Dawn just west of Papunya: I woke super early probably because I was SLEEPING ON THE GROUND IN A CANVAS BAG. The full moon was actually too bright like sleeping under a flouro. Nature is horrid.
I got up and wandered around the landscape in the dark for a while, crunching through spinifex and marvelling at size of the horizon and listening to whatever stupid birds get up way before dawn. They mumbled and twirbled and then there was a magpie so the sun was going to be along at some point.
The sky was full of shooting stars (three) and I expected to be trampled by a camel or a giant cow suddenly looming out of the darkness. I saw a bat.
Dawn out here, when it came, was a luminous sunrise that silhouetted the obtuse shrubs and the stupid stick trees with their stupid now obvious sticks, while behind me a picture-book full moon slid through the clouds preparing to tuck itself behind the huge outcrop over the way.
Meanwhile, the birds and the bats and all the chirping twiddling little bastards of dawn are hooting and hollering while the temperature dropped six degrees and I had to stoke the fire some more.
Behind us the sunrise started to show the colours of the rock hill that would have been at home on Mars except for the lumps of stubborn green foliage camped across it.
It was gorgeous and terrifying.
The night before we had pulled off the side of the road nowhere in particular but everywhere is red and beautiful. The dirt is not as great when you have to roll out your swag on it, finding somewhere between the spinifex so you don’t get prickles and lumps. Who am I kidding it was great.
So far I have seen:
- a bird
- another bird
- a third bird and its friend
- birds in general
- a hawky looking thing
- an eagle
- two budgies
- a flock of budgies
- some sort of duck
- something that Ian the botanist said were camel melons
- an actual bustard
- skinks
- A GIGANTIC CAMEL THAT WANTED TO KILL US ALL
- not a bilby
This country is ridiculously beautiful and it makes complete sense to me even though I have never been here before and I don’t even know what that means but it does. I like it.
I think a lot of Australians might grow up with this idea of this being the heart of the country and whether we actually visit or not it is part of us. I sound like that movie with Hugh Jackman and whatserface. That movie was terrible I loved it.
It hailed in Alice last week which doesn’t happen often and it’s been raining “a lot”, everywhere is “green”. There is water in the Todd River which apparently is a once in a lifetime thing.
We arrived at Kiwirrkurra in the Gibson Desert after a long drive. The Ninu festival was in full swing. Indigenous rangers spoke about their experiences with bilbies (called ninu in the local Aboriginal language) and the things that like to kill bilbies. There was lots of science talk about mapping and data and how to do stuff. There was a DRONE SCIENTIST and a BILBY POO SCIENTIST and I learned quite a bit.
I GOT A T-SHIRT WITH ALL THE DIFFERENT BILBY NAMES ON IT THIS IS THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE.
I met Albert from Broome who is a country protector. He looks after bilby country around Broome and he has never even seen a bilby I have no hope. He also looks after the spectacled hare-wallaby as well and has only ever seen one of those in the wild. Hmmmm.
In the afternoon we went out TO WHERE THE BILBIES ARE! We saw a burrow, and some bilby tracks. And we heard lots of science and bilby lore and I know what ninu eat now. We also saw some quite complicated feral cat traps which I wasn’t entirely sure about. There was a lot more stuff but I can’t remember what it all was the sun was quite hot.
Things I learned:
1. How to find out if you have bilbies:
(a) you have bilby tracks,
(b) someone has been digging in the acacia roots for grubs,
(c) there is bilby poop.
2. What bilbies eat:
(a) witchetty grubs,
(b) ants,
(c) cheeseburgers.
More tomorrow.
Join us every day this week for the latest instalment of First Dog on the Moon’s blog from the bilby summit.
