Notes From The North West

Opportunity is a funny thing. Mark and myself met a few years ago in Perth working on music videos. We were both involved in various ways with a production company called Bard Films. Mark, behind the camera on Jebediah clips, and myself in the lighting department for Jebediah, Eskimo Joe and Diesel. Alongside that we both worked on Filmex-funded shorts and commercials with myself dipping into 3d animation and colour grading. Currently we both work freelance within the film and music industries trying to survive and continuing to expand our skills. The Making Movies Roadshow is a funded travelling, film-making workshop that enables first timers the chance to tell their story in a medium unfamiliar to them.

We both know a good opportunity when we see one. We also know not to look a gift horse in the mouth. When we each heard there was a job going that involved travelling to some of the most remote communities in Australia to teach storytelling and filmmaking, light bulbs went off. To get paid to travel doing something you love is what we all dream of. A lot of people never leave the comfort of the city. Never know what it’s like to step barefoot under the Milky Way on red earth still warm from a long day’s baking in the sun, or to see first hand how harsh it is to really survive in the middle of this ancient, deadly country.

A lot of people have never had the chance to sit down in the desert and have a conversation about life with an Aboriginal elder in their own country. A group of people who only one or two generations ago were still living substantially off the land. Coming from a film background and earning a living working on commercials, I thought it absolutely necessary that I experience these remote areas first hand, free of media ‘slanting’.

This is the great thing about the ‘Making Movies Road show’ (MMR). We are not outcomes driven. That is to say that the program places more emphasis on the creative learning process than the end result itself. It is about igniting passion and creativity, helping people to find their own voice; to step outside the square and put their stories into another context. The other great thing is that it is a travelling show. People from other areas actually get to see the films and benefit from the insights within their stories.

I’m not going to pretend it’s all a rose-tinted magic carpet ride. It isn’t. Doing these workshops takes you to the edge of all of your limits. Challenges you at every turn and forces you to burn quite a few pre-conceived notions of just what goes on out in the middle of nowhere. You can’t run away; you can’t hide behind the veneer of your constructed self. You have to be genuine, real. The wide open space and heat affects people’s perceptions. People see a person’s character a lot cleaner out there.

Some of these trips are up to six weeks long. Six weeks of living out of a bag, constant driving, flies, bugs, disease and searing heat. Often sleeping on the floor of whatever room is spare. With some of these communities housing up to 15 people and six dogs per house, there’s not a lot of spare accommodation going.

04 September, 2005

Well, we have been on the road for 4 days now. The contrast from Melbourne is shattering yet refreshing, from 12 degrees to an average 33 in three days. It is the tail end of the peak tourist season now and small camper vans still litter the highways like rogue Slater bugs.

Two words spring to mind up here: GREY POWER. The retirees’ exodus and continual circling of this vast country is unrelenting. They file out of coaches and tour buses buying up all those things the rest of us cringe at. T-shirts, hats, stubby holders and silver spoons. You may dis them at first, sitting behind a wall of heavy window tinting and thick air-conditioning as they consume all in their path like frail, hungry locusts. Yet I can’t help but think that if faced with the alternative option of the sterile confines of our multitude of retirement villages or ‘resorts’, the choice becomes pretty clear.

The best thing about making films, as any film-maker will tell you, is screening them to an audience. It completes the feedback loop. Sitting with an audience you hear every murmur, every wriggle in a seat, the sighs, the giggles and the groans. It is trial by fire. It is a gut-wrenching experience, the end of which will give you a pretty good indicator as to how your film was received.

With this project we have a mobile cinema with us, PA, projector and 20-foot screen. All packed with precision onto the roof of the 4WD. At the end of the week’s workshop the finished films are screened to the entire community. There is a beautiful moment when you peer through the darkness and spy a kid watching a film they’ve made. In the dull flicker of light, you see the faces of their relatives and friends occasionally look down with fondness.

“You’ve done well!”

05 September, 2005

Arrival at Noonkambah

After a four hour drive from Broome and a further hour’s drive on a rough gravel road, darkness has set in. This is my first time on a remote Aboriginal community and my imagination is being dissipated by my senses. Through the murky darkness it looks like an ordinary small town: lights emanating from many of the small buildings; dogs running alongside the car yapping at the tyres and announcing our arrival. There is a lot of protocol involved in communities. Certain areas you are not allowed into. Men’s areas, women’s areas. Trying to find the house we are looking for is no easy task without street signs and only verbal instruction.

The community itself is divided into rough clusters. Top camp, middle camp and bottom camp. Top camp being the last of the traditional peoples, bottom being the Christians and middle being somewhere in-between. Apprehensive, we kill the lights as we approach a house with several dark figures and a fire outside. Janine, ‘Tour Mum’, our ambassador, disembarks and heads over. We needn’t have worried. Word has spread pretty quickly and the whole town is reportedly very excited to have us here.

After getting directions, we meet our host the local school headmaster, who, I kid you not, is the splitting image of Jim Carey! This time we are staying in the school we will be teaching from. Sleeping on the floor of the home economics room, we use the girls’ toilets to shower in (which we share with four large green frogs). As our host leaves, we are instructed to keep the gate shut at night to keep the cattle out. Noonkambah is known for its cattle farming, and the locals have a long history entrenched in cowboy culture. It is famous for a blockade that happened in the 1980s, when a mining giant tried to seize the land.

The week’s workshop progresses exceptionally well. The kids arrive at school as early as 6am and peer through the windows, waiting for us to rise. These kids are fantastic. Several bond with me instantly, and I end up having a jam with them in the music room. Crazy little drummers – they got rhythm, that’s for sure. Our job here is to take their stories and turn them into watchable films. The heat is unrelenting: it’s 43 in the shade before 11am. We teach them animation, clay-mation, camera work and editing. The end of the week arrives and we are up all night preparing the films for the screening on Friday.

Almost the entire community arrives for the screening and kids dance and play to the ‘Noah23’ album we play over the slide show. Dogs play-fight in the middle of the shearing shed we screen in. The kids run a barbeque and serve steak, sausages and eggs.

The screening ends and it appears to have been very successful, with everyone wanting to watch the films a second time. We are exhausted and pass out more than we do sleep.

11 September, 2005

Fitzroy Crossing Local Pub

Noonkambah is situated about a hundred kilometres or so from Fitzroy Crossing, and after a very tough week on a dry community it was decided that beer would be the order of the day. So where do you go to meet locals? The local. This pub is so rough that they only sell cans behind the bar. Famous for staying open during the floods that saw you swimming to the bar to get a beer, it is in a world of it’s own.

On our approach the place resembles a war zone. Bodies litter the ground outside under trees, passed out on the sidewalks, moaning and groaning post battle. Blood is visible on the footpath. It’s like a zombie flick, minus the brain eating.

Stepping past and over, we make our way in. Everyone wants to meet us and tell us their stories. Before long, about six locals – all related in one way or another – surround us. Laughter is bellowing at full volume. I feel like I’m in some kind of weird cartoon, larger than life, trying to keep pace on the beers and quick wit with them.

Big Jim had an interesting story about being reverse-‘Stolen Generation’-alized.

Abandoned by his black family and left on an ants nest at birth to die because they wanted a girl, Jim was put into foster care with a white family in Esperance for the first seven years of his life. When they passed away he was then placed back into the old country, and said the culture shock was ‘pretty scary’ – growing up in a white family, then thrown back into the desert with no knowledge of Aboriginal language or custom. He was immediately ostracized. Jim is now over 60 and very well adjusted. He sits on the council in some faculty and is one of the liveliest, funniest bastards I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to. We connected on a human-to-human level. Gotta chuck a piss. Enter the toilet.

I turn around from the urinal to face a large, skinny man with freshly congealing blood all over his face and in his eyes. Caught off-guard and not knowing what to say, I offer:

“Whoa! Looks like you had a run-in with a brick wall or something there mate! You alright?”

Him: “Had a fight with the missus.”

He wasn’t even coming in to clean it, he just wanted to take a piss, too.

We spend the next day wandering the gorge and swimming in the river. We get burnt to a crisp by the sun, and quickly have to do a week’s food shopping before making the rough trek crossing creek beds and dodging cattle to our next location.

13 September, 2005

The wisdom of the elders
Yakanarra

We’re working with a mixed group this time, kids from the local school and elders from the adult education centre. Enter the oldest remaining couple from the tribe, Colin and Daisy.

Daisy is a large woman with a three-inch goatee with a reputation for flashing her breasts. A talented artist, she is the area’s local success story. So successful she has travelled the world exhibiting her paintings. It makes me smile picturing her on show at posh galleries in France. Colin, her partner, was one of the great cowboys of the day. Hunched over, long hair and beard, crusty old baseball cap and battered walking stick, he moves at a snail’s pace yet somehow manages to throw his body over the fence with more gusto than someone half his years.

“G’day mate!”

Loud and genuine.

Enter ‘Bumbla’. He speaks like Bill Cosby’s character Dr Huxtable. Listening to him do his English literacy class was at once hilarious and heart-warming. We chatted about life, death, murder and what happens in tribal law.

“Are you worried about terrorism?” I ask.

He pauses, flashes me a smirk.

“Not up here.”

And it’s hard to disagree when the outside world is so far, far away.

Bumbla and his white wife Lauren, the local headmistress, are the pillars of this community. Having their door open to visitors with all sorts of problems 24 hours a day has taken it’s toll. Jealousy is the main cause of fights up here. After 17 years or so, they are planning on leaving.

14 September, 2005 4.22pm

Yakanarra

A tough day today. Working with one group of men and boys, the story they decided to do was on hunting. Hunting and the passing on of traditions from one generation to the next. We swung by one of the guys’ houses and picked up a .22 rifle and headed off into the low desert scrub. Our aim was to shoot some bush turkey, the reasoning being that they lay low under bushes as the temperature climbs. We crawled off road for what seemed like hours, just running through small bushes and scrub. No signs of life. After a good two hours, our head-hunter pulled to a stop and pointed out ‘roo ears between bushes a good 100 metres away.

Blam! Miss. Blam! Miss. Blam! Hit!

The female ‘roo took it in the gut and managed to hop a few yards before hitting the deck. Her young joey fled. Scramble. Out of the car, everyone raced over and found her twisting and turning on the ground trying get away. Our head-hunter grabbed a large stick and finished her off with five or six swift blows to the base of the head. The young boys picked her up and dragged her to the back of the troupe. As we drove off, I turned around for a glance at this strange, and now still, creature.

Flick-flick.

She was still alive, writhing in pain on the floor of the car, looking about wildly.

Lock.

We made eye contact and I was overcome with guilt. I had the distinct feeling she was calling for help. And I turned my back on her. The smell of death-fear filled the car. The guilt came not from my unwillingness to help but from the nagging feeling that if I had not been here to help these boys film their story she would have lived, gone on to roam wild with her child. When we got back, we found another embryo/joey inside her pouch, not bigger than 10cm, still alive. As I prised the pouch open it scrambled and winced at the harsh sunlight burning into it. Double guilt. The circle of being a meat consumer greeted with the killing process now complete.

18 September, 2005

Yakanarra

So many dogs. In Noonkambah (population approx 200), there were 110 canines. This place, with a population of about 100, has at least 50. They have their gangs and their own class system. They also have a king, D4 (dog 4), the most battle rugged, tough bastard of a dog I’ve ever seen. Not vicious or nasty, he will let you pat him and even make eye contact. His fur ripped, torn and burnt like a weathered old pirate map, scars everywhere.

When we had the screening here, we had a massive 20-dog brawl break out in the middle. A pit of gnashing teeth and yelping. People just picked up chairs or whatever was around them and smashed the shit out of them. Completely normal, and let’s face it, you wouldn’t go putting your arm in amongst a fight like that. What do they eat? Buggered if I know, most are used for hunting wild pig, goanna, bush turkey and kangaroo. I think they just fend for themselves. Occasionally one will give you THAT look, but for the most part they are all friendly and enjoy a good scratch of their tick-filled bellies.

I’m a dog person.

20 September, 2005

Leisure Time

After two weeks of full-on workshops in dry communities we are rewarded with three days off before the long drive to South Headland for the final workshop.

We head north from Broome on a 200 kilometre dirt road. One of the roughest I’ve even driven. It’s boggy, choppy and we bottom out over the moguls constantly. It requires 200% of my concentration. Smoking a cigarette is impossible, as is conversation. The CD player skips. Mark is in the back sucking on a beer and holding down a full time job just re-stacking camera gear, bags and cushions that are flying around the car. Our destination, Lombadina. Another Aboriginal community; the difference being that it has opened itself up to tourism. Run by locals, it has a general store with a small bread bakery. We have fishing, swimming, cards and reading on our minds. This place is perfect. Tiny little dongas are nestled amongst tropical trees filled with exotic birds. There is lush grass everywhere and our own personal 10 kilometre beach lies just one kilometre over the sand dunes.

We wake early and head north another 10 kilometres to Cape Leveque, the northernmost point of the peninsula. Red cliffs, an ancient lighthouse, tropical birds, pristine white sand and turquoise water that is warm enough to float in for hours on end. We have beer and gin and spend the entire day lazing in the ocean on an inflatable red ring I bought for six bucks. We are all exhausted, yet exhilarated: back to the accommodation for some vodka and UNO. Around midnight we head to our own private beach.

The feeling of standing under the stars, knowing you have an entire coast to yourself, untouched, no footprints, so remote, is overwhelming. We bodysurf in the dark for hours, letting the ocean toss us round like rag dolls.

September 26th 12.07pm

South Headland. One word for this hokey, mangled, inbred town: SHITSVILLE. We’re forced to break a golden rule and eat McDonalds because there was simply no other place open on a Sunday afternoon. The bottle shop across the road has a smattering of locals sitting on the ground in the 30 degree heat waiting for the drive-through to open at 11am. One man in particular furiously rechecks his watch as we walk past. The pub – ‘Last Chance Hotel’. This town is heartbreaking. The sorrow and echoes of battles lost hang heavy, trapped in the stifling heat, seeming to battle even themselves over nothing.

The Kids. Beautiful but trapped. Not old enough to have sampled much of the possibilities for what life could offer, they hang around in their bed of drugs, drink and sexual disease always under the assumption that this is just the way it is. This is normal. I take my hat off to the youth workers we have been working with. Like retired prizefighters, fighting a battle that they know they will lose. They dance the dance and sing the song that was sung to them as kids. The figures for sexual infection and cross-infection rival those of just about anywhere. The feeling that you could catch something just by waving your dick around in the toilet is hard to fight.

The US has a lot to answer for, pumping out their white-boy sanctioned black hip-hop and R&B shit 24/7 into the mouths of Aussie black kids with no role models of their own. Selling that hard image of sex and wealth and opulence, you can see the allure. They know all the moves, all the songs. They call each other ‘bitch’ and ‘slut’.

Outcomes

So at the end of it all, what is left? Do I think the films are any good?

I think the kids and everyone involved got to experience something foreign to them and it was an intensely creative and productive week. The fact that they got a finished product that was THEIR story is what’s important. I think our role was a mix of educator, facilitator and stick-prodder.

I feel very saddened by the state in which these people exist. Anyone who says “Oh Abos, they’re all drunk, dirty, smelly bludgers,” should seriously spend some time up here. Judging an entire culture based on the four or five people they’ve seen in their local inner-city park is not only ridiculous — it’s just plain dumb. Yes, many Aboriginals I encountered here drank a lot. Everyone does up here. It’s hot, and there ain’t a lot of work. There are so many people trying to make a change in their lives, trying to steer clear of the booze and get an education. It’s also not easy studying in a house with 10 other people and five dogs who are up all hours of the night.

Someone said something interesting up here:

“I think in another 15 years we are gonna cop a lot of flack for NOT intervening, for letting these people live how they are.”

There is so much stigma left over from the stolen generation that everyone is scared to act. Ask any elder, it ain’t pretty. Something needs to be done now to save this race and their rich culture. With all the talk of famine and poverty overseas, people forget we have our own third world civilization in our own backyard.

+