Down Under for the holidays
Tash and I have been catching up with family in Darwin, in the North of Australia. It’s the first time we’ve been here together in ‘the wet’ and today the rains are finally falling, deep and heavy. Last year there was a shortage of rain so this is much needed. This country is on the front line of the climate emergency and it’s most shocking to watch as huge areas of the west, south and east coast suffer from serious fires. The tipping point is here, if you are in any doubt read this excellent feature from ABC News:
See how climate change has impacted the world since your childhood
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-06/how-climate-change-has-impacted-your-life/11766018
And read this hard hitting post by Angus Hervey:
https://medium.com/@angushervey/a-burning-nation-led-by-cowards-c7bc620ca0c0
It’s not lost on me that we are privileged to be able to fly here and also that our return flights emit approx 5000kg of CO2 for each passenger. The aviation industry is a leading (and growing) polluters, accounting for over 2% of global emmissions. We are planning to limit our trips here, but having family on opposite sides of the world does make this difficult. From 2020 we will start to support an Australian charity through our work. While carbon offsetting and charity donations are not the only solution, it’s a simple step we can take to balance the scales.
We spent a few days over my birthday around Katherine, at the Southern tip of Kakadu National Park. The place we stayed was called Nikmiluk, located on the land of the Jawoyn people. It’s a stunning area of natural, wild landscape carefully managed by the Jawoyn. Nitmiluk is the Jawoyn name for Katherine Gorge. It is pronounced ‘Nit-me-look’, and literally means Cicada Place. There are many Aboriginal rock art paintings on sandstone walls throughout the gorge system, some of which are thousands of years old. By tradition, Bolung (the Rainbow Serpent) still inhabits the deep pools of the second Gorge at Nitmiluk and care must be taken not to disturb him.
Nitmiluk Gorge, near Katherine.
Each time I travel here I learn about the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders (Indigenous Australians), in partcular their deep understanding of their landscape and their beautiful expressions in art and craft. They’ve been on this continent over 50,000 years and have passed down stories and skills through generations - to see how these skills are not used (‘cultural burning’ to prevent bushfires for example, which is carried out in the NT but far less in other states) is heartbreaking.
We visited the wonderful Mimi Arts and Crafts centre in Katherine and spoke with an artist there who was working on a large painting in the gallery. Mimi is an Aboriginal owned and operated not-for-profit art centre. More than fifty per cent of sales are returned to the artists, with the remaining proceeds going towards running the art centre. There are centres like this throughout Australia and they are the best way to be sure you are supporting the artists when purchasing art and craft. A good list can be found here: https://www.daaf.com.au/art-centres-2/
Some of the Indigenous art and craft we purchased in Darwin and Katherine.
Tash has also been taking advantage of the weather, lovely light and travel easel to paintn every day en plein air.
Some highlights from our trip below.
