Monday September 16 2013

A year or so ago Ann Davis came up with the idea of making a book about all the long-term residents of Giles Street. Bill and Ann live at number 49 and there are many other interesting people in the street who've been there for thirty years or more. Federal Polly Warren Snowdon is one of them.

Ann ran several residents' meetings, there was considerable interest and material in the form of individual stories from the different houses was written, collected, collated and edited.

However the idea of a book has morphed into the idea of a website, which the residents will be able to access and modify and Ann has commissioned me to produce the website, which will be a great delight.

I've been taking photos of the houses and here's a typical one...

So yesterday we started by visiting old friend Peter Yates, a few doors up the road in Giles Street. We'd not visited earlier because he and Pamela had been out bush, helping run a healing camp for distressed white people from down south, with the help of local Aboriginal people. This is the sort of thing Pete does. He has an amazing fruit and vegetable garden at his  house and has a company named VAST under the auspice of which he finds and casts Aboriginal actors for films. He worked with Rolf de Heer on 'Tracker' and more recently found actors for 'Tracks', the story of Robyn Davidson's amazing trek with camels from Alice Springs to the west coast in 1976. One man he cast was Roly Mintumi from Mutitjulu. to play old Mr. Eddie from Wingellina, who walked with Robyn for several hundred kilometres. in 1997 I hired Roly to be our first male house-parent at Nyangatjatjara College.

Peter Yates

Pete set up the art centre at Ramingining (David Gulpilil's home town in Arnhemland) thirty years ago and also Maruku Arts at Mutitjulu, whih still runs well, collecting and marketing bush wood carvings from communities all around the area. He's spent pretty much the whole of his adult life working for the betterment of Aboriginal people. And he's also very funny! Great bloke.

Next we went out to the Old Telegraph Station, a must-see for all tourists to Alice. It's a few kilometres up the north road from town, but was the original white  settlement here. It's on the bank of the Todd River, nestling in to beautiful rockscapes such as this ...

 Rocks on approach to Telegraph Station

The Allchurch referred to in this tourist info board was the uncle of Don Allchurch, who lived next to us at Willunga. The uncle was stationmaster at the telegraph station until it ceased operations in 1932.

There is much of interest to see and learn at the Telegraph Station but it is best to Google it.

The old stone buildings are in excellent condition

We went for a second time to the IAD cafe for lunch and then to the IAD bookshop where Merri bought a beautiful book about Aboriginal art - Lives of the Papunya Tula Artists - and I bought Yami Lester's autobiography, first published in 1993, but Yami's still going strong.

We found a cafe near where we're staying in Eastside, called the Pilates Cafe. Only been open for a month and they've renovated a big old shed where a friend Robin Laidlaw used to live until he unfortunately died five years ago.

More typical Alice Springs architecture.

Right across the road from the cafe is the Muk Muk Aboriginal art gallery. By cripes, have we seen some artwork on this trip. Muk Muk has works by many well known artists and the young lass in charge was very knowledgeable. So many styles, so many new themes emerging.

Don't know who painted this piece at Muk Muk

Dinner and yarns last night with friends Meredith Campbell and Richard. He sells St. John Ambulance first aid kits, she works as a carer for disabled Aboriginal people - some with autism, some brain-damaged. They have a boarder named Audra (not a mis-spelling) who works as cook at the Alice Hospital, who cooked the barbie last night and is unexpectedly very funny.

Audra told a yarn of coming home one night to find her dog with a mouth full of feathers because he'd chewed the whole centre strip out of a duckfeather doona and she reckoned he was thinking, 'Where's the effing duck?' She also showed us pictures of her eight month old grandson who has a huge set of well developed teeth and has been chewing up a lot of his cot. She thinks he's a monster. They call him the beaver.