Port Douglas & Mangrove Mucking

Map of Aboriginal Australia




Map of Aboriginal Upper North Tropical Queensland

Australia is a country of extremes. It took Ash and I about 30 minutes of driving on the windiest road ever to get from rolling hinterland to the beach. From crazy red dirt to pure white sand.

But before we did that, we stopped at a roadside stand called “The Humpy.” Oddly named, the Humpy seemed to be the Tablelands’ sole provider of organic canned goods and fresh veggies. And lots of hot nuts. Weird name + organic food = worthy pit stop.

Port Douglas had been hyped up to be a ritzy little town, where it was advertised you might rub elbows with celebrities (who cares) while soaking up the tropical sun (I definitely care). Well…P. Douggie ain’t quite that ritzy, but it is cute, and the beach ain’t that great, but the marina was beautiful. Whatever – Ash and I made the most of our afternoon there, picking out an Aboriginal tour over cocktails (Ash ordered a Drunken Cane Toad…so guuuud), wandering the shops, drinking the better half a bottle of wine in the backseat of our rental, meeting some crazy locals and sipping a coffee at the coolest coffee bar/internet café I’ve ever been too. It was here that Ash and I determined the difference between vacation or holiday and traveling.

Vacation is an escape from the daily rhythm of life, a chance for people to pull away and chill out. Travel, on the other hand, throws you into another culture’s daily rhythms, forcing the traveler to adapt themselves to their new environment and engage with what’s going on around them. I have to admit, our travels hadn’t quite lived up to the image I had going in my mind. When Ash talked about driving up the Gold Coast, I envisioned us driving along sunlit coastal highways in a rented, speedy convertible, dressed in cute sundresses and sleeping in bungalows just off the beach…HA. Maybe in summertime and maybe if we were both made of money…Anyway, this new realization helped me discover how important it is to have both in your life. Everyone needs vacation, definitely more often than they need to travel, but I also think everyone should really travel at least once in their life. Good travel stretches you; good vacation rejuvenates you.

Saturday morning, we roused ourselves early, after re-packing our bags yet again, and headed up to Cooey Beach for an Aboriginal tour. One of my top 10 things to do to learn more about the Aboriginal traditions. Little did I know that within Australia, before the English came in the late 1700s, there were over 1000 different language groups (think of it like the numerous nations of American Indians) spread out all over Australia. Even though the current government lumps the all indigenous people into two groups, Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander, the cultures of each language group are completely unique. We also had a hard time finding any indigenous cultural activities to do – and most of the activities we did find were kind of glitzy and based around the ceremonial activities. Ash and I were more interested in learning about the everyday lifestyle of a typical family, and boy did we find some unusual everyday lifestyle (at least in comparison to what’s everyday for us…)

Our guides were named Linc & Brandon Walker, of the Kuku-yalanji tribe, a coastal people that lived off the mangrove forests along the coastline, north of present-day Cairns. The tour wasn’t really a “tour” per say, as much as it was Ash and I following alongside the brothers on their daily routine. Both boys attended college, but after working for several years decided that they wanted to readopt the lifestyle of their ancestors. Everyday, they go out and hunt for their families’ food, along the coastline and up the Daintree River. Ash and I learned a lot about current government policy with the Aboriginal groups from the brothers. It seems like the history of treatment of the Aboriginals is quite similar to the treatment of the American Indians. A lot of coastline in Queensland has recently been protected from commercial fishing, to allow the native peoples an opportunity to fish like their ancestors would have. However, those protections have really hurt the families that depend upon the commercial fishing industry for a living. It seemed that every decision is a double-edged sword in some way…

Apparently crocodiles come into the mangroves to hunt for prey, and our guide, Linc, kept trying to assure us that we wouldn’t personally be attacked by a croc. Luckily, Ash and I were completely ignorant to that fact, so we just kept laughing to ourselves when he would remind us every few minutes that the crocs wouldn’t get us. Even when we were knee-deep in murky, clay water, right in the depth of the mangrove swamps, our biggest concern was not tripping on the knots of mangrove roots…

After this tour, Ash and I are fairly certain that if our families were dependant upon us hunting for food, we’d have VERY slender children…

Here’s what we did on the tour:
1. Licked the butt of a green ant. When you do that, the ant shoots something like a cold medicine out its butt, onto the tongue…I still can’t believe I did that…
2. Learned to throw a spear. Even though we were terrible at this, Ash did manage to spear us a crab for lunch
3. Harvested snails off the roots of the mangrove trees. If the shells are yellow on the underside, they’re good to eat, if they are orange that means they feed off a different kind of algae and will give you the runs if you eat too many…we placed all the orange ones back on the mangrove roots…
4. Looked for oysters. Looked and looked and looked and found empty oyster shells, but none that had a living oyster in them. Linc told us b/c we weren’t finding a lot of oysters, that mean a crab had been in the same area recently and eaten them before we got there…oh well. Linc & Brandon had been up in the Daintree River the day before and had harvested some freshwater oysters for us to try.
5. Played the didgeridoo. You flap your lips, and then hum through your throat…Sounds easy…and it is, for about 5 seconds before you realize you have to breath and the sound stops.
6. Linc’s favorite phrase was “easy.” Throwing the spear, “easy.” Ash chasing the crab through thigh-high deep water, “easy.” Playing the didgeridoo, “easy.” Feeding a family of 10 by hunting every day, “easy.”
7. Found a ripe coconut – you’ve got to shake them and listen for the milk sloshing around. Ash and I actually picked out a slightly fermented coconut…oops. Alcohol kills the germs, right?
8. Ate my first oyster, with homemade chili oil & lime juice….spicy, but good!
9. Ate the crab Ash speared about 1.5 hours after it was caught. The most incredible seafood flavor I’ve ever experienced.

After the tour, we headed over to their father’s house and they showed us all the kinds of boomerangs they use to hunt water birds and small land animals. They also told us some of their family heritage – their father was a member of the Stolen Generation, a whole generation of Aboriginals that was taken from their families in the 1940’s and educated on various Christian Missions all over Australia. Most members of the stolen generation don’t know their families today and if they have their own, struggle with alcoholism and abuse. It was obvious that Linc & Brandon’s father had overcome quite a lot and was very proud of how his children were carrying on their ancestral heritage. The family had even been to NYC to show some of their artwork and give a talk on their way of life. It was a real honor to follow this family and learn how much closer to the land they live, and how much more at peace they seem on the whole.