15th October: Gove : where land and people make you feel the australian warmth…

We arrive at night, after 3 days and 4 nights sailing across Gulf of Carpentaria.

Our first night out has been choppy and sleepless for all of us!…we’ve payed off all the confortable sailing since Cairns!…The rest of the sailing was good, but we were so knackered that we didn’t enjoy it as much as we should have…a part for the nights with heaps of shouting stars and the many dolphins we saw daily (but only once did they came to play with the boat, and only for a few minutes…we were probably too slow to be interesting…)

Gove is an small town in Arnhem Land, huge aborigene reserve in the north of Australia.

The town was created to cater for a huge alumine plant, so it is mostly “white”, and mostly workers of the plant and related services.

There is a sour “Goro look” for those who know (it’s the place I was working in New-Cal for those who don’t) : huge camp of Atco containers (dry camp too!), red dirt road, white pick up driving along the plant road morning and evenings…

The climate of the city seems quite tense between the aborigenes, the white locals and the workers of the mine…not to speak of the numerous philipinos and other imigrants…

As for us, we were warmly welcome by all.

There is 10kmbetween the Yatch club where we stay and the city center. The yatch club is in the middle of nowhere, but on a very busy road, leading to the mine and some aboriginal reserves…there is no bus thought and each time we have to hitch hike…we usually find a ride within 10mn or so…here are a few example of the locals helfulness (not an english word?) :

• 3 young indonesian looking but australian talking fellows in a wreck of a car stopped on their way home and turned around to gave us a lift back to town…because we were going the opposite way…
  
• When we came back, with our back packs and bags full of stores, we decided to stop one of the city charter buses, which go from the city to the camp. The driver accepts to drive us to the yacht club (maybe 10mn further than the camp) for 15AU$, but he has to drop off his client before. When he stops at the camp, the worker of the plant turns around and says…”I had fun chatting with you about your trip and all…I’ll pay your trip to the yatch club”…and we couldn’t do anything to prevent him from giving the 15$ to the bus driver… “and say hello to France for me” he says in a last grin…
  
• We also caught a ride from one of an important aborigene women of the place (not sure who exactly, but the way people said hello to her, we gathered she was somebody important), a yatchie, etc.
  
• But the very best and most original ride was on saturday afternoon, where we inadvertently stopped a police car (we hadn’t seen the lights on the roof) who was patrolling against drunkeness in public places. They gave us a ride…in the cage at the back (first time of my life, personally!)…don’t worry we hadn’t drunk anything and our police record is still blank! ;-)

Vincent and Romain at the back of the police car (sorry about the quality of the pic…I was laughing too much !!!)

The yacht club is a little oasis of green grass and fresh palm tress in the middle of the heat and red dust of the australian desert.

It looks so colonial that we expect to see englishmen with a colonial hat and suit drinking 5o clock tea!

A little bit of english looking grass in the middle of the oz desert...

All we see is autralian workers in there blue-orange overalls and aborigene in their color full suits drinking beers…not a POM around !

Both of the above are prohibited drinking in their respective work camps and reserve, so they come to the Yacht club, which is the only drinking outlet in the area.

We meet a very interesting and varied crowd : a serbe worker talking a lot and beer-philosophying all the same, plant workers, yachties and aborigines.

We watched the New-Zealand/Australia 13players game, where they won, and we were surprised to see some of the aborigenes supporting the kiwis…

Guess why?…because they are black!!!

The aborigenes around here seems much less happy than in Bamaga…We can’t gather if it is due to the status of that particular town (they are still fighting against the lease given to the plant by the governement) or if it is the same all around OZ.

We will soon know more, given that we are now in the Northern Territories, where most of the aboriginal reserves are, and where there is the highest aborigene population…

I also quite liked the small town feeling, which means after having caugth 2 rides and gone to 2 shops, half of the city is waving at you when driving past in the streets!

02:30 - 2/11/2006 - Ajouter un commentaire