ASIANOVERLAND.NET SYDNEY TO LONDON DAY 11: EUCLA TO NORSEMAN, WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Balladonia is an Aboriginal word meaning "big rock by itself", better known nowadays as a roadstation and part of the Nullabor Links.

The quest for gold led to the establishment of Norseman, on the traditional lands of the Ngadju, in the Goldfields region of Western Australia.

The Ngaanyatjarra are an Indigenous Australian cultural group located in the Goldfields-Esperance region. The area inhabited by the Ngaanyatjarra people has a record of human habitation going back at least 10,000 years. In traditional society, the Ngaanyatjarra comprised numerous bands, usually constituted by a group of a dozen people. Males only reached marriageable age at around 30, after a thorough training and graduation through a complex initiation system, that transformed tjilku (male children) into wati (men). Passage to this status was marked by the right to wear a red headband, though as post-initiates (tjawarratja) they were still required to dwell apart from the main camp as elders continued to instruct them. Learning the lore/law required that the initiates had to supply their elders with food like meat, a scarce resource in the area. The tjukurrpa system also functioned as a cross-generational mode of exacting obedience and an income from the younger men. 

Females entered into wedlock soon after the onset of puberty. Ceremonial induction consisted of learning to absorb the complex details of tjukurrpa, namely the lore/law of the dreamtime. The process is graded so that full knowledge only comes after 50, the normal age after which one gains recognition as a wati yirna or tjilpi, a thoroughly knowledgeable elder, although even 60-year-olds can still be denied recognition as an "elder".

Kanyini is a word in the Pitjantjatjara dialect spoken by Indigenous Australians. It is the principle of connectedness through caring and responsibility that underpins Aboriginal life. Kanyini is a connectedness to tjukurrpa (knowledge of creation or Dreaming), ngura (place, land), walytja (kinship), and kurunpa (spirit or soul). Kanyini is nurtured through caring and practising responsibility for all things.  

The Nullabor and Central Australia is desolate country, and without education and knowledge handed down from generation to generation, human beings would not be expected to live there for a month, let alone for 10,000 years.

↑ Day 10 ↓ Day 12