29 July 2016 – 180 947
Drew’s Birthday, Top Didj, FA18’s and Thermal Springs
First up this morning was Top Didj Aboriginal Cultural
Experience.
https://topdidj.com/
This was run by a man named Manuel who grew up in East Arnhem Land living a traditional life. He talked first about his life, the pluses and minuses of the changes taking place in aboriginal culture, both for himself personally and also for aboriginal people in general. Sadly, I think he is correct in saying that the aboriginal culture and law he grew up with is dying. Manuel then performed on the didgeridoo and the clap sticks. Then we were taught about the Dalabon method of painting – looking at the technique it is possible to tell where each method comes from, eg dot painting is from the desert, the number of white lines in each group of cross hatching is determined by the tribe the artist belongs to. The paintings we did were done with acrylic paint on canvas, we did use a small paint brush for the first part in black, but after this we used brushes that were made from the centre of a particular reed. These were used more by laying on the canvas and pushing and dragging at the same time rather than stroking as with a regular brush. Next up was fire starting using two pieces of softwood and some kindling, Hayden gave it everything he had, but just did not have the muscle power yet.
https://topdidj.com/
This was run by a man named Manuel who grew up in East Arnhem Land living a traditional life. He talked first about his life, the pluses and minuses of the changes taking place in aboriginal culture, both for himself personally and also for aboriginal people in general. Sadly, I think he is correct in saying that the aboriginal culture and law he grew up with is dying. Manuel then performed on the didgeridoo and the clap sticks. Then we were taught about the Dalabon method of painting – looking at the technique it is possible to tell where each method comes from, eg dot painting is from the desert, the number of white lines in each group of cross hatching is determined by the tribe the artist belongs to. The paintings we did were done with acrylic paint on canvas, we did use a small paint brush for the first part in black, but after this we used brushes that were made from the centre of a particular reed. These were used more by laying on the canvas and pushing and dragging at the same time rather than stroking as with a regular brush. Next up was fire starting using two pieces of softwood and some kindling, Hayden gave it everything he had, but just did not have the muscle power yet.
The last item
on the agenda was spear throwing using a woomera – Hayden was quite good! From here, we rushed back to the van for
Hayden’s appointment to Skype with his class – both he, the class, and the
teacher all seemed pretty excited and enjoyed it immensely. The next Skype session will be a mystery
Skype, where the class has to work out where we are. After lunch we headed to Cutta Cutta Parks,
but decided against a tour as from the information available it appeared very
similar to the one we did in Tasmania, just warmer. So, instead we drove to the Katherine Airport
and were lucky enough to have a FA-18 Superhornet come in, bank around a full
circle and then land, passing about 30m above our heads – it was very very loud
and very fast. We relaxed in the
afternoon at Katherine Springs, which originate in the Cutta Cutta Cave system
and come out near the Katherine River at 32 degrees Celcius. http://www.ourterritory.com/katherine_nt/hot_springs.htm I cooked up Beef Parmigiana
with vegetables for Drew’s birthday dinner, I hope he enjoyed it! Happy birthday my love!
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