Greetings From Beyond the Pale: Fitzroy Crossing

Ben Laycock  

We bid a fond farewell to the Mary River and head south till we hit the Fitzroy River; the longest river in the Kimberley and one of the last wild rivers on earth: No dams, no diversions, … Read More

Greetings From Beyond the Pale: A Gathering of the Clans

Ben Laycock

PART 9: A GATHERING OF THE CLANS

What have l stumbled upon here? Part conference, part corroboree. There are mobs from Beagle Bay and one Arm Point, Kolumbaru on the Timor Sea, Oombulgari, Yakanarra, Jigalong, Lajamanu. … Read More

Greetings from Beyond the Pale: Wolf Creek

Ben Laycock

Having been evicted from Balgo for transgressing a Christian sacred site, l am standing with my thumb out in the blistering heat. A car going the other way pulls up in a cloud of dust and hands … Read More

Greetings from Beyond the Pale – Balgo: the second most dangerous town in Australia

Ben Laycock

After crossing The Great Sandy Desert, we limp into Balgo belching black smoke. The funeral is in full swing. A string of fairy lights dangles from tree to tree. There is much wailing and moaning.

I make … Read More

Greetings From Beyond the Pale: The Tanami Track

Ben Laycock

Time to bid a fond farewell to Nyiripi and continue my lonely quest. The Kimberley beckons with the allure of the exotic and the unknown. The bitumen road from Alice Springs to Kununarra is a giant dog-leg … Read More

Greetings from Beyond the Pale: A Death in the Family

Ben Laycock

I am still at Nyiripi, way out in the Western Desert. Paul and Clair are the ‘gudia’ (whitefellas) that run the place. The Walpiri reckon gudia are like Toyotas. They go really well to start with, but … Read More

Greetings from Beyond the Pale: Hunting & Gathering

Ben Laycock

No sooner have we arrived than l am invited on a genuine, authentic, real, live, traditional hunting expedition with real, live, genuine, traditional blackfellas. I felt like all my Christmases had come at once.

We all pile … Read More

Greetings from Beyond the Pale: Nyiripi

Ben Laycock

  A friend of a friend of mine has a friend living with the blackfellas in a tiny outstation way out west of Yuendemu, the unofficial capital of the Walpiri Nation, 300 kilometres of bone jarring corrugations North-West … Read More

Greetings from Beyond the Pale: Alice Springs

Ben Laycock

Part Two: Alice Springs, where your intrepid wayfarer meets a real, live blackfella

After bidding a fond farewell to the Big Red Rock I head up the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs, in the centre of … Read More

Greetings From Beyond the Pale: Not Climbing Uluru

Ben Laycock

To set the scene for my escape, I am an artist, starving in a garret in St. Kilda, back in the days when stragglers in the rat race could still afford to live there. I am … Read More