Blue Mountains Walkabout

The ASC took our last group trip besides the trip to New Zealand today to the Blue Mountains. Early this morning we met at Central Station at 8am, which means we got out of bed at 6am to take a bus and a train to get there in time. The train ride to the Blue Mountains took about an hour and a half and we got off at a little one platform stop in a very rural area called Falconbridge. Our guide, Evan Yarra Murra, was part aboriginal and was raised in a an aboriginal way,but you never would have guessed it. He looked very Anglo, which is common with Aboriginal people because they are often part something else and the dark skin gene is recessive. He was very in touch with his aboriginal heritage and spirituality.


We hiked down into the bush, all 40 of us, not very far to a place on a large rock where there were some old rock carvings of kangaroos, the rainbow serpent, and a sky god. They were from a traditional dreamtime ceremony. Evan described how the ceremony would go and a bit of the storytelling involved. He taught us things like how the old people used to "feel" the elements of nature - rocks, bushes etc. - and their spirits so that they could stay in touch with their sense and live in the present moment. We all tried it - not sure how I felt about it but it was interesting. He also talked about initiation to adulthood for boys and girls when they reach adolescence. A woman reaches adulthood naturally, but a man must be shaped by culture. The initiations include removing a front tooth, a nose piercing, cuts across the chest and arms, and a journey into the bush for the boys. It sounds quite graphic.

We hiked a bit further down to an amazing sandstone cave. As you can see from the pictures, the stone was all carved out and weathered in these amazing patterns and it was a bright yellow-orange. Evan brought out some rocks to grind into ochre that we used to paint on rocks and bark and then on each others faces. We were there for a long time admiring each others' paint jobs and taking pictures.

We continued on our hike down into the bottom of the valley - the trail was steep and we were climbing all over things and sliding around - through a rainforest area and then came back up a bit to another cave for lunch. We also had the wonderful option of using the woods for our toilet. Evan passed around some artifacts like the skins of a poisonous spider and a fat grub that is a delicacy and showed us how to roll eucalyptus leaves up and stick them in our noses to clear the sinuses. We learned to tea tree oil kills bacteria and germs and can be used for all kinds of toiletries - toothpaste, hair product, deodorant, soap.

Before we headed back to the train station Evan played the bullroarer for us. The bullroarer is a small oblong wooden stick that you swing around on a string to make music. It could only be played or heard by men traditionally, like the didgeridoo.

When we got back to Sydney it was 5pm already and I went with some other girls to Melanie's apartment for pizza and a movie. We watched Bridget Jones Diary and just talked, which was a nice change to the pace of life this week.