Notes from Kununurra, Week 2: What a Country

Right this second I am sitting in Cornerside Cafe, a properly hipster joint on the Kununurra main strip, complete with exposed lighting, fake plants, and a morning crowd of lycra-clad park runners getting their protein smoothie fix.

(I’m drinking the protein smoothie, actually. It has cherries, beetroot, raspberries, banana, protein powder, ginger, almond milk, and lemon juice in it, and it tastes a bit like dirt - but, like, healthy dirt.)

Cornerside does brunches like this:

I tried to recommend the cafe to a French backpacker. He started learning English eighteen months ago when he first arrived in Australia and so far he’s picked up a great collection of swear words and does a pretty good job of pretending to understand Aussie accents but somehow he’s not yet come across the concept of brunch.

“Brunch?”
“It’s like breakfast and lunch.”
“…”
"Smashed avos and poached eggs."
"..."
“Young people eat it.”
“…”
“You don’t have brunch in France?”
“No.”

A friend of a friend has a car so yesterday we drove out to Wyndham and saw the sights along the way. Given the number of Wyndham license plates in Kununurra I thought Wyndham was a major service town, but obviously that’s the wrong way round; Kununurra is the major service town in this area. Wyndham is the major crocodile town:

All these dogs were eaten by a big crocodile.

"What do you mean 'please do not climb the crocodile'?"

Can’t get over how freaking beautiful the country is out here, nor do I want to get over it. It reminds me of every Namatjira painting.

(I think this is by Oscar Namatjira, not Albert. Can someone help me out?)

Except obviously the Namatjiras were painting the country around central Australia and I'm not sure how different central Australia is to the east Kimberley, ecologically; but a lot of the colours are the same - red and purple hills, yellow spinifex, white trees with bright green leaves, blue sky.

On Friday afternoon after work, one of the language teachers (who, by the way, describes himself as mad), wanted to go on a bush “walk” in Mirima National Park; and by “walk” I mean crossing streams over upended signposts and rockclimbing up the side of a water hole.

“Yes,” I said doubtfully, looking at the rock face. “But how are we going to get down?”
“Nah, don’t worry about.”

Normally when people say “don’t worry about it” I worry about it even more, and I definitely worry when people (Mum stop reading this) carry beer instead of water for hydration, but somehow, even when we had to cross back over the stream after dark, using our mobile phones to light up the cane toads along the way, it really did turn out alright? Trip highlight.

Amongst all this traipsing around the countryside of course I’ve been having really interesting chats with the Aboriginal language workers at Mirima Dawang Woorlab-gerring - you know, project stuff (which I’m not really allowed to write about); and I've been trying to get my head around the Miriwoong verb system, which is legit complex. The fun challenge seems to be how to present two thousand verb forms without freaking people out. I tend to think that all languages are complex in some ways and simple in others, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite as complex as this. I’d love to do a little side project about how people teach - and learn - so called “difficult” languages. Post-doc one day, maybe.

The other constant in my life right now is backpackers.

Honesty, I’m warming to them. They’re like small children - small, drunk, stoned children. They’re loud and don’t clean up after themselves and they sleep weird hours and have ambivalent standards of hygiene and some of them don’t wear pants to breakfast and they need constant amusement or they get bored and fight each other.

On the plus side - well, on the plus side, they’re seriously entertaining.

That’s about the only plus side, but it’s kind of worth it.

All the Italian backpackers hang out together, and they drink proper stovetop coffee and bake cakes, because, of course they do. Similarly the Germans hang out with each other, as do the English. The Belgians and the Dutch claim a more general European identity, and hang out anywhere in the Eurozone.

Everyone loves Mumford and Sons, and knows all the words to the ‘Sigh No More’ album. They will bust out tracks from that album any chance they get. They also listen to a lot of Guns and Roses.

You can leave your phone/laptop/kindle/backpack/boots/wallet/passport anywhere and three days later it’ll be exactly where you left it; but leave a packet of cigarettes or cutlery out in the open and it’ll get nicked as soon as you turn your back.

They’re all incredibly tan, and don’t believe I’m Australian.

They read real books, made with real paper. One particularly tan English puppy was carrying five big paperbacks in his luggage, including the Count of Monte Cristo.

They stay up to 3am and drink Emu Bitter and sing 'Little Lion Man' like they mean it, but if you turn the dorm light off, they know that means “no talking”. It’s the one “no talking” sign in this place full of passive-aggressive, completely ineffective signs they actually respect.

So while I’m looking forward to getting back to my own place in Perth, and I won’t miss getting kicked in the face every time the girl in the top bunk gets out of bed, I still can’t believe I get to do this, this phd life.