Raminginning for a week

Raminginging from the air

We have been in Ramingining all week and we are pretty exhausted for a Friday night. I am exhausted from going up and down the shorter red road in this photo. Our training centre was at one end of this road and the business end of the community (all two buildings) was at the other. I must a done the trek 3-4 times a day and it is not fun in the heat. Actually the last two days have been much cooler and quite pleasant at times.

The flight in

We flew into Ramingining on Monday - Australia Day. The only celebration in town was a pancake morning tea run by the local community manager Russell. It was not popular - about as popular as Australia Day is in Indigenous Communities. When we arrived we wondered "down town" and within 5 minutes were sitting in the yard shelter with one family, getting quite a strong view of what Australia Day is about for Indigenous people. We also had a great introduction to the community and picked up lots of local knowledge.

The flight was terrific. It's only 10-12 minutes by air from Milingimbi and so we had a low flight. We were amazed at the difference in the trees and wetlands as we moved from the coast to the inland area. Trees bigger and much more diversity of flora.

The digs

The digs are much better on the inside than the outside. It's a open area with 8 bedrooms. The shared kitchen is well stocked and has lots of devices. We made some curries, roast veges and chops, sausages and mash and a mince-based stir fry. Today (Friday), the shop was closed, as a complete surprise to me. We needed to shop cause we have run out of the Darwin-based meat we brought with us. This meant we had 3 left over sausages. So I made oven-roasted stuffed sweet potatoes (herbs, onion, mashed potato and sweet potato middle with mustard and soy milk in the mash) and some chicken stock flavoured rice and the left over veges with the 3 sausages cut up and stir-fried as an accompaniment.

The local veges were okay, but did go off very quickly. You have to buy as little as you can cause it does not last once out of cold storage, even the potatoes and sweet potato. We shared the digs with people this week who ate frozen dinners for convenience. We could not do that. Imagine 6 months of them. With a trusty jar of curry, I can pretty well make anything edible.

Hopefully the shop will be open at Oenpelli tomorrow or we are eating our emergency dry food supply for the weekend. We do have 2 carrots, 1 sweet potato and 4 small potatoes as well. Please send recipes.

The kids are wonderful. I love em. These guys were playing "flick" in the dirt with plastic bottle tops. The game is huge and lots of kids get together to play. My godchildren and nieces and nephews should be embarrassed by what they have to play with compared to these guys. Interestingly, I think these local kids are happier. Also I have had nice baby hugs including a little mite today who fell asleep immediately I picked her up. I had to then carry her for an hour or so while running the workshop. Not the sort of thing "presenters" usually do.


Ramingining is where Ten Canoes was made. We met some of the stars! Lovely folk and I can easily imagine them in the movie. They seem to just fit the roles they played. Also one of the musicians on the movie. Great bloke. We can certainly recognise the bush from the movie. Been for a couple walks through the bush and the diversity is wonderful. Love the bird life too. Beautiful blue-winged kookaburra, flocks of Torres Strait Pigeons and some small green parrots. There are also millions of crows.... We have found out about some local lagoon and been invited down to one of the outstations - need a vehicle next trip.


There are some wonderful topical specimens in the bush here. My facebook mates have albums of them to look at. It's so hard to stop taking photographs while walking around here.

We give folks the cameras to use and judging by the hundreds of photos on each workshop machine, I reckon we have a photo of every single person in Ramininging. Everyone in town knew we were here, that's for sure. These guys followed me round on my walk one afternoon and gathered increasing numbers of mates. Felt like the pied piper. They used my camera to take photos of each other.

Workshop days

We had four terrific days with the Ramingining mob. Some people came every day and stayed all day. It was astounding to see the progress. One important local man made a multiple video DVD of his worker teams in the CDEP and it was amazing. It drew a crowd everywhere he took it and it is running in the store, been used in school and being used in motivating people. It was astounding to see how proud he was. I need to copy his video for just about everyone in town tonight. Other folks made family videos, made family portraits and collages and the ususal Cds etc. Three young men came in and had a ball with photoshop putting their faces on the bodies of famous people. Priceless fun! So another sucessful workshop which thoroughly exhausted us. I was too tired last night for a walk and tonight was no better, especially as we had to pack up too after the workshop.


This is the closest thing we got to a cocktail. Lime and lemon mineral water in a plastic wine glass with a block of ice in it. It looked so good, I had to take a photo.

Paul had a sore leg. It developed in Millingimbi. Started as a small red mark and by Tuesday it was very large and very angry. It looked like a tropical ulcer. He went to the local nurse here in Ramingining and they think it had developed into celulitus. A dose of heavy antibiotics later (and the threat of needles), it is much better. We wash it in a surgery soap we were given often and put two antibiotic creams on it including a triple-one we got in the US that is not avialable here. It is hard to believe how quickly things can develop in these sort of conditions.

My teeth still hurt. I can't imagine why you (my readers) choose to go to dentists. Senseless. I have pain now in my teeth and I had no pain before I allowed myself to be persuaded to have a tooth out and two fillings in case it went bad while we were away. My mouth is not the same. And my breaking tooth probably would have lasted years. It had already lasted 15-38 years without trouble. I've had my whine now.

Well we are off to Gunballanya (Oenpelli) tomorrow morning on another flight. Quite a long flight too. More then.

Hope everyone is well and happy.