For me, the highlight of the year was taking the kids on a field trip with the sculpture department to Wilgie Mia, the site of an Aboriginal ochre mine just north of Cue. It is the biggest ochre mine in Australia and later when I went with an ANZUS expedition to Central Australia we sometimes came across ochre balls (balls of ochre bound with saliva). The anthropologist on the expedition said ochre from Wilgie Mia was taken all over Australia. The ochre mine was huge with a large variety of ochres. In a niche, high up in the wall of the cave was the body of an elder in a casket. It was obviously a very sacred place and we were intruders. It would not be allowed today.
We all chose an isolated place to set up camp. The kids and I could have been the only people on earth and didn’t see other people unless we wanted to. It was an enriching experience, having time to notice things. It was fascinating to see the kids almost melting into the environment, completely at one with the bush. Both spent a lot of time preoccupied with the campfire and I don’t think there was a cross word all week. It made me conscious of two things: firstly, I loved being ‘alone’ and needed long periods of being alone to make sense of the world. Secondly that being ‘alone’ is considered unwise for a woman. A man can be alone in the bush and nobody questions it but a woman is ‘inviting trouble’. I resented that and vowed to one day learn self-defence so I could feel free. (I never got around to it.)
Planting fruit trees and growing veges – a steep learning curve but love growing things.
On the 29th April 12-year-old, Keisha had to be put down. We were all very sad. She had been part of the family but she had a good life including having a litter of pups, some of which went to friends.
EP has returned to us along with a friend, Bluey. They have grown enough to forage for themselves but we give them a bottle a day to keep them coming back. It was lovely to see the kid’s enraptured faces as we brought them home. Each sitting in the back seat of the car with a joey in a ‘pouch’ on their laps.
At the end of 1983, Rob turned six. He requested a rose for his birthday. Angelic! This is the kid who admitted in a year five ‘autobiography’ that during this year he teased another boy because his skin was dark (called him sunburnt) and that he pulled out the chair of the girl who sat in front causing her to sit on the floor
