The Aborigine in Coober Pedy

To Escape the heat in Coober Pedy,
people have made their homes in the cool of disused opal mines.

Magun's Compass
Learn from the Travel Experiences of Others

Because of a lack of larger animals, the Central Australian Aborigine would have lived off plants, insects and lizards.

In the desert community, the women were the food gatherers, and the men the established hunters. It was not easy, and the art of an Aborigine's survival was in knowing where to look.

The Aborigine -- hunter gather of old.

Today they lounge on the wall, passing bottles and ignoring the flies, without a care in the world. They hang around with little to do, and watch the miners pass by.

The former hunter/gatherers are now unkempt and disorientated, in a world that is not theirs to handle. Not fully integrated, they somehow hold together in their own fragmented community.

After three hours at the side of Stuart Highway, you begin to regret your decision to leave the Danes and try for other lifts.

The small volume of traffic that does pass, is mostly miners stopping for lunch, or transporting explosives.

Most of them wave and smile, probably thinking that they will get to know you over the next couple of days.

The cars that do come along, have a distinctive sound from a long way off, take forever to reach you, and flash past in a microsecond.

Then they are just a memory, or was it a dream.

The flies torment you as they tickle your ears, land lightly on your lips, instantly irritate your nose, sneakily settle on your cheeks, and try to raid the corners of your eyes.

It is almost sanity destroying, as they keep coming back like the proverbial boomerang.

Tired of reading; bored with kicking stones, or mindlessly throwing them - the paperback becomes a bat to pass the time:

"Thwack!"
Another stone...... "Thwack!";

Still off target for a metallic "Twang!"

Eventually, a car slows down, the driver looks at your bags; his back seat is full with his own possessions, but he is satisfied that he can squeeze you in.

If you had been travelling with a companion,
you might not have gotten the lift.

Travel on trains and buses in Asia, then jump into cars with complete strangers in Australia and New Zealand as Michel introduces you to a collection of characters that bring Nomadic Gatherings to life.

If you can't afford to buy a copy of Nomadic Gatherings, the chapters are slowly being made available online - for free.

You may even decide that it really is worth having a hard copy in your hands; a useful read for those long bus journeys being written about, and for endless waits at ferry ports.

Nomadic Gatherings - Online Chapters.

To Escape the heat in Coober Pedy, people have made their homes in the cool of disused opal mines.

To Escape the heat in Coober Pedy,
people have made their homes in the cool of disused opal mines.