rss feedWidgiemooltha, Norseman and surrounds
Over the weekend Sonny took us all on a trip out around Norseman, where he grew up and his community now owns tracts of land. The road out took us past mountains of soon-to-be-well-travelled wheat and tiny leftover towns.
First stop was Bromus Dam (below), for a cut lunch with Dewi’s homemade bread and to check the quandong and sandalwood trees around the dam … no fruit at this time, and nuts perhaps already collected by others, but the tiny quandong flowers are surprisingly tasty.
spiny bush used medicinally*
Then it was on towards Dundas Rocks. On the way Sonny stopped to dig up some Tjunga Tjunga, little spindly yam-like roots underneath an almost invisible vine often found around a certain kind of very straight tree.
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At Dundas Rocks we made a fire for some damper and tea. Sonny produced from his shirt pocket one wriggling bardi he’d found inside a tree, and roasted this along with another he’d brought as back up, which we shared as a nutty little entree.
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This was where we camped for the night, convening in Norseman the next morning.
Saturday saw us trooping out to Widgiemooltha, for toasted sandwiches at the roadhouse, another dam surrounded by flowering bush tomatoes …
… and a wander around the now mostly abandoned Tjirntu Para Para (Sunrise) Mission, where Sonny went to school, got married, and eventually became manager. In its day it was quite something, up to eighty kids at a time, big vegetable gardens, chickens, sheep… and a particularly inept Dutchman whose capers brought no end of consternation from the local boys who knew exactly what they were doing.
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After lunch we drove out to some known bush banana vines, past deserted streets that used to be busily lived-in and a boarded-up pub whose old publican/grocer was once notorious for jacking up the accounts when Aboriginal men went to settle, and adding the weight of his hefty arm to purchases by ‘New Australians’. Ah, the cheeky larrikin!
Only two little lonely bush bananas at the moment, but lots of flowers promising a good haul next year.
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After a winding detour in search of Cave Hill (which we didn’t find, distracted by bright red sandalwood nuts) we headed back to Norseman for a cup of tea.
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Trees and dirt and lonely men in the bush shimmering time lapse
… and onwards to Esperance, past another salt lake sunset.
* later the sausage seller at the village markets tells me he comes here regularly to chew on a branch from this very bush, ‘makes the skin cancers drop clean off!’
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