“I’m from the Kimberleys, up north.”
“I’m on top of western Australia. Beautiful. I run two companies up there. I have a... resort on the river. It is a very special place.”
“Where I live is where my mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s has lived for 45 thousand years.”
“Why you moved in Perth from a place like that?”
“I only came for one day. I wouldn’t move from heaven. Where I live is an amazing place. “
He gives me a business card
“I don’t try to sell you anything,” he says, “If you have some time, google. And you’ll see what I’m talking about. My company is called Uptuyu. I do anything. I do anything. You know, if it’s on my land I do anything. Anything I can’t provide you is a train or a submarine. Otherwise, you name me a mode of transport. When I have time off I do WWOOFing. You know WWOOFing?”
“Yes! I can join if you want.”
“Ok. You can send me an email and say we met here.”
“We can do something better if you like. I am a photographer and I’m working on a street photography project.”
“Let me know, because I need to update my profile, because all my photos have black hair, you know?” said bursting into laughter.
“What I am doing is I interview people in the street, and I ask for stories. DO you mind if I take a photo of you?”
“No, I don’t mind at all... Two days ago a scorpion stung me on my foot.”
“Yeah yeah yeah, but lucky for me I still have my traditional medicine. From the bush, you know?”
“What do I use in case I will be stung by a scorpion?”
“I take a... on my river there is a tree we call Magilam tree. This is a fresh water mangrove tree and this tree has many many healing properties.”
“You have to come with somebody like me. Cos I can say it’s a tree on the river with a big leaf and green. So, this tree, when you cut the bark of the tree and you put on your sour wherever, it’s like morphine. About seven years ago we sent that tree to James Cook University in Queensland and they analyze this tree and they find 23 new medicines from this tree. This tree has analgesic, anaseptic and anesthetic properties. So, another example of the value of this tree is, my people we eat crocodile and we walk along the age of the bank and we feel for the crocodile. But when you feel, when you know there is a crocodile there, you try not to touch the crocodile. You feel over the top like this,” says moving his hand on an imaginary line on the air, like it’s floating on the water, “and then once you feel the hot breath of the crocodile...”
“So you get that close to the crocodile?”
“When you feel the hot breath, then you say ok, this must be the tail, this end must be the nose. So you grab the nose and you pull it out and then you hit it on the head and throw it on the bank and everybody is... all the children come and grab this crocodile. So we eat this crocodile while me I don’t eat this crocodile because it is... like a... how would I say it? Like a totem. For my family. So when it is your totem, you do not eat this animal. And that because it is your family. So I catch this crocodile for other members of my family that it’s not their totem. We have a lot of similarities to american indians, in the same set. Chief Sitting Bull. Do you know this name?”
“Chief Sitting Bull? Ah yeah.”
“Maybe his mother father somebody before he is born, maybe even when they first realize his mother is pregnant, maybe his father dream of a bull sitting down and he says oh if this is a boy I will call him Sitting Bull. So my family is the same. When we feel something is... a baby is coming, we look at our surrounding, what happened on that day or when the child was born what happened on that day. In today’s society you must go to a hospital to have our babies and I did not walk in the hospital with a name already for my child. Maybe I have already dreamed something, maybe I see this child again, for the first time on this day something special has happened, so this will be the name of my child. Maybe a bird will sit in the window when my baby is being born so he will be called a particular bird or something. I live a very traditional life. Tomorrow I walk around in the suit, next day I walk around with my son with the spear, and we go hunting. Still light the fire with my hands, still read the sign of the weather.”
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