Helping out at Nungalinya

We are truly loving this BCA Nomad work. Not only are we being useful to the various bush churches that just don’t have the resources esp manpower available to them but we are meeting and experiencing communities that we would not otherwise connect with.
Our friends and fellow BCA Nomad workers, Richard & Julie are here too. Between the four if us, we have partly renovated a unit (nothing structural) but lots of cleaning, painting, repairs and gardening; getting it ready for the newly appointed cook to move into. Then there was lots more painting and some gardening. Their local maintenance guy, Keith, made good use of Bob’s skills and had him repair all manner of things. I was put to good use making curtains for the unit as well as some book binding. (I also made good use of the borrowed sewing machine and made curtains and pelmets for the Robbiebago in my time off!  ) As one of the photos below show, I made our curtians outside the van. Actually this was terrific, I wish I had done all the sewing out of doors. I caught the breezes and never felt that I was working too hard. I could listen to the birds as I worked and greet people as they went past.

I love Nungalinya College in Darwin

Nungalinya (sounds like Noon-a-lin-ya) is an Indigenous Theological College run by 3 churches working together: The Anglican Church, The Catholic Church and the Uniting Church. Isn’t it great to know and see that these three major denominations can and are working together for the body of Christ. I wish it could happen more often.

Aboriginal Students

The students (all adults) I met came from various Arnhem Land tribes eg Roper Valley, Bathurst Island, Tiwi island and Groote Island. One lady came from a clan near Lightening Ridge who wants to know how to share the gospel with the street people that she deals with in her social welfare work in Outer Sydney. It is so good to meet Aborigines that are here to learn more of the Bible so that they can take it back to their people especially the children through various programs such as a Sunday School or Bible study. Some go on to become ministers in their communities.
 
They have Chapel (a informal church worship time) every morning and it is marvellous to see and hear them sing and do the actions to the songs. One of the most treasured memories that I will take away with me is being invited to an impromptu dance & praise session that some the ladies had one evening under the stars. It was so beautiful to dance & mime the songs , often times in Kriol (a common Aboriginal language), sometimes in English. Many of the songs were known Hillsong type of songs that we are familiar with. Some are worship songs in their own language written by some of their people.

Aboriginal People

Have you ever considered that most Indigenous people are actually very clever. They are multi lingual in knowing several languages in addition to their own language. They also have a huge capacity for love and are more than willing to include you in their lives.

The college and its people were heavily involved in the creation of the first full bible in an Aboriginal language (Kriol) which was published and launched just last year. They are so excited to have the Bible in their own language. There are some other partial translations avail such as Yolnu (Our son, Allan’s adopted family are Yolnu which is most of North East Arnhem land). There is another language from east Arnhem land that will have the New Testament by the end of the year. Having a Bible avail is well and good but not much use if they can’t read it. The biggest problem is the literacy and numeracy level of the majority is very poor but it is improving esp amongst the younger generation. A couple of Allan’s ‘brothers’ are at boarding school in Darwin and doing very well.

Joining in

Anyway back on track... We didn’t get to many of the Chapel services as they are at 8.30 in the morning which is part of the best time for working here as it gets too hot to work in the afternoons. Even now in winter, 30 degrees is common in the afternoons with an overnight minimum not less than 18 whilst we’ve been here. We do stop and have morning teas and some meals with the students here in the Dining Room, which helps us to get to know them. Some are here for the first time, others have been here several times. Some courses run from 2 weeks to 6 weeks generally speaking with some courses needing a second or third session of stays. Most need to stay on site as they are more often than not from remote areas even islands so daily transport is impossible. Some are here once and others come back several times for further education. Some may need literacy help too. A rare few go on to do a full theological certificate, some even to a full theological degree. The college would love to encouage more to go on to the full certificate and take the Gospel message back to their own people in their own language & culture.  I have met quite a few Aboriginal Deacons and Ministers that have trained here. It is such a vital ministry. Money and resources is extremely limited even after they have trained, they can’t always be as useful as they otherwise could as they don’t have the resources to follow through with back on land, in their tribes etc. The college here would also like to introduce more courses esp in vocational skills such as Hospitality (which is starting next semester) and Child Care training is being considered.

More information

Do take at look at their website and gain more of an understanding of what Nungalinya is all about. There are some exciting photos there too. http://www.nungalinya.edu.au/index.html

More waterfalls and water holes

Next stop is Litchfield National Park where we camped at Wangi Falls and did more walks and visits to waterfalls and water holes. There was no swimming allowed due to the presence of crocodiles at Wangi so walks is what we contented ourselves with at this campsite and just visited the other places for swimming such as Buleys Waterholes which is by far my fave. It is a series of 5 or 6 water holes next to one another. It has a very easy access from the car park – maybe 100m from the car to the pools. I love sitting under or against the water falls if I could. It feels just like a powerful spa.

The Florence Waterfall is spectacular and long. You don’t have to go far or down any steps to view the falls, however access to the pool at the base of the falls is a lot more difficult with some 134 wooden stairs down and that doesn’t count the natural rock stones as steps either. Once again I like to swim up & under the actual waterfalls but these ones were too strong to stay under it for long.

You must also stop by the Magnetic Termite Mounds whilst at Lithchfield. These ant hills are not as interesting to photograph as the cathedral style nor as high but they are fascinating because they are basically a thin rectangular shape not unlike a tombstone which are aligned to the sun on north south orientation for temperature control. Quite curious.

Thermal Pools, Waterfalls and National Parks

Elsey Homestead of We of the Never, Never fame

We continued onto Mataranka Resort which is truly beautiful. There is a 32 degree thermal pool in which we hopped to cool down – that’s how hot it was out of the pool. Mataranka is also the place where “We of the never never”, was written and recorded on film which is shown daily here. We enjoyed a few quiet relaxing days here.

Next stop is at Katherine. We were hoping to visit Allan however the road to Nhulunbuy will remain closed until at least the end of June due to a very late wet season and some of the rivers are flooded in the area. So we will visit & work in Darwin and see how the river fares in the meantime. Whilst in Katherine, we went for some short drives around and found the thermal pools here where we went in clothes and all since we hadn’t planned on swimming and it was just too tempting. We loved it. It is narrower and closer to the spring source.

We spoilt ourselves and took a helicopter ride & cruise up the Katherine Gorge. After a night of rain, the sun came through in perfectly lovely patches which lit up the rocks and gorges but not too much that was stinking hot. We saw 3 long waterfalls and 13 gorges. A 30 minute flight really disappears quickly and it seemed like no time at all and we were back on the ground and rushing off to the cruise wharf. We thoroughly enjoyed the laid back cruise and the breeze created by the movement of the boat whilst viewing everything the gorges had to offer. It was hard to limit our photos to show you of our flight & cruise, it was all so beautiful. More photos are at the end of this entry.

Leaving Katherine we went onto Edith Falls which is an absolutely terrific place and cheap too! It is certainly not overcrowded even though there are no powered sites. Each site has it’s ‘own’ private grassed backyard. I played a joke on Bob. I went back to our van and told him that people we had met previously were there too and that we were invited to go around later to chat and such. Bob didn’t ask any questions about them. I think he assumed that I couldn’t remember their name, I did deliberately put him off by saying that these people were on their way back to Katherine. It was our fellow BCA Nomads. Richard’s car had broken down and had to be towed back, so I was telling Bob the truth... I just didn’t tell him the whole story. It was worth the fun and games. No swimming at the fall’s pool due to crocs, so we went for a 2.5km walk to the top pool.

All is not smooth on the trip north

Once we left Alice we took time out to visit some of the beautiful locations on our way up to Darwin. I was pretty crook with the tail end of a flu and so was glad to leave the near freezing morning temperatures of Alice. First stop was an overnight stay at the fascinating Devil’s Marbles then onto Tennant Creek and their 2 very good museums; one is an excellent rock & gemstone museum worthy of a capital city. Then our overnight stay was at Bunka Bunka Station where there is a interesting slide night of the history of Bunka Bunka.. The following night saw us at Daly Waters, where we had to take an unpowered site which was a problem as earlier that day Bob noticed that the regulator was not working and thus the spare batteries were not being charged up thus no 12 volt power, lights etc. On top of this the last of 3 gas burners on the caravan kitchen hot plates stopped working too. (The first 2 blocked up earlier for some obscure reason). Thankfully Richard, Julie and Judy were still with us and thus we had just enough power from them to run one light and to keep my CPAP machine working that night. Oh to make a bad afternoon worst, Bob had offered to cook a baked dinner for the five of us on the gas hooded BBQ which went well enough except we dropped the vegies on the way to the outdoor table. We had no choice but to rescue the vegies and pick off the grass and present the food as best as we could. Thankfully it wasn’t too bad and our friends were too polite to make any comments about the unexpected ‘herbs’ added. After dinner Bob & I went to the Daly Waters Pub where there was a nightly country singer. Judy came with us as she hadn’t been to a country night at an Aussie pub before. Being a New Zealander, she loved the whole experience. A new day dawns leaving all the problems of the day before. Most problems were soon sorted out and life goes on pleasantly again.

Favourite recipes

LASAGNE easy version – a favourite!

700g – 1kg topside mince
2 onion finely chopped
½ teaspoon Italian Herbs
¼ teaspoon oregano
750 ml tin tomato soup
2 Tablespoon oil (approx)
1 teaspoon garlic
1 tin chopped tomatoes
½ jar tomato paste
Pepper & salt to taste
Cook onion & garlic for 2 minutes. Add mince and remaining ingredients. Cook altogether for 30 minutes minimum, stirring regularly. Whilst this is cooking make large cheese sauce.
Layer 1/3rd mince on bottom of large lasagne tray. Top with lasagne noodles and 1/3rd cheese sauce. Repeat layers. Add grated cheese and/or breadcrumbs if desired.
Bake @ 180oC for 1 hour.

CHEESE SAUCE for Lasagne

3 Tablespoon butter
3 Tablespoon flour
¼ teaspoon mustard powder
3 cup milk (or 1 cup milk powder & 3 c water)
1 cup grated cheese

Melt butter for 15 seconds. Add flour & mustard and mix until smooth. Then add a little milk at a time and mix until smooth until all milk mixed in and no lumps.
Heat 2 minutes in microwave. Stir and reheat 2 minutes. Repeat thrice. It will get lumpy at first. Just mix. Eventually it should smooth out or use whisk to finish smoothing out.
Add more milk if getting too thick.
When cooked (thickened) then add grated cheese & stir.

Christian Fellowship & work so often go hand in hand

Still here in Alice Springs, once again we were to experience the fellowship and hospitality that is so common to Christians, the first was an invitation to dinner at Gill’s who is the Community worker here, there we also met Dr Joy Sandefur who is the Dean of Anglican students at Nungalinya College in Darwin which principally trains aborigines for ministry positions in their local communities. We started to do the work that the Ascension church here needed, mostly it is of building maintenance: painting, fixing door locks, erecting curtain tracks, replacing old guttering on one side of the church, fixing & installing a reticulating watering systems in the garden, pruning trees, mending fences, etc. Thankfully Richard and Julie (together with Richard’s sister Judy all the way from Wellington, NZ) arrived within a few days to gives us a much needed hand. It was great to have their company again. We had missed them since Coober Pedy. More fellowship dinners included a marvellous BBQ at Deb’s unique permanent site caravan home with this wonderful South African Ox tail casserole as an added bonus made by her friend, George. Another evening we invited Gill for dinner too, once we stopped asking her questions about her work in the community long enough to let her actually eat her dinner!