The Territory comes alive with amazing music and characters
The desert is about space. Big sky, big land and lots and lots of space.
I was travelling again to Alice Springs, to work at a music conference that develops and promotes Northern Territory music – with the added bonus of heading to Tennant Creek for Desert Harmony, a landmark indigenous music and culture festival in Warumungu country.
I couldn’t wait to get my boots covered in red dust and have my cluttered mind cleared by being in a place where time skids to a halt, and the great scheme of things bears down to remind you that the world is far bigger than that of your own making.
What a 12 days it turned out to be. Off the plane and into the car, zooming north up the Stuart Highway at 130kmh (legal), with the rapping kids from the Red Sand Culture CD the car’s soundtrack.
I watched the landscape transform from black and red to green and yellow, the acacia thick from the rains the year before – that which made Alice’s sandy Todd River flow and become torrential.
It’s a strange sight to see a river of sand, with gnarly trees sprouting not from green but red.
And even stranger to see a river of fire which the Todd often becomes nightly in Alice Springs, as campfires career out of control.
On the opening night of our conference a riverbed grassfire sprouted against pitch black, just metres away.
Firies were there within minutes. It was burned out in spectacular fashion.
Fires are also a big feature of Tennant.
One night – before we had dinner at a restaurant housed inside a squash court – I was photographing a local memorial at sunset high up on a hill.
A fire front that stretched for miles slowly unfurled like a great snake along the horizon.
Twister-like plumes of black smoke draped themselves against the dusky sky.
But it all felt unthreatening, just part of the vast space that was the desert in the distance. Possibly a controlled-land management burn, possibly not.
It didn’t matter. It just was.
Back to the road trip though.
Just past the startling balancing boulder formations of The Devil’s Marbles at Karlu Karlu – a sacred site of many Dreaming stories to the traditional landowners of the country – we came into Wycliffe Well, the last stop before Tennant, now 130km ahead.
I’d forgotten; Wy-cliffe Well is the UFO spotting capital of Australia.
Now I was really excited.
After dropping $50 on all manner of alien-inspired souvenirs, we hit the road again.
“Whaddyareckon that is?” I asked my workmate, as I watched a shiny round thing hovering way up above us in the great blue. “UFO?” She peered through the windscreen. “Maybe” she answered, not unconvinced.
Then it was gone. Smoke took it from view, and it never re-appeared.
“Fire in the sky” I cry. Others advise “a silver weather balloon”. I want to believe.
That was day one of a remarkable time away, brimming with amazing music and characters.
In a space where all you have is time, it was ‘palya’ (Pitjantjatjara for ‘good’) to be able to give people my full attention, have deeper experiences and to learn about things I don’t yet understand.
More please…
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