Aboriginal Camping Trip

The aboriginal camping trip was such a great experience. Any Australians that I have spoken to since we got back from the trip have said that even most Australians don't get the experience to go camping with Aborigine people. We were camping for 5 days and 4 nights. The area we went camping at is called Minyumai and it belongs to the Bundjalung people. We had 3 elders that were on the trip with us. There was Ian, Russel and Doug. There was also Pete who was not an elder but he came on the trip with us.


During the 5 days we were camping we learned some much stuff. One neat thing we learned was to take the leafs from the Red Ash-or soap bush as they call it, and use it as soap. You have to put it in your hands with water and rub it together really fast, but make sure you don't drop any, and then as your rub it together it starts to foam up like soap does. Once it's foamy you can wash with it. It is also good for ant bites, mozzie (mosquito) bites and any other bug bites to relieve the itch and burn.
A couple other things we learned were:

How to throw a spear. You can throw them with just your hand or you can use a womra to throw it. A womra hooks onto the end of the spear and gives you more leverage to throw the spear further and if you're good with more precision.  I was never able to hit the target, but I came fairly close a few times. We were about 35 metres from the target.

We also learned how to throw boomerangs. And you better believe it, they come back to you. Russel taught us how to throw them just right so that they come back to you. When I say it comes back to me, personally, it comes with in about 20 feet of where I'm standing-soo...generally close. The wind, your 'umph' on the throw and the direction you throw it and how much flick you put on it all affect how close it comes back to you. I got better at it as the trip went on. You just have to be careful and watch out for trees, so it doesn't get stuck.

We also learned many aboriginal symbols in regards to painting. I didn't use too many of them when I painted my boomerangs because there were a lot of animals and I didn't trust my painting skills to achieve the way they're supposed to look. However, I did use the dot work, a lot, on my boomerangs because I really like the way it looks. You just have to be patient and have a decently steady hand when doing it.  I have posted 2 photos of the boomerangs I painted. The first photo is the front side of the boomerangs and the second is the backside.

Now to explain the backside of the boomerang that says Herinjerri. After a few days of camping Russel gave us all aborigine names. He decided that mine was dragonfly or in his language Herinjerri (pronounced as it looks). He decided this because he said I was all over the place. He said I would be throwing spears, then painting, then throwing boomerangs and then back doing something else...I was all over the place like a dragonfly. One thing that is really awesome about my aboriginal name is that my name is in it hERINjerri, and Russel didn't even know that until I noticed it after he gave the name to me. I must note that Luci, who is on my program, painted my the dot dragonfly for me that is on the back of my boomerang. Also, Russel hand made all of the boomerangs for us!!!