A sacred day

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Majeed works as a consultant/program administrator at Walk About Your Business, a program sponsored by the Australian government and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (http://walkaboutyourbusiness.com.au/), to help Aboriginal people start businesses. Pretty sweet program. We had an AWESOME experience with Maxine, one of the participants in the program.

One lovely Sunday in October, Maxine invited us to hang out with her and her sister where they live, in Litchfield National Park. Litchfield is about a 2 hour drive from Darwin so we left early, picked up Jen, Majeed's coworker (who was also his coworker at YMCA in Ottawa) and headed out. On our way we stopped at the Rapid Creek Market, around the corner from our place, to pick up some delicious fresh fruit. Yum.

The drive there was beautiful and mostly uneventful, except that we saw a dead wallaby on the side of the road! Not exactly the best way to see one, but it is the only one I've seen so far. In case you don't know, wallabies look like mini kangaroos. I'd love it if I could see fewer live cockroaches and more live wallabies. But anyway.

So we met Maxine and her sister where they asked us to meet them: "under the banyan tree" -we were totally nervous that we wouldn't find said tree, but we did! Then we went to this amazing sacred water hole and they painted us with Aboriginal symbols! It was WAY WAY COOL. They made the paint from these rocks that sort of crumble when you wet them and then they rubbed them on another rock and boom, paint! Majeed got painted with 'man' symbols -animal prints and eagle feathers to symbolize a hunter and virility. Jen and I got painted with 'woman' symbols -water and berries to symbolize a gatherer and a leaf that represents fertility. It was really amazing how the paint stayed on for a few days, even after swimming and showering.

We drove by patches of land that were special places where men or women, depending, go to 'dream'. From what I understood, 'dreaming' is a period of time where a person goes off into the wilderness either alone or with other people of the same sex, with the intention of engaging in cleansing rituals or meditation or bonding and sharing. It is a time of pensiveness and emotional growth. The place where we swam is sometimes used as a place to dream. Very very magical. Maxine told me to ask the water spirit to cleanse my body and mind and to help me let go of any tensions and negative feelings that I was holding onto. I did and it felt great.

They told us about how if you have a sore tummy you can grab 6-12 green ants and bite off their green butts as whatever is in there is medicine. These ants are huge, for ants. They showed us some trees that have these sweet little fruits that are medicinal and told us that we would never see these fruits again as they are not available in stores and only Aboriginal people know about them. I asked why they were showing them to us and they said because we wouldn't be able to find the trees again. They're right. I can't even remember the name of the fruit!

They brought us to these totally awesome termite mounds. I had no idea there were three kinds: cathedral (they literally look like cathedrals and many are h-u-g-e), magnetic (they look like tombstones) and arboreal (usually against the base of a tree). Many of the mounds are still living -i.e. inhabited by termites- and Maxine told us that if you put your ear up against one, you can sometimes hear them moving around inside. We tried but couldn't hear anything.

To end off the day, we went over to Maxine's place. Her yard is filled with all types of fruit trees: SIX different kinds of mangoes, coconuts, dragon fruit, passion fruit (ok this is a vine, not a tree), bananas, and probably more that I'm forgetting. She gave us some delicious mangoes, bananas & a coconut to bring home! Yummy.

(Scroll down for one more photo)

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Photos

Cathedral termite mound
Would you check out the size of that??? This one was still 'alive'!

Green ants
A group of green ants ganging up on a big bug. I got bit by one while right after taking this photo.

Mangoes
Can't get 'em fresher!

Comments

[Catharine]

What a fabulous story about an amazing day!