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Cranbrook-Nyikina Camel Expedition.
Sept 1999. 25 Aboriginal kids and Sydney kids with their teachers loaded 8 camels and took off on a 9 day trek along the Fitzroy River. The photos may take some time to download. Please find at the bottom of the page a newspaper article about the expedition.
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Photography by Nick Bradley
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SYDNEY BOYS TASTE A BUSH TUCKER LIFE |
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BOYS from an exclusive Sydney school have experienced the tough life and bush tastes of young Aborigines in the Kimberley. Carving didgeridoos, catching catfish and barramundi, and digging crocodile eggs have been part of the routine for the Cranbrook School teenagers in a unique youth program based at Pandanus Park Aboriginal community near Derby. The program has been described as a model of reconciliation. Nykina Aboriginal elder Peter Francis, 53, and camel handler Tom Beckers, 33, led 14 Cranbrook students, their teacher and four local boys on a nine-day, 200km trek into the Kimberley. Mr Beckers said low Aboriginal self-esteem and youth suicides were well documented but teenagers whose wealthy parents worked long hours also could feel neglected. The 100-strong community turned out at their traditional meeting ground to welcome the Sidneysiders last week. The troop loaded eight camels with provisions before setting off on their journey of personal discovery. The Sydney boys took to the Aboriginal culture after initial trepidation. "They asked me about the bush tucker and I said I wouldn't tell them," said Mr Francis, a veteran actor who starred alongside Ernie Dingo in the movie Dead Heart. "You have to see how it tastes to you."
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"I hope when they come back bigger and married with kids they can see the people that taught them these things." Mr Beckers who migrated from Belgium to begin a life of camel-catching, said the children were rapt. "Even when it had ended, they were in their hotel and they were singing songs they learnt here,"he said. The Cranbrook students will have the chance to repay the hospitality when Pandanus Park residents Eddie Riley, 15, and Phillip Watson, 25 visit Sydney as part of an exchange agreement. They were excited about their first journey to the big smoke but said they were unlikely to swap their Kimberley home
for one in a city of more than four million people. Pandanus Park chairperson Ernie Hunter, who helped organise the project, said the experience was real grass-roots reconciliation and it was planned to repeat the journey regularly. He said the concept was the brainchild of former Kimberley pastoralist David Bradley.
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