Being out in the desert at night is a pleasure. Wandering along the sandy path, we enjoyed the spectacle. Dad said, "What would happen if someone was lost in this field at night?" One of the workers said, “There was a pack of dingoes bothering some of the people,” he said.
Read MoreI’m not on call except for unusual emergencies. I sleep through the everyday emergencies — the heart attacks, obstructed gall bladders and car roll-overs — that my colleagues, the Remote Area Nurses (RANs) deal with at night. This week there are two RANs here with me — for a town at its peak population of around five or six thousand.
Read MoreMy friend gave me her pomegranate tree and lime tree. I’d been dreaming of a pomegranate tree and was well-read about limes. I knew they’d be a good match for our place. I still dream of olive and fig trees. “How many years are you planning to stay here?” asks Claudia.
Read MoreAt first, the stony path was unremarkable except for a closer look at some of the bright flowers. But cresting a rise at the end of the path revealed an immense and strange space — a panorama of desert dunes and volcanic cones.
Read MoreI saw Louise Hay speak in Australia in the eighties. It was perhaps her first visit. My friends and I were trying hard to dislike her. She addressed an audience of HIV positive people and their supporters, overwhelmingly gay men with their partners and friends, at the height of the AIDs terror.
Read MoreThat sounds mad. But for a while now I’ve quietly believed that rocks have consciousness. It’s not that I hear gravel crying when I walk on it, but rocks do speak to humans, albeit in their own way.
Read MoreI’ve known her to use sixteen layers of translucent paint to get the depth of the doll’s complexion right, greenish veins just showing through the different shades of brown. Weighting the doll’s head, by suspending a steel ball inside it (without smashing the glass eyes) makes it loll on your shoulder.
Read MoreThe stage was a plateau of red sand under a starry night. People sat on the ground around fires that warmed them. A set of headlights lit the stomping ground stage. Performers were painted up in the dark behind bushy mulga trees.
Read MoreClaudia spent many early mornings hunting bats with her camera. They had complicated wings and hooky ‘hands’. Our garden was full of food for them and for us — fruiting banana trees, cannon-ball-sized breadfruit, taro, soursop and limes. Piglets fussed and rooted for fallen fruit below, following their mum.
Read MoreI can’t say that I know how it would feel to have the small purchase I have on this world blown away by a fierce wind, to have your house torn up as if it were made of wet cardboard.
Read MoreThe driver asked if we could help. We got out feeling helpless. We had to get closer to see the car, a small crumpled vehicle lying upside down about fifty metres into the stony roadside brush.
Read MoreI’ve learned a thing or two, but sometimes there’s a moment. A moment when I realise that the emergency won’t be deflected, that the patient’s pressing need — the threat to life or limb — won’t be met or rationalised away or quickly ameliorated.
Read More“It looks like a school of tiny fish or plankton,” I said. The pulsing mass extended all the way to the ground from the tall brightly lit pole. “It looks like a snowstorm,” said C. Every 50 metres or so, another column of multitudinous specks towered in the surrounding desert darkness.
Read MoreFar away from Lil’s fragrant and colourful sewing table, sewing classes were a fifth grade thing, along with budding breasts and fun with the boys in the playground. Our teacher, Miss Brawn, was narrow and aged. We were a rowdy bunch of impatient, smart girls.
Read MoreA special snake created the landforms, rivers and lakes, mountains and reef. The entire landscape of earth was made from her body. She communicates now through the rainbow, her giant colourful body having been consumed in the world’s creation.
Read MoreThe big beast gets up elegantly with you sitting on it, back legs first, pitching and tilting the rider as you lean back in the saddle. Suddenly you’re up and can see a long way over the desert landscape. A camel’s walk is measured and rhythmic. Being there gives you a lofty and mellow perspective.
Read MoreThere was a spiral staircase up the clock tower where I would meet my beau for kisses at lunchtime. I put a satirical poster of Ronald Reagan (the demented Hollywood actor who threatened to launch the nuclear war) on the wall next to my office desk and felt quite at home.
Read MoreIn ancient — but still human — times, animals lived at Mungo that challenge the imagination. Called Megafauna, they were giant animals of many kinds. There were kangaroo-like beasts that weighed over 200kg (440lb) and could reach three metres (10 feet) to eat leaves off the tree tops, called now Procoptodon goliah. There was the Diprotodon, the biggest marsupial known to have lived on this island.
Read MorePleasure in babies and young things is natural in humans in all stages of life. In many of the Indigenous cultures, including the local ones here, child-raising was the norm for grandparents before the British came. Young people were good at having children, but not necessarily good at raising them.
Read MoreI heard about an Aboriginal man in Central Australia whose totem was the fly. I have friends related to the crocodile, a fierce and unpleasant creature, but undeniably powerful. I felt sorry for a man whose totem was a fly. It was such a pest. How could you make a relationship with that insect?
Read MoreSlot Canyon photograph in banner by Sebastian Boguszewicz
Creative Writing by Dr. Janelle Trees
Photo: Claudia Jocher
I'm a doctor of Aboriginal descent living and travelling with my photographer wife, Claudia. I see myself as a bridge between 'races' and cultures, gay and straight, the child and the crone, arts and sciences. I am inspired by Nature, including humans in all our splendid individuality.
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