Not Much Going On

November 3, 2001-Arts and Crafts
(photo:David blowing our didgeredoo)

We had no planned touring today slept until 11 AM. What a pleasure! Fortunately for you, even though we did laundry today, we did it at our motel so there’s no story to tell.

But we did buy a didgeridoo. We ended up at the Aboriginal Cultural Arts store recommended by Fodors. We have followed their advice before & have been pleased. David can actually get a good sound out of it. It must be from all the shofar blowing practice, although the technique is different. With a didgeridoo, you vibrate your lips & hum in your throat. I found out why traditionally women do not make them or play them. If a woman plays a didgeridoo she will either get pregnant, lose the baby if she is pregnant, or be infertile. As I see it, the men look upon it as akin to the male appendage & they just don’t want to share. Didgeridoo is the word that whites gave to what the aborigines call “yidaki.”

Since we’re now on the romantic Barbary Coast, we wanted to walk over to Wharf Street where the city began. There’s a building where you can book tours, piers where tour boats dock, & lots of Japanese operated stores with all Japanese signs in the windows. I was a bit confused by the sudden appearance of a Japanese neighborhood, but David figured it out. There’s a huge casino across the street.

We had time to stop in at the local art gallery where they had several interesting small exhibits. There was a collection of photos of locals that was right out of Norman Rockwell. One was of the mayor & “mayoress” of Cairns. There was a grouping of batiks made by the women of a tribe in Utopia, a tiny town Northeast of Alice Springs. A great video illustrated step by step how the project was started. There were interviews with aboriginal women as well. The project was introduced as a way to create a sense of economic & personal independence for the women while letting them stay on their land with their families. Although batik is not a native art form, the women easily learned it & created beautiful designs.

An exhibit of paintings was introduced with an explanation of aboriginal history. I thought there was a typo so I re-read it, but there was no inaccuracy. It said that in the early 1990’s, the concept of “terra nullius,” the land uninhabited, still existed here. It was “typical of the egoism” of the colonial mentality that gave them the rationale to clear the land & segregate aboriginal children from their families. In 1992 & 1996, the land rights & aboriginal rights laws were passed. Aborigines were given citizenship in 1967, not that it meant anything then.

On a lighter note, a fanny pack is called a bum bag. On the menu the other night was “white bait.” I didn’t know what it was & thought that it was fried grubs so I didn’t order it. When I found out what it was, I thought it might be tasty. It’s a tiny fish the size of a guppy that’s deep-fried. From the description, it sounded like popcorn shrimp.

Toby