Sunday 26 August 2012

Djabugay

We have moved to Port Douglas today, from an ant-ridden, noisy backpackers hostel (where for some reason they sweep the corridor floors sometime between 1am and 5am) to a five-star villa with 16 lagoons you can swim in round the complex, as well as swimming pools, not to mention the 4-mile beach almost in view! we walk across a small bit of golf course (pictured behind my Lottie substitute in the photo below!) in between some trees and we are facing the rolling surf and white sand. This afternoon we lay on the beach and I body-boarded a bit but the waves weren't really big enough, so it was more bobbing around than an extreme sport!

Neither of us slept very well last night...I'll never understand why Friday night is still Friday night to people even when they are on holiday and days of the week mean nothing! We tried to drown out the noise of the other residents with the air conditioning but that was loud too. Becky still managed to get up in time to do a meditative yoga session in cairns center and I...er...went back to sleep! So we did very little today other than lie on the beach and in my case sleep a bit, then jump back into the amazingly warm waves...it's almost like a bath as you step into the shallows.

I haven't got around to telling you about our aboriginal experience at a center called Tjapukai. It was fantastic-we had a demonstration on how to play the didgeridoo...with all the animal effects (dingo howling, kookaburra chattering etc), then an aboriginal creation story show with special light projection effectswhich was very clever. The real people on stage interacted with projections of fire, animals, thunder etc. The aboriginal people used their own language and we all had headphones on to listen in our own languages, but we could still hear the djabugay language. You'll notice two spellings...I think tjapukai is an anglicised (Australised?!) version. Then we saw traditional songs and dances...well any of you who know me well will know just how much I enjoyed that and how my work brain (for the most part switched off out here) pricked up and started planning Australian music workshops! After learning about bush tucker, medicine and weapons we had a go at spear throwing and boomerang throwing (my first one was pretty good and after the djabugay woman called me a "good hunter" I threw the second one at the wrong angle and would have killed myself had I tried to catch it!)
Sadly it was all over too quickly and our shuttle home was waiting for us so we had to go home, back to Njoy where the tiny ants had found their way into a bag in a bag and were swarming over my eucalyptus drops. The only food remaining untouched was the stuff we had hung in a bag in the middle of a clothes rail so they would have had to scale the side of a wardrobe and balance along a metal pole, then shin down a bag handle and bite through two layers of plastic bag!

Anyway, long entry, sorry, hope you're still with me...a little enticer for next entry...come back next time for exciting tales of ant bottom licking!


2 comments:

  1. Lovely to read all you are doing. So glad you are enjoying it. Ants can be covered in chocolate and eaten, or you could sell them!! I had a super birthday and loved my present. Thank you Rebecca. Love Ann

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  2. Port Douglas sounds gorgeous, very jealous. At least you're much warmer than in wintery Melbourne.
    Enjoy the last of your trip, feels like a lifetime ago that we saw you both.
    Take care,
    Tracy, Andy & Molly x

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