Hot but not so hostile

It’s very hot on this trip to Hayes Springs, named after the grandfather of the Aboriginal woman with us. Veronica’s grandfather was an Arrernte (Ar-run-da) man who got the surname Hayes from an early white cattle farmer. I don’t know the details of that story. Maybe the grandfather worked on the Hayes’ station – what we call the huge cattle farms here. The grandfather’s real name was Ulampa, just like Hayes Springs is Mpartwenge.

Such a telling story, just in names. There are lots of Aboriginal people in Alice Springs with surnames of early white cattle farmers, or pastoralists as we call them. Often these Aboriginal people are the descendants of the pastoralists, who took (often literally) Aboriginal wives before, or as well as, white wives. Sometimes people just worked as stockmen on a property and adopted – or were allocated – the pastoralist’s name when they needed a surname.

Grandfather Hayes was a rainmaker. We could do with him now. Most of central Australia has had less than 10 cms of rain this year, low even for here. Although we couldn’t say it’s global warming. Droughts and flooding rains really are the norm in the Centre, and they’re not predictable. There are no regular rains.

It’s the kind of heat where you check your water supplies very carefully. The springs have been fenced off from cattle, horses and camels for a year now, but there’s still a lot of manure in them, I wouldn’t choose to drink that water yet.

Because of some miscommunication and being in a hurry to leave - to meet me - the other car-load on this trip only ended up bringing one 20-litre water container. Not enough for 3 people for 3 days in this weather. I'm going a day earlier than them, so I give them some water from the tank under my Toyota before I leave.

We’re only forty minutes, on a track that winds in and out of the creek and then across rolling bulldusty plains, from the nearest Aboriginal community. But that’s 40 kilometres, a long way to walk. You’d have to do it at night in this weather.

People, both black and white, still die when their cars break down in the bush, often not all that far as the crow flies from a settlement. I've been stranded myself and got to the point of draining the car radiator and windscreen-wiper water, ready to walk 20 kilometres to a slightly busier track in the evening. But then we were saved by a community rubbish truck that for some reason had gone to check on a deserted outstation.

Of course in the last few years we’ve had satellite phones. They’re still too expensive for most people to buy for private use, but organizations use them a lot now. We have two between 4 adults, from 3 different organizations, on this trip.

There are quite a few small springs in these red sandstone hills and nearby ranges. Veronica tells me how one of them, Marion Springs, had clear water flowing over a large flat rock. The missionaries who set up the nearest Aboriginal community, Santa Teresa, in the middle of last century, put a well down there and used it for a water supply. Now the spring is dry. The water’s never come back.

Veronica tells me about another spring you have to walk some distance or ride a horse to get to. She hasn’t bothered talking to the land council about fencing that.

We get the plant and water animal surveys and water readings done at Hayes Springs and move on to Salt Springs the next day. There are salty and fresh pools at both places.

As we drive through open woodland along the track to Salt Springs, I practice Arrernte plant names with Veronica. The kids in communities, who speak Arrernte or one of the other local Aboriginal languages as their first language, still know most of the plants, and their language names.

Atwakeye – bush orange, arlperre – whitewood tree, artetye – mulga tree, atnyeme – witchetty bush, untyeye - corkwood. Almost every tree and bush has fruit or sweet sap or flowers you can eat or suck honey from; or an edible grub (moth or beetle larvae) in its bark or trunk; or leaves, sap or bark that can be made into medicine.

Hot and dry as they are, these rolling plains are far from the empty hostile land that is still the stereotype of the outback for many Australians.