Ilkurlka Desert Stars Sessions Part 2

Ilkurlka trig station, WA - 16 June 2024

Driving - Jay expounds on male places, female places, everybody's places. And there's other places like our greenrooms – the place where business stays. We need those.  >>>>  A huge bird suddenly lifts off from beside the road, tucks it's stocky legs up like an undercarriage and gradually flaps upward and along. I reflex think it's some fashion of eagle, but know it can't be. “Bush turkey”, says Jay. It's the second one I've seen in my life… the other was standing, like a little dinosaur, roadside somewhere on the Stuart Highway on a Re-mains tour. Bustard. “Better than real turkey”, he reckons. It heaves off into the spinifex. I didn't realise they flew.  >>>>  The road is madly rutted, corrugated, sand-drifted and beset with relentless hazard - washouts, gidgee spikes and camel bones. Like anywhere, you look ahead, but with a particular sand-blasted focus. The track will certainly come to bite should you forget where you really are. Slower, then faster, follow the track, or don't quite. Power back, up the dune and over, no brakes down the other side. It’s baffling how much grief can be dished out to these vehicles. Now that the LandCruiser is no longer built, what will take it’s place? I’d be all for an EV doing it, but what could put up with this abuse? I'd try to describe what it's like, but let's say it'd eviscerate most ARB customers. The corpses are innumerable - they dissolve now by the roadside. There’s one I've been watching over the last twelve years, an XF ute. Lost ordnance. Every community sports an open-air mausoleum. Ferric oxide to the future. >>>> Time is as nebulous as it’s said to be. Out here it leans long and longer, short and shorter. What you're supposed to do within that time, however drawn-out or brief, appears entirely variable, exchangable or irrelevent. I’m gleaning there's an ontological divergence for people here, of course, and that it's cyclic, or that events come in and out of relevance, like spokes branching out from a personal hub, out to the rim. And the wheel turns this way and that.  >>>>  The flies. If they were to all drop dead in a flash - globally, aside from missing the ones immediately bothering you... would you notice? Would the world know? Would it shift planetary orbit?  >>>>  The Dogs. They're everywhere, part of society and thought of as family. They are loved and given skin names. There might be more dogs in Tjuntjuntjara than people. They come and go as they choose, moving about the streets and houses on their own business. Squabbles break out, then quell. The variety is stupendous! Everything from bristle-haired-greyhounded hunting beasts to corgi/dingo infusions to teacup miniatures back up to mastiff-blueys, all talking to each other. The Gravel Road documentary featured Bolt, the kangaroo-wraith. That dog lived by the sword and so died the same way at the hands of another. I swear Bolt was in front of me again the other day, but his name was Rocky, and he was traipsing the dirt-streets with Angel.  >>>>  At Ilkurlka, I can wander about in the moonlight without worry. There's a camel here and there, sometimes dingoes. They howled last night a few times, an arresting sound at first, yet ultimately so familiar. But while the band is here with me, I can't really walk off without it being remarked upon or ushering in a distinct air of concern. Jay worries the Mamu will get me. Fires throws shadow that would reveal the Mamu. Not to be confused with indigenous peoples of FNQ and particular to the eastern regions of the Western Desert, the Mamu are terrible, soul-destroying, devouring and spiritually corrosive monsters. Mamu refers to the dark forces, or the various forms in which they manifest. Through all the missionary interventions, the displacement, the Maralinga atomic testing refugees and the general dissolution of these people, the Mamu endures – They want human flesh, especially babies. They leave no tracks and only come at night. They are always near. Mamu equates to the Christian Satan. Lights are left on at night. People stay close in the dark, sleeping in rows like sardines. The Mamu do not speak, but they listen for your name. Night terrors afforded an established culture unto itself.