I can’t write about the people who ran the bar in the roughest part of town, who gave us free drinks because we came in with the minister who buried their father, and who then proceeded to tell us the story of their entire life because there’s no such thing as a free drink; I can’t write about the people who got me hooked on pointless game shows, and insisted I learn how to make a proper white sauce, and cooked me kangaroo bolognese, my first meat dish in fifteen years (it turns out that spag roo, cooked on the stove top for two hours with just enough vinegar to keep it interesting, tastes a lot like being taken care of); or the people who showed me how the local Aboriginal people made water trees by jamming a dead log into the young branches of another tree, forcing the new branches to grow around the old log until they formed a natural water bowl that would collect rain water and anticipate the thirst of people passing that way, thirty years later.
And I can't write about the people who with great grace and patience schooled my skinny white ass on the Australian 1967 Referendum and every piece of Aboriginal policy that surrounded it (and how can you force laws on people who you don't even consider to be legal citizens?); people who drove me around town to find my elusive hire car; people who could swap stories about what it’s like to be so shy as an eight year old that when your friend’s mum gives you a lift home after school one day, you can’t even interrupt her to tell her that she’s already passed your house.
And I won't write about little three year old people who thought I was the bees knees for absolutely no reason whatsoever but did just wonder what I meant by sighing all the time like that?; and seven year old people who begrudgingly became my friend when it turned out I was tall enough to open the lock they couldn't reach on their balcony door; people who I went to uni with ten years ago and who married a Welshie and learnt Welsh to pass on to their son (y freuddwyd o ddysgwyr Cymraeg, i fod yn honest) and who I then met within twelve seconds of arriving at a woodlands festival in Norseman, the centre of the known universe; and people who came to Norseman on a whim to manage a hotel because they thought it would only take a couple of hours a day to clean the rooms and book the guests, giving them the rest of the time to work on their PhD (and suddenly I saw my life flash before my eyes).
And how can I mention the people back home who lavished my cat with more love and attention than could possibly be good for him and who talked me through my fieldwork conundrums and who still needed me even though I was uselessly far away; and people who insisted on hugging me when I left Kalgoorlie because they’d met me twice, now, in three weeks, and they’d probably never see me again.
I mean. I can’t write about all those people. So what else is there to say?It was a good trip; it was fun; I got to talk to lots of people and I fell in love with Karkurla Park and I ate karlkurla, or silky pear - for which Kalgoorlie is named, it took me an embarrassingly long time to realise - and I obtusely refused to learn the names of different trees; and one time, I got to hold a snake.
And that was my fieldtrip.
