Tennant Creek, The Devil’s Marbles and Battery Hill

It was cold as buggery when we woke and early to boot so instead of rugging up and trying to cope with numb fingers and toes while sculling some breaky we decided to pack up quick and head into Tennant Creek for some morning sustenance. The Aboriginal Arts and Culture Centre had advertised in the tourist brochures that they had a café and with any luck it was hopefully going to be open and have a proper coffee machine. Prior to getting there though we thought we’d fuel up so I pulled into the local Mobil which seemed to be having a bit of a run when I arrived. The poor cashier in her controlled haste managed to plug in $553.86 rather than $53.86 on my AMEX and didn’t know how to remedy the situation. Needless to say, Jen popped her head in about 20 minutes later to see what was going on and I was waiting for the head honcho to show up and fix the matter. It eventually got sorted and I’m hoping I still got to keep the QANTAS miles despite the refund (I know – unlikely). Anyways – we made it to the café and were the only ones there so didn’t have to feel too self-conscious with our rather overzealous children. The lattes were so good we had to have two each! The Arts and Cultural centre was great on the latter and rather poor on the former. The artwork looked as though someone had provided a class of year threes with some paints and told them to have at a canvas – it was seriously that bad (no offence to year threes!) We feel as though we’ve become near experts in determining good Aboriginal art from bad after visiting so many galleries and shops over our trip – you really can tell which is quality and which is crap – fair dinkum! (Oh how Aussie I am). The cultural side was actually quite intriguing and filled in some of the details we didn’t know about the “Stolen Generations”. From 1910 to 1970 the Australian Government essentially removed or ‘stole’ 45,000-55,000 kids from aboriginal families and put them in state institutions or under foster care with the misaligned thought that this would ultimately lead to the improvement of the Aboriginals as a whole – bizarre thinking at best! The authorities would visit aboriginal communities and tell the families they were taking their kids on a government sponsored picnic and the families would never see their kids again – it was incredibly cruel and short sighted. As a result of this failed social experiment, whole families and communities essentially self-destructed and the repercussions will be felt for decades to come as communities re-structure and family units reform out of a mess of alcoholism, non-communicable disease burden, and psychiatric distress.
We had decided to camp the night in TC as the Outback Caravan Park hosted a fellow by the name of Jimmy Hooker every night who was supposed to provide some yarns, bush poetry and talk to us about some bush tucker etc. Sounded good so we booked in, dropped the caravan off and headed south to Karlu Karlu – the Devil’s Marbles. Freed up from the load of the van we could travel at NT speed limits – 130 km/h! We didn’t quite get going that fast but it was tempting. We made it to the Marbles fairly quick and were immediately entranced by their incredible shapes and seemingly impossible balancing acts. Some were perfect spheres which appeared almost glued to the smooth rock underneath by mud and other rocks no bigger than a cubic metre. Further into the field of boulders some pill-shaped boulders had cracked as if precisely sawn or chiseled by a gigantic tool. You couldn’t help but stand gape-mouthed at some of the positions of the rocks – truly amazing. Having had our fill of the place we ventured back to TC to the information centre which just so happened to be located at the old Battery Hill Mines – now a tourist stop complete with guided tour of the old ‘practice’ mine (where they taught novice miners how to blow things up). They were just starting a tour when we waltzed through the door and the kids were keen so we headed on in – hard hats and all. It was actually quite interesting and we were shown some of the machinery that used to be employed in extracting the precious minerals (primarily gold or copper) from the rock. I still find it hard to come to terms with mining although I knowingly enjoy the fruits of mining endeavours in my everyday life. It just seems like such a greedy – self-fulfilling enterprise with short term gain for potential long term catastrophe – personally and environmentally.
Our field trip complete we made our way back to the caravan park and got to work on dinner. With heavy darkness shrouding the camp and our bellies full we found the campfire and ‘Jimmy’ or ‘JH’ as his friends call him, feeding the fire, dolling out bush ‘lemongrass’ tea and keeping an eye on some damper in one of the fire pits. I get the impression he’s a bit of a fixture here in Tennant Creek having moved here on a whim back in the late 60’s before it was much of a town at all. He’s a bit of a lucky lark as he is admittedly illiterate and from the sounds of it has an issue with the grog from time to time but has managed to have someone transcribe his poems and yarns into a small book which he sells at his shows and has also had an article written about him in ‘That’s Life’ and ‘Take 5’ – those trashy women’s magazines so often found on the nurses desk at the hospital. The article was essentially a sensationalized account of him being ‘attacked’ by an 18 inch freshwater crocodile one evening whilst walking home from one of his shows. He felt a nip at his ankles and thought perhaps it was a monitor lizard so strode home to get a boomerang and give it what for. When he returned he heard it bark and realized it was actually a croc so ran home and Steve Irwin-style, threw a blanket over the juvenile bub and carted it home to his bathtub. 5 maybe 6 or more beers later he stumbled into bed and was awoken early by some Aboriginal girl he knew who came knocking at his door having just been released from prison. He let her in and he went back to bed. She naturally found the croc in the bathroom and eventually they managed to get a park ranger out to manage the situation. The ranger wasn’t all together croc savvy either though and in trying to put a noose over the nose to contain the bite seemed to be making the croc more and more agitated so Jimmy simply picked up a towel, covered the croc up and carried it to the waiting cage. Jimmy was a bit miffed though as he never managed to get a photo with his attacker and had to borrow some pet crocs for the photo ops needed for the magazine. They also covered the event on the news and had a fake croc on a string to try to demonstrate the so-called attack – apparently a bit of a sham in the end. All in all it was an interesting couple of hours and the damper was actually quite good. We again cozied into our beds and prepared ourselves for the last leg of the journey – onward to Queensland!