"I knock at the stone’s front door" - Namadgi
The longer I'm here, the more surprises I encounter. This time, like most other weekends, we had planned to see something interesting. As usual, we obediently followed the commands of our GPS to get to our destination. The views were to die for: picturesque mountain vistas, empty winding roads, and valleys upon which the cloudy shadows moved slowly. We stopped several times, not simply to admire the scenery, but to experience it. Each stop was like a face-to-face meeting with the landscape. It moved me to tears every time. Open space has the potential of the ideal. It’s as if the Genius loci was inviting us to this place. I felt so much joy.
We drove higher and higher, the GPS led us to
Namadgi National Park. The road was no longer covered with asphalt. Our red
dragon was bravely moving forward, but because it's a conventional car we felt
every big stone. Lots of banging and
clattering of dissatisfaction emanated from the car chassis. After a moment, the rear wiper started to
operate by itself. We were tens of kilometers from anyone and the thought of a
broken down car here was very unpleasant. Our phone had lost reception, google
maps stopped working. There was only one road to follow, but its condition was getting worse and worse. I was beginning to feel uneasy. How easy it is to
travel from a reality that is safe with marked white lines with police ready to
enforce road laws to a space dominated by wildness. This is one of the most
fascinating characteristics of Australia.
We passed a sign: “Namadgi” on our way and then
there was nothing for a long, long time.
The wiper was still dancing and eventually irritated us to the point where we
disconnected the cables and then turned the car around. It turned out that someone had indeed put the
Namadgi National Park coordinates in
Google maps, but it was the edge of the park and the other side of where people
normally enter. We still had an hour to
get to the visitors centre (where the walking tracks start). We reached asphalt
again and my eyes sparkled at the wonderful views and with sincere gratitude
for our misadventure.
We had just passed a sign with the inscription
“Deep Space Network 3 km”. It sounded intriguing, so spontaneously we veered
off the road and followed the sign's direction.
A valley straight from a fairy tale opened before us. A huge white
antenna was visible far in the distance. It's a part of a network of three
devices located in three locations across Earth: in Europe (Spain), the USA
(California) and Australia (Canberra). Thanks to this geographical location, it
is possible to monitor space objects without Earth's rotational “disturbance”
(here is a link to the DSN site). The antenna looked impressive and there was a
visitors center just next to it which housed a museum and a small cafe. I was
excited because I wanted to read about some intergalactic adventures, but
all I had to settle for was the sight of
the "official" Moon rock. There were some children standing around it
with me. Their little noses were
touching the glass case guarding the precious object. It was so beautiful
outside and I think that there are so many stones out there that have much more
touchable stories to tell.
The massive white antenna was the landscape's only
anomaly. Without it, the views were from an idyllic romance: lush green meadows
and shady, gentle hills with grazing lambs. All this would be almost bland, if
not for the huge boulders scattered randomly in the field of gentleness. They gave
it a sense of sharpness and expression. Like dots on Aboriginal paintings, they
were creating their own web, which holds up the visible world.
It was a stone that brought us to Namadgi – a huge
granite boulder, a rock shelter, which was a meeting place for Aboriginal tribes.
The rock art paintings made on it date back at least 800 years. Art rock
paintings! In Poland there is not a lot of them to see. The oldest discovered
rock paintings are situated in Australia. The place is called Nawarla
Gabarnmang and the art is dated between 45 000 and 60 000 years old. Thus, we
have evidence that the Aborigines had already been painting them then. Humanity
was using colours to express their reality back then! Aboriginal traditions
continued until around the time when Europeans first settled around 1778.
Pictographs in Namadgi are part of the world's longest-lasting culture and I
knew that it would be an extraordinary experience to look at them.
To see them, we needed to walk for about an hour
through wonderful open spaces and over a wooden footbridge situated on the rim
of Bogong swamp. And so they were –
timeless. I learned to admire paintings at school for their realistic representation of reality. Later I discovered that the sense of beauty is not limited to
imitation and here once again I experienced that aesthetic experience may arise
from an awareness of history, which is manifested by art. This is the aesthetic
of the very beginning, when man and nature lived in harmony. The paintings were
created using natural earth minerals of white clay and ochre. They depicted
kangaroos, dingo, echidna, turtle and humanoid forms. The theory says that
these animals are totems of tribes who gathered at this meeting place. And they
gathered annually at a time of great abundance. The corroboree (the meeting)
was connected with ceremonies, trading and marriages between the tribes. Such
great events cannot take place without an appropriate feast. So there was a feast and the main ingredient of the meals
were ... Bogong moths. These fatty night butterflies flock to the area of
Canberra every year in October.
Here is a recipe for Bogong damper :
Bogong Moth DamperA generous handful of moths
1 cup plain flour
1 cup self-raising flour
1 cup powdered milk
1/4 teaspoon raising agent
water
Using a mortar and pestle (or something similar) pound up the moths with powdered milk. Mix in the remaining dry ingredients. Add sufficient water to make a stiff dough and shape into a ball. Flatten the ball to a height of 2.5 centimeters, lightly flour the surface and cook in ash, camp oven, or domestic oven until cooked through. Serve hot.
Enjoy!
For dessert, a photo from one of the short trails
leading to Boroomba Rocks. 20 minutes of steep climbing and we managed to get
there just in time for a glorious sunset. Genius loci again has done his magic
here.
