in the work itself — you have to deny your own needs and desires twenty times (or a thousand times) a day.
Read MoreBubbling Up
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If a ball of lava is coming towards you, you focus on it and watch its trajectory, then move sideways, that is, not down the mountain or into the volcano, so that you can avoid it. I have missed catching so many balls in my life that I figured I’d be fine.
Read MorePlaying Outside the Dollhouse
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"One of Mary’s eyes became permanently closed thanks to that common disease that afflicts long-living dolls treated roughly by toddlers. I did have to take her head off once or twice to see how she was made inside."
Read MoreNyinnga - The Frosty Time
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There are six seasons here. Unlike other places, where winter is a time of dormancy, it’s a time of energy and growth here. In Nyinnga people can exercise: walking is a pleasure and sleeping is easy.
Read MoreSkin Colour Pearls
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Next time an Australian with fair skin reveals their Aboriginality, whether by their clothes or jewelry, their tattoos or their story, let your heart swell with gratitude that the web of Aboriginal cultures continues to be woven.
Read MoreSomething in the Water
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Some of the Aboriginal babies she cared for were thin and irritable, with watery diarrhoea and scalded nappy rashes. They were diagnosed with Failure to Thrive — a diagnosis which puts a child’s parenting directly under the spotlight. Their mothers seemed powerless. Health workers wondered what was going on in these babies’ homes?
But Christine wondered if it could be something else.
Elevated by Concrete Sails
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The Opera House is built on Bennelong Point, named for the multilingual Dharug man who became a cultural educator for the founding Governor of the New South Wales colony. Intelligent and funny, Bennelong traveled to England -- got stuck there for years. Perhaps he learned more than he wanted about the subjugation of his people
Read MoreThe Sneer of a Chainsaw
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Claudia and I've become fond of the trees of our town. So we were both angry to be woken early by the sneer of chainsaws. Through the bedroom curtains, we saw a man hanging from a tree, sawing the very branch he stood on.
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Chai, cappucino and rosehip
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In the darkness before sunrise, I blink as the kitchen lights come on. Pulling out a small white paper bag from the tea box, I see its pencilled name, ‘Hibiscus flowers’. I bought these more than a year ago, and forgot I had them. Delighted, I take a generous pinch of the blackish dried spikes, and throw them in the teapot.
Read MoreLove among the Medicines
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We needed to be needed. For some, there was a lingering appreciation for high status, a medical degree being final proof that you were good at school work. Some did want to relieve suffering, usually poor souls who’d seen a loved one through a long sickness as a child.
Read MoreFor the sake of the exercise
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I ran hard, and enjoyed the feel of my feet on the ground and the grass. I was pleased with myself, and expected congratulations. But when I finished, one of the adults said, “Somebody has to come last, I suppose”. I could tell it was a bad thing to be that someone and resolved not to do it again.
Read MoreThe Salted Centre
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We had some seriously ill people in the clinic this past summer. They had deteriorated to a critical condition in the fifty degree heat, not because of dehydration but because of a deficiency of sodium — salt.
Read MoreSplendid tiny beauty
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They were sea creatures with never-before-seen limbs, fins and strange appendages, resulting in names such as Anomalocaris, Wiwaxia and Hallucigenia. They hinted at the explosion of possibility during the early days of life on the planet.
Read MoreWoman in Uniform
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I spent a bit of time browsing the leather tool belts in hardware stores before a colleague persuaded me that it was probably a little odd for an apprentice doctor to want to look like an apprentice plumber. Perhaps even more pretentious than wearing your stethoscope around your neck all day.
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