Gove beach on Arafura Sea 

Episode 7

The trip was full of eventful little episodes like this , but we saw lots of wonderful pockets of rainforest , complete with parrots and all sorts of bird life.  After fording other small rivers and creeks, we arrived at the first aboriginal outstation.  Here I met the very old aboriginal painter, who was waiting for his supplies of bark.  However, a problem had struck him.

His tractor had run out of diesel on the beach at the next aboriginal outstation, and he asked if  we would take him there and give him some diesel.  Of course, this was no problem, so he climbed into the front seat with us, and I hoped he would tell me something about himself.  He spoke very little  English,  but his vibes were of a very gentle person.  As we drove along the track, suddenly two emus were flushed out of the bush --- and they were big ones!!  “Look at that!!” the old man cried, “ I’ll come back later and get those”.  The emus were running wildly along in the bush, almost parallel to the Toyota,  so I got a really good look at them. They were fast, but they were destined for dinner.

We eventually arrived at the next aboriginal outstation to find no-one at home.  But ,in the distance, along a beautiful, wild, sandy, hot, beach, we could see a group of people, and Andrew told me that these were the aboriginals from the out-station we had just called at, and they were gathering their native foods, which were seafood and yams etc.  We dropped the old man at his tractor and started back to the first out-station. Here we picked up a few aboriginals for the ride back to town.  When I asked them how they were going to get back, they told me they were going to take a small plane (these 4 or 6 seaters are used almost like taxis), and the aboriginal outstations have their own small airstrips