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Published: April 16th 2008
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A Trip to the Blue Mountains with Arcadia
Day 1
The morning started early with a walk to central station. I met Sam and Stacey (another girl that lives in her building) at the park on campus and walked down the street about 15 minutes until we got to the train station where we would meet our guides. Our guides for the weekend were Emily (who works in the office here in Sydney) and Stewart (who is a nice older gentleman who works in the office in Melbourne).
Our bus ride took about 2 hours to get to the Blue Mountains. Our first stop was at a desert park where we got to see all kinds of Australian animals. I saw my first koalas and got some nice pictures with one. I also got to feed kangaroos and wallabies and even emu’s. The emu’s were scary to feed because they had sharp beaks and snatched at the food in your hand. I also saw some turtles which of course I always love.
Then we stopped at Springwood for a bite of lunch. I brought some sandwiches from home so I took a moment to walk
to a local market that I saw when we came in on the bus. It was held in a community hall filled with little old people and their booths. They were selling handmade crafts and and foods. It kind of reminded me of an Amish market. One of the coolest things that I saw was a booth that put old family pictures on fabric and made pillows and things out of it. There was also a booth that sold jewelry made out of old plates (hand-painted). Then I ate my lunch with others sitting on a brick wall on the side of the road.
Our next stop was on the side of the highway. We walked across a footbridge and met our Aboriginal guide who was going to take us on a bushwalk. He explained that the lightness of his skin was due to the fact that the aboriginal people of “this” area were mostly killed off and that the dark skin gene is recessive. He took us on a walk literally through the bush and very steep. The problem was that it was damp and that made the steep rocks very slippery. He took us to an aboriginal
spiritual site and taught us about dreamtime and the stories that were depicted on the rock there.
He introduced Aboriginal thoughts to us. He talked a lot about “bad spirit trouble.” “Bad spirit trouble” are emotions that get in the way, negative thoughts, and ego. He said that Ego wanted you to not be fully aware; it wants to control you. Ego is what makes you not believe in dreamtime or think that it is good. He said that it makes you wonder: how do I look when I’m trying to do dreamtime? What are other people doing? It makes you worry rather than accept. He also said that “bad spirit trouble” is contagious. That is why they built great fires when they had big group meetings. To cleanse everyone’s “bad spirit troubles” away with the smoke. Because we couldn’t start a fire in the middle of the bush safely we did a visualization to cleanse away our “bad spirit troubles” before we tried to participate in some dreamtime. We visualized a leaf from a nearby tree going through our body and cleaning away the “bad spirit troubles.” When he told us about dreamtime he told us it is
Ochre painting
Here is the turtle that I dot painted on my leg. like meditation but when you are good at it you are doing it 24/7. He said it is a kind of heightened awareness because you are fully conscious of everything that you do. He instructed us to not think about anything and then talked to us about dreamtime for a while. It was hard to not think of anything because every time he said something I would start thinking about what he said. I was also having trouble staying awake because I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. I want to try to do it more in the future and maybe with practice I will understand it better.
Then he took us down another (barely transversable) path to an overhang cave-like area that the Aboriginies used as shelter during the day. We tried ochre painting by making paint with water and ochre dust. I painted some designs on Erin ( a girl I hung out with that goes to UNSW) and Sam’s faces. Sam painted Nicole’s face and Nicole painted my face. I also dot painted a turtled onto my calf. It was very fun and I wish we had more time. Then he read us a poem about the people of the area by an Aborigine. He also demonstrated to us how to use a bull roarer. Think of crocodile Dundee the apparatus that he uses to make a “telephone call.” I thought it was interesting that he let us take pictures of the sacred site and use the ochre paint to play around. At other aboriginal sacred places they have told us not to take photos and not allowed us to touch the ochre because it is sacred. I felt conflicted about it. I enjoyed the ochre but I didn’t take any pictures of the carvings at the sacred site because I didn’t feel comfortable doing it.
Then we hiked back up the steep never ending bush “trail” to where we left the bus. We road to Katoomba which is the local tourist town where we stayed the night at a very classy Youth hostel. For dinner we walked down the street to a fish and chip shop and brought it back to the hostel to eat it. Nicole and I left the ochre paint on our faces but Sam and Erin washed it off. We stayed up talking for a while, then I read some more in my book (I’m almost to the end ☺) and went to sleep relatively early.
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