Martha and the Aborigines

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Helen, the park ranger, working her way up the rust-coloured slope on her hands and knees, gesturing that something was there – she had heard a sound – just beyond the crest. The red dust stirred lightly around me, settling on my sunburned arms and neck as I found myself crawling around the side of the bluff, binoculars in hand.

Suddenly, a mob of eight startled kangaroos, each standing at an intimidating 5 1/2 ft tall, came bounding directly at me, I jumped aside, dropping the binocs, as these powerful 'Keepers of the Outback' went right over me! I lay there for a moment, staring up at the indigo-blue sky until Helen’s silhouette eclipsed the sun.

“So, what d’you reckon, mate? Do you like what Mother Nature has on offer?”

All I could stammer was, “I-I didn’t really get to see them, They were too close!”

Okay, fine. I admit, I’m no Indiana Jones, but in my defence, this was my first day on an Outback-to-Ocean exploration tour in Western Oz – but with a twist; I was here to explore the Aborigines’ side of the experience.

Too many people come to this beautiful corner of the world, prepared to take in the ‘white man’s experience’; you know, wine tasting in the quaint Margaret River region near Perth (in itself a shopping destination); horseback-riding through the carefully groomed and fenced off farmsteads; sheep-shearing shows, etc.

Nothing wrong with that – this is, after all, the Ozzie reality of the holiday brochures – except that too few visitors realise that there is the relatively unprompted wealth of the Aboriginal experience on this continent, predating all else by, oh, 40,000 years or so.

So, that’s why I was there. Starting with my hapless and slightly pathetic encounter with the ‘roos, my adventure would include living, eating, and travelling, even if it was for just a day, in a once again timeless world, one the Aborigines aptly call Dreamland.

HELEN’S MARGARET RIVER

Three hours south of Perth, accessible by a new highway, lies the gloriously wooded and cool Margaret River Region, famed for its fine wines, welds of giant Karri trees, and artist colonies. Ironically, the river itself lies untouched, forgotten, acting as nothing more than a geographical turn-off sign.

This shallow, gentle river does nothing to reveal its turbulent and tragic history. For that, the river has Park Ranger Helen, the self-appointed 'spiritual caretaker of the Margaret.'

Helen is like no one I’ve ever met. She has the spiritual intensity of a shaman and the relaxed confidence and physical fitness of someone who truly understands and lives off nature, which, for the most part, she does.

Helen is white but her soul, she says, is Aborigine. Her parents were missionaries in an indescribably remote Aboriginal settlement in the interior. As the only white child in the entire region, she was taken in by the Aborigines as one of their own. With them, she learned the spiritual significance of every facet of nature and how it meshes with their oral/mythical history, the Dreamtime.