Places under the radar for millions of years

Bucky Graham, been painting warlu (snakes), now into turtles.  

Sea turtles, affirmative (yeah!)

      Coming up on my last couple days in Roebourne, Western Australia.  I will truly miss this village.  I was talking to my friend earlier how I felt a powerful family-oriented culture here similar to Hawaiian or Okinawan culture (something to do with islands, maybe?  everyone is an island. or remote places, I should say.  but not everyone is a remote).  The Aboriginal people are deeply and thoroughly connected through their families; many times I've been talking to someone about someone else and they've informed me "Oh yeah, that's my brother."  or "Mmm, you know my daughter is his nanna."  It's a real connection I feel- even as an outsider- that the family tree is also directly engrained into the land, like Shintoism in Japan.  Props to Moorumburri and the cousin-sisters from the Burrup and Croydon.  Word, family, word.  If any Murai's are reading this, that's what I say, thanks, from around the world.

      We went camping in the Chichester Mountains over the weekend.  It was an amazing trip.  This here is the best waterhole I've ever swam in.  The Pilbara region is desert, desert, and no rain, desert.  So many town around here rely on the freshwater springs that come from inland.  This is one of them, in Karajini National Park.  There are sheer cliffs that border these clear streams, and there was a huuuge rounded out hole/cave in a wall, where eras of erosion, I think from minerals as well as flowing water, carved out this cave.  A true Shrine of Nature.

      Here we are actin-a-fool up in a national park where we were the only people around for many kilometers, except for some crazy dude living with a full bed and amenities outside his lone hut who we skillfully avoided as we picked mangoes off an abandoned tree.  The rocks were amazing on the ground, like little people came and heaved the rocks around and painted deftly colored murals on each stone.  Really little, really talented people, simile-ly.  That looks like smiley.  Yeah, let's say they were smiley people, too.  Wha?...

      ....Annd yup, what's a road trip without a little car trouble?  We fixed a flat at Auski roadhouse in the middle of nowhere.  We thought we were going to be stuck there for weeks because we were parched for fuel and the power was out when we arrived.  Luckily the power came back on and the petrol tickers worked again.  But it was bloody hot. Please believe me when I say it was bloody hot.

    

      This is Millstream.  I wanted to trick the reader and flip the photo upside down so it looked like it wasn't a picture of a reflection in the Fortescue River.  But I don't know how to work this shizz.  Cools down right, though.  

Swimming in groundwater clear enough to read newspapers through, as long as you encase the paper in a big ziplock, is very healing, a different kind of immersion from the Indian Ocean.  But I am yet to immerse myself in the pearl farms of Broome, where I am taking the bus to in two days.  I shall not know how often I can write entries when I'm up there, but I'm pretty sure the well hasn't dried up yet.

Dude, I just jumped in my seat.  This huuuge beetle careened into the wall near my ear and made a sound like Goliath knocking.  Damn.  Hope you're well.