Episode 8

We ran into a considerable storm on the way back , and the water had risen in quite a lot of the streams we had crossed on  the way into the bush.  At the final one, the water was over the bonnet of the Toyota, which gave me a bit of a fright . We made it with no trouble.

Not long after that, we stopped to gather some bark for the aboriginal painters, and I was amazed to see Andrew, standing on the roof of the Toyota,  stripping this from the Stringy Bark trees with an axe – he does all the preparation for the artists, which is quite a job in itself.  No wonder this type of work is so expensive, and as the painters also only use natural ochre, manganese and white chalk for their work,  it is all very authentic.

There was certainly a big storm in progress, so I was lucky that I had flown into Gove  the day before.  No planes were able to  land or take off  and, one quite big passenger plane had flown so far around to avoid the wild weather that it was running out of fuel.  It had to put down at a big station airfield to take on more.  That would have been a treat for nervous fliers.