Saturday 29th June
Our Maningrida Day has been just
fascinating, thus far. We have been
invited to dinner at the Business Manager’s house…he caught barramundi this
morning and has very kindly offered to cook it for us. SO tempting – I do love fish…and Marcus is
wonderful. But we will probably have to
leave this evening; we still have 300-odd nautical miles to go; we have rudder
problems; the wind is tricky. Everything
conspires against a lovely chatty evening with our very nice new friend Marcus.
This morning we went in to shore and
started walking – a bit slowly; Pete’s foot is very painful. Some friendly locals told us how to get to
the art centre – a few kilometres up the road, at the airstrip. Hobble hobble… We went past the police
station, the community centre, the school, and then weren’t sure of our
way. Pete saw a bloke getting out of his
car and fortuitously asked whether we were on the right track. Fortuitously because…this was Marcus. He looked at us in a considering way, and
then said, “If you are going to the art centre, you had better take a big
stick. Here, borrow this one.” A big stick…to fight off vicious packs of
dogs…
I
had already taken a photo of a local dog.
It was lying apathetically in the sun and didn’t move a whisker when a
big sheet of plastic blew across it.
Very cute. But…these Maningrida
dogs are NOT cute. They are ugly, mangy,
miserable and potentially lethal.
Marcus gave Pete the stick then
immediately took pity on us and drove us to the art centre. It was, so we have been told, full of magnificent
art work…and shut up like a clam. But we
ended up having a much more interesting time because Marcus invited us in for a
cup of coffee and a chat. I won’t go
into all of the politics involved in his job, both with the Intervention and
now with Strong Communities, but he was a wonderful person, and able to answer
lot so of the questions Pete and I have been asking ourselves during our time
thus far in the Northern Territory.
After a few hours sitting in Marcus’s
breezeway – his accommodation consists of two conjoined converted containers
with a covered area in between – it was time to go back to 2XS, via the
supermarket. Marcus took us on a tour
all around Maningrida and gave us a brief but very informative rundown on the
community. Ten different clan groups
live here – ten entirely different languages!
I won’t go into any detail re the
housing but suffice it to say that Libby was entirely correct when she said
that housing is a crucial issue in these remote communities. At the moment an average of 18 people live
in each small 2-3 bedroom house… This is not sustainable, for many reasons.
And why are the dogs such a
problem?? Well for a start, they hang
around in packs, and they are itchy, scratchy and uncomfortable in their own
skin, literally. As well as this a lot
of people in the Northern Territory have bred up big, lethal pig-hunting dogs,
and some of these have interbred with the local camp dogs, creating a very
dangerous mixture. I sad that most dogs
would keep well away for Pete, with his confident loud farmer voice. Marcus was not so sure… He said a local woman
was killed by a dog pack quite recently, and that one of the Maningrida school
teachers is in hospital in a critical condition after being mauled by the local
mutts.
AAGGHH!
As if the crocs weren’t enough!!
When we got to the ramp this morning there
were two local kids throwing a net. I watched
for a while, and saw that they were very happy to be observed. In my experience, children EVERYWHERE like a
bit of attention and admiration…They were still there when we got back a few hours
later, and they were very keen to show me their fish (tiny…)
They were also very happy to chat and be
photographed, but I am not showing their faces…
Marcus had told us he had seen a 3-metre
croc at the ramp that morning, so I asked Caroline and Georgina (such lovely
names…not really their names but close...such lovely girls.) Oh yes, said Caroline in a
matter-of-fact manner. We see them.
I asked if they were frightened and she said, a bit impatiently, NO!
We can see them!
Fair enough…
