Wednesday September 11.

With  Ann's car at our disposal, she being away on a bush trip, we decided to go out to Ross River Station in the Eastern McDonnell ranges. Taking things easy, not rushing too much, we left at about 11. It's not far - only about 90 k from Alice - but on all the previous times I've tried to visit it has been closed, for a variety of reasons including fire.

You drive south for a while, then east along the base of the ranges, then after about twenty k you turn into the mountains as they rise up around you and the scenery suddenly changes gear from beautiful  to spectacular.

Not mad about this photo. Really doesn't do the scenery justice.

Well soon we were at the old homestead, built over a hundred years ago as a cattle station and it was enchanting to walk around inside and feel the history of the old rooms and furniture, and imagine the good times and bad, droughts, floods and bushfires that they'd known, bearing in mind how incredibly remote it is.

The old homestead

The big dining room, added in the fifties for tourists. In these outback oases one finds unusual mementoes, such as the skin of a huge feral cat, a kangaroo skeleton and so on.

We spent an hour or so there then acceded to a request from a woman named Sally for a lift back to Alice. Hers was an interesting story but I won't go into it here.

We stopped for a brief look at Emily Gap on the way back to Alice. Very special place for Aranda people.

Sally took our photo.

Annie got home in late afternoon, hot, dusty and tired. Her trip to Willuna to talk with the community about the new learning centre had not been a success because it was time for mining lease money to arrive and the various community factions were at each others' throats about who should get what and in no mind to talk calmly about a learning centre. There are good and bad things happening in Aboriginal communities all over Australia and this is an example of how they can conflict and of how much pressure people like Ann, working cross-culturally, have been under for years.

So Annie did not feel like coming downtown to see the street parade and the opening of the Alice Desert Festival, but after a simple but filling pasta and salad meal prepared by Meredith and me, we went off to participate. 

Todd Mall was filling fast when we got there at 5.30. We caught up with friends Meredith Campbell (a wedding celebrant) and her husband Richard and found a fine vantage point.

In the last couple of years my Meredith (Bowman) has bought two arresting paintings of black cockatoos by an increasingly well-known Centralian artist named Kukula McDonald. Kukula spotted Meredith Campbell in the crowd and here they are.

Meredith has been a carer for Kukula, who has a strange disability due to having had meningitis when she was young.

Inside a building right near the start of the street parade they were holding a 24 hour non-stop dance-a-thon.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Here follow some photos from the street parade, which wasn't very long but was very extra ordinary.

Hotpants and daughter led the parade

Bloody great big caterpillar makes its appearance

Inside the caterpillar was a drum band

A well-built but somewhat mystifying contraption being danced around by witches

Aboriginal Indian

Drum Atweme - the Aboriginal kids' drumming band that's been going for ten years, the brainchild of Peter Lowson, seen on the left, leading it, walking backwards.

Battye's bomb

Bringing up the rear of the parade was an incredible old bomb of a car, with smoke belching out and no muffler, being driven by David Battye, the maker of the Bush Mechanics series and with an Aboriginal guy on the roof filming the crowd, many of whom were running for their lives. It got ahead of us but when we got down to the ANZ bank there was a huge pool of dirty water on the road and the car stopped a few yards further on, with the bonnet up. About six black guys were peering into the engine and doing things. Battye said 'It blew up!' I believed him, but when they got it going again only for it to explode a few metres further on we realised that it was street theatre and advertising for Battye's event in the Mbantua Music Festival in October, which will involve Aboriginal mechanics fixing up broken cars, just like they did in Bush Mechanics. But it was bloody funny!

One of my impressions from the street parade was the great involvement of Aboriginal people, mainly kids, with no feelings of embarrassment, coercion or shame, rather pride and happiness.

And so back to Giles Street, to watch QI and Gruen to round off another great day.