DigereeDood in Darwin

March 25

Darwin
Today we leave Darwin heading into the center of knoware to see a big rock. Days left in Australia 33. Well we picked up 2 guys named Niko (from France) and Mark (from Indoven in Holland). More about them later. Anyway I really like Darwin, it was a nice repreave from Broome. It wasn't as hot, and I liked the pople a lot more. I spent most of yesterday talking to this guy. What happened was I was looking for a more authentic boomerange than the ones you find in the tourist shop and we walked by the Aboriginal Fine Arts Gallery where they have all of these digereedoos, boomerangs, and other fine aboriginal art. So we walked in and met Walter and before I could get to the boomerange section he asked "Have you ever played a digereedoo before?" I said no, and he grabbed one and said "well you're about to learn." he then spent the next hour and a half teaching us how to play. He told us how to pick a digeree doo and how we could tell if it was the right size for us. He told us that there were 60 digereedoos in the shop, and maybe three of them would fit me. "The Digereedoo picks the person" he said. He also said that a true digereedoo is actually hollowed out by termites, which I didn't know. We talked for a while and then went looking for a cool smoothie (as recomended by Walter) before meeting up with Niko for the first time. We met Niko and Chris and him went off together to chat, I decided that I wanted an afternoon to myself and went looking for a nice place to relax. So I ended up walking by the Digeredoo store again when I ran into Walter on his smoke break. We got chatting and I discovered he was a rock hound (rock collector) he then told me where all of the good places to go looking for different types of rocks, including opals, jems, and even some dimonds. It was a fun talk, in which I have circled on my map all the places he mentioned. Well we just kept talking and that is when I learned more in that one hour than in 15 of the museums. Here are some of the stuff he talked about.

Bush honey, you can often find there in trees or in termite mounds. Look for a little straw sticking out of a tree, and lots of little bees going in and out of it. You can bust open that branch and it will have a hollow in it and it will be full of honey, best part, the bees don't have stingers up here. They will quite often build their nests in termite mounds as well.
An australian bush BBQ is made by building a fire, letting it burn down to coals, then busting up a small termite mound and laying the peices of mound on the coals. You then lay your meet on the peices of mound. Whay is so special about this is that in the termites saliva binds the dirt together to make the mound, and it is heat resisitant, so you can lay your meet on it and the dirt won't get on your meat, and it cooks great.
If you have to, for some inexplicable reason, enter a water hole that most likely has a crocodile in it, bring a stick and hold it vertical in front of you and walk forward and you should feel it with the stick. once you find it you should be able to figure out which part of the croc you are dealing with, and well I'm not sure what you are supposed to do after that, he never actually said what I should do after that, but he did make a comment that the stick would still be standing vertical in the water, and I would probably be still running. The interesting thing is that the aboriginal hunters used to use this meathod to hunt crocodiles. They would slowly wade into the billabong, feeling with the stick, and when they found the snout they would stand, with the stick held in one hand and a bomerange or a rock in the other. And when the Crock came to the surface to have a good look they would come down on it's head with the before mentioned rock/bomerang. They would then toss a rope on it, haul it out, make sure it is dead, and then cook it. I don't know about you, but I think I would be pissing myself if I came face to face with a croc in the water, even if I had a rock.
Muds holes were not originally measured in meters, or feet, but rather in bottles of rum, if you got your cart/car stuck in one of them, you would start drinking and stop when it dries out, and thus the number of empty bottles is the size of the mud hole.1 bottle was considered a small bog, 12 was considered a lake. Of course the same thing applies for driving distances, it isn't 200km, rather 18 cans of beer.
He also told me a whole buch of other stories, but if you guys want those you will have to wait until I get home, because I am so going to have to tell them in person, because they are way to funny. If you want to read a funny comic, look up Joffel online. It is about a cartoonist who lived with the aboriginals for a while, and some of the incredibly funny stuff he witnessed. The aboriginals used to tell their children all the stupid stuff that they did when they were kids, not only because they were funny, but because that way the kids would know better and not do that kind of stupid things.

Not wanting this amazing source of information to go to waste I asked him how the boomerangs worked. He brought me to the display and told me they were returning bomerangs, he then demonstrated how to properly throw it (without actually throwing it as it would have made a wreck of the store) and told me the principal in which it worked. He drew what the different tribes in the different parts of Australia and how the bomerangs varied from each tribe. He told me also the different types of bomerangs, like the hunting kind, the fighting kind, and the musical kind. Yes, some tribes in Australia never used digeree doos, but used bomerangs to make music, and trust me when they used these, knowbody laughs, as you might find out whay they were used in fighting. He also said that when you thow this thing remember if you suddenly decide you don't want to catch this thing, step to the left or right, don't run away from it, as it will follow that line. He said he has seen so many people turn and run the exact same direction at which it is going. He said it is absolutely hilarius, but don't do it. Just after I bought one, the this guy came in with a digereedoo for sale. He went upstairs to the owner of the store to see if he was wanting to buy it. When he was upstairs Walter looks at me and says "That is a good digereedoo". Well the guy came back downstairs with it, because it is the wet season, and there isn't really a big market for them right now, but Walter calls him over and tries it. It is a good digereedoo, and I give it a go, but I have a hard time with it. But Walter grabs this bees wax and makes a better end to blow on, and then I give it a go, and it make a really good sound. Walter says if you want to buy that from him you have to do it outside as you cannot do a private sale in a comercial store. So I stepped outside and bought this off of him for 80 bucks. Walter was outside smoking a cigaret and he told me after I bought it that if that was in the store I would be paying around 300 for it, so I got a good deal for 80 bucks. I shook his hand and said thanks for all the stories and information, as I have been looking for the history behind these things and the boomerang ever since I saw them in Victoria market in Melbourne. One last fun fact about Darwin, was bombed by Japanese during the second world war and had more bombs dropped on it than in Pearl Harbor. Oh that and on high tide you have to be aware that crocs will walk up onto the beach from the ocean, there are also sharks, and jelly fish. They don't swim in the bay, they actually built a wave pool near the bay, so that they don't have to swim in the ocean.

We said goodbye to Clair and Simon when we left Darwin (we met them originaly in Broome) and am heading down to Kakadu for the night, will get back to everyone shortly. Be home in 33 days.