The Last of the Nomads (1983, 2004 edition) is both a
travel adventure and a testimonial to enduring companionship.
The Western Gibson Desert in Western Australia is one
of the most rugged, isolated places in Australia, a great expanse of sandhills
running parallel to the horizon with vast open spinifex plains. There are no
mountains, no rivers, and few landmarks in the arid, hot desert of gravel. It
was home to many First Nations peoples: Budidjara, Gadudjara, Mandildjara,
Ngadadjara, Wanwan, and others. By the mid-1970s, “for the first time in
possibly twenty thousand years, there were no First Nations people ranging across
these tribal lands.” Although people had left their land to join missions and
settlements further south, two people remained. They were the last of the
nomads, the last of the Mandildjara people.
Warri Kyangu and his wife, Yatungka, of the
Mandildjara, chose to remain on their ancestral land in the Gibson Desert. They
had their reasons. They were outsiders, fearful of punishment for breaking
the marriage laws. They had married each other. They had married within their
section, which was against their law. Yatungka was born a Burungu
and she should have married a Milanjga. Warri was born a Yiparka and should
have married a Djararu or a Milanjga woman. To avoid punishment, they fled
their community and travelled the desert together, never leaving each other’s
side. Their friend, Mudjon, was sent to find them. He never did. Even their
four sons eventually left their ancestral land, and their parents.
Hence, over time, when all of their kinsfolk had left
the Western Gibson Desert lands, they remained. “War, famine, revolution, acts
of terrorism, things of great moment for civilisation meant nothing to that man
and woman.”
But in the mid 1970s, a drought of devastating
proportions spread across the central and western deserts – the worst in living
memory. Fearful that the couple were still walking the desert, without water
and food, the elders of the Mandildjara tribe sought the help of Europeans to
find Warri and Yatungka, now old and in danger.
In August 1977, for a month, the author and four
other men, with the aid of Mudjon (now an Elder), three 4-wheel
drive vehicles, 1319 litres of fuel, and 637 litres of water, set out to find
Warri and Yatungka. Travelling over 1500 kilometres of the most inhospitable
land in the country, they went from water hole to water well to water bore.
This is a true story. The author had his critics. Of
his critics, Peasley would ask two questions: “What manner of man or woman
would refuse to undertake a search when requested by Elders,
desperately anxious about the safety of two of their kinsfolk?” And, if found, “who,
after undertaking a long search … would be prepared to leave them in the desert
to die alone” emaciated and ill, without adequate food and water? If Warri and
Yatungka left their land, there would be none left of the Mandildjara in the
Western Gibson Desert. This is the account of the search, the landscape of the
desert, the psychology of tracker Mudjon, and the dilemma of the Mandildjara Elders. It is a great book.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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