Jenny met me at Nhulunbuy airport and drove me on the grand tour through the town. It has a Woolworths, Westpac and chemist, a bunch of tourist gift shops, a Toyota dealership, IGA, a post office, library and three bottle shops. There’s also the surf club, yacht club and Arnhem club. There’s a Mitre 10 too, but they call it Mitre 20 because it charges like a wounded bull. There’s a motel and hotel, both of which are always booked out.

The town has about 4,000 people, most of whom work for Alcan. The rest, mostly partners, find work where they can, at the schools, in the shops or with the aboriginal communities. The aboriginal people in this area are called the Yolngu.

Alcan provides reasonable housing: rooms for single people, units for married without children and three-bedroom houses for families with children. The house allocated to Jenny and her husband Allen was near the school and across the park from the main shopping area (Woolworths, Westpac and the gift shops). It was air conditioned and the rooms were a reasonable size. There was a backyard and a breezeway area where Jenny liked to sit of an afternoon, so she could acclimatise to the heat.

The heat was oppressive though I found that I didn’t notice until we came home from our daily walk and I was dripping with sweat. The first morning we took the dogs out and walked around the swamp looking for birdlife. Jenny and Allen have two dogs: Jake who travelled with them from the Central Coast and Sandy, who was once a camp dog and seems happier in her new home. She belongs to Melanie, Jenny and Allen’s daughter.

Since school, I’d wanted to see the Gulf of Carpenteria. So the first evening Allen drove me to the surf club to have a look. Jake raced around the beach with us, exploring pools of water. Allen kept calling him croc bait, so I asked about crocodiles. There’d been a story in the local newspaper about Allen and his dad being followed by a saltwater crocodile one day when they returned from fishing. After hearing about it, I decided to keep my distance from all water sources. I know my limitations; I’m short, fat and 52, no match for a determined crocodile. And there’s that story about them taking leftover human bodies to keep under a log when they’ve eaten enough.

The day after my arrival, Jenny and I took a tour of the bauxite mine and the Alcan refinery. The mine is a surface mine, it might be called open cut, except that they weren’t digging very deeply at all. First, they clear the trees to allow bacteria and plant species to propagate within the topsoil. Then, they move the topsoil and overburden (the area immediately above the bauxite deposits) and replace it on areas that have previously been mined. They re-plant the soil and ensure plants will grow. The whole topsoil and overburden is only about one metre deep.

Bulldozers are used to dig up the bauxite which is pushed into piles and loaded onto dump trucks, which are about the size of a backyard shed. They looked a little small to me; the ones I saw at Leighton’s mines were about the size of a two-storey building. The tour guide confirmed that these were baby dump trucks. They took the bauxite to the crushers where it was crushed into 25mm rocks and loaded onto a conveyor belt to be carried around 18km to the refinery.

We drove along next to the conveyor belt and around the refinery, which was spread across most of the peninsula and looked like a rusty version of the old game of Mousetrap. There were rows and rows of round tanks and odd shaped buildings, including two which looked like a pair of space shuttles about to take off. It was ugly, like something out of a poem by William Blake, though at night it was lit up and looked like a giant Luna Park.

The ore arrives on the conveyor belt and is stockpiled until the refinery is ready to process it. Then it’s ground into a powder and mixed with caustic soda to form a slurry. The slurry is heated to separate out the aluminium oxide and filtered to remove the bauxite residue and the remaining solution is cooled and ‘seeded’ with alumina tri-hydrate around which the alumina tri-hydrate in the solution concentrates. The alumina tri-hydrate is washed and filtered, then heated to remove the tri-hydrate (water). The result is alumina, a fine white powder, which is exported and converted to aluminium at the destination. The process is largely automated and controlled from the control room where Allen works. The Alcan tour office provides a brochure explaining the process and samples of bauxite and alumina in little plastic packets. I’m not sure what it says about the human race that we have built an ugly Meccano construction in the middle of nowhere in order to turn a bunch of reddish-yellow rocks into white powder so we can have cars, trucks, pots, pans, windows, doors, alfoil and CDs, but I’m sure it’s something profound.

 On Saturday, Allen, my tour guide for the Gulf of Carpentaria, took me to an isolated area where he likes to fish occasionally. We drove on roads which became progressively worse, starting as bitumen, then packed dirt and when it became sand, Allen engaged the four-wheel drive. We drove along the cliff face (which I hoped was stable) and when we couldn’t go any further, we walked over grassy rocks, then pebbly rocks full of bauxite. Allen dug out a nodule for me.

No sooner had Allen cast his line, than he started straining backwards and trying to reel it in. “It’s a big one,” he said. He seemed under such stress I was wondering what I could do to help when he stopped. “That was the one that got away,” he said.

I took some photographs and sat in the sun to read my camera manual. Allen wandered from rock to rock with his fishing rod. He showed me a crab that attached to his line and cursed a few times when he lost lures. Then he started straining again. “What can I do?” I asked. “Photos,” he said. So I took a movie of him reeling it in, then a series of photos of him displaying his fish. It was a trevalli, Allen said, not as big as the one that got away but big nonetheless. “That’ll do me,” Allen said, “and we better get you in before you get sunburned.” “I’m OK,” I said, because I’m stubborn that way but by evening my back was hot and Jenny was smearing aloe vera from the fridge on it.

On the way back we stopped at a place called Macassan, where the Yolngu used to meet and trade with the Indonesians. The Yolngu have used local stones to create pictures of the trade and objects used including fish traps, processing of the trepang (sea slug or sea cucumber) which was traded and Macassan boats. Walking through the area, signs explained what the various stone formations were. Outside was a car park with a border made of stones and someone had made a heart.

For a small community, Nhulunbuy has a diverse population. The taxi operators are all Arabs because the initial taxi company was started by an Arab. Not all the blacks are Yolngu, some looked very Papuan. And the local hotel does Thai food every week supported by the small local Thai population. This Saturday. It was full moon festival, so we did some dancing and bought small floats made of crepe paper with a candle in the centre. They were meant to be floated in the swimming pool but because we had to leave early, Melanie got a second one, which she floated next morning in the bath.

While we ate we watched Howard lose the election and his seat and over the next few days, we watched the Liberals self-destruct as Costello pulled out of the leadership race and Turnbull showed where his ambitions lay. Finally the Liberals decided on Brendan Nelson. Meanwhile Kevin Rudd told us his government was getting down to work.

Sunday was quiet. Jenny, Melanie and I went to the pool and to watch Melanie rehearse for her ballet concert. Watching all the mothers and children I was reminded of rehearsals for our belly dancing concert in Woy Woy. Some things are the same everywhere.

On Monday, Jenny and I were up early for our Bawaka Cultural Experience. This is an opportunity to see how the Yolgnu live. We dressed in skirts, as was expected of women in Yolgnu communities, long sleeves to protect our white, sunburned skin and shoes and socks to keep nasty little biting things off our feet. We were picked up by Timmy Burrwanga who was fifteen minutes late because the office had neglected to supply him with an address. Not to worry, we said, the brochure told us we were on Yolngu time.

First stop was the Yirrkala community. It was beautiful and the view of the ocean from Timmy’s office was to die for. Jen and I watched a turtle swimming in the ocean while we waited for Timmy to make a few phone calls. The turtle is a wise and clever beast, every time I aimed a camera at it, it disappeared.

I commented on a house made of cargo containers. That belongs to the woman responsible for enforcing Howard’s national emergency response to help aboriginal children, by banning alcohol in aboriginal communities. So I was told. They were glad Labor had won the election. Maybe they will leave us alone now, Timmy’s mother, Barbara told us later. By Wednesday that week, the Australian reported that the Labor Left was pressuring the Rudd Government to review Howard’s intervention, particularly with regard to the scrapping of the permit system (which helps support aboriginal communities) and the five-year leases over townships.

While Timmy brought us cold drinks, Jenny and I looked through the Yirrkala Art Centre. The prices ranged from thousands for large paintings to a few dollars for smaller items like painted shells. The paintings were interesting and some were brilliant but I found it hard to appreciate without an understanding of aboriginal mythology and their relationship to the country. Timmy explained the division of the Yolngu into the two moieties: Yirritja and Dua. It’s like yin and yang, he said.  He is Yirritja, so his wife must be Dua. I told him I understood because I’d studied anthropology at university. “Oh, are you indigenous?” Timmy asked. “Do I look indigenous to you?” I asked, blue eyes bright with surprise, while Jenny chuckled. I remembered later that, years before I had my hair cut short and permed with tight curls for my sister’s wedding. People said I looked like a blonde aborigine. So there must be something in my face, though I certainly don’t know where it came from.

We climbed back into Timmy’s car with his aunt and a friend named Bruce and headed off to Bawaka on the usual dirt and sand roads. As we bumped around, Timmy told us we were getting a complementary natural massage. We drove along a never-ending beach, stopping occasionally for the men to spear fish. I noticed the tips of the spears were metal. They buy them at Mitre 10 and sharpen them, Timmy’s aunt told me. So much for pristine aboriginal communities. I asked if there were stingers in the water where the men were fishing. Yes, Timmy’s aunt told me, but the men can usually see and avoid them. Spear fishing isn’t as easy as they make it look; the men tried about five times and caught one fish.

Bawaka was a camp with a few huts on a beautiful sandy beach. We were introduced to Barbara, Timmy’s mother and Timmy’s sister, whose name was Ruth, I think. There were a lot of names and I’m not sure I caught them all. There were two little girls, one slept a lot and the other, Gracie, took a liking to Jenny and gifted us both with shells she found on the beach. The women were sitting on a tarp on the beach, chatting while they made baskets and dilly bags.

Barbara made a small ceremony and rubbed us with smoking leaves while she asked the land to welcome and protect us. Then the men went off in their boat to catch a stingray for us to try and Barbara told us some of the women’s mythology, which I won’t repeat in mixed company. They took us on a drive around the area and showed us the places where women liked to go and how to dig up roots using a large flat hacking knife. They dig to one side, to prevent damage to the root itself. Ruth was the designated driver but the seat was broken and kept sliding back, so Jenny and I took turns at ‘seat duty’, holding it forward with our feet.

Back at the camp, Barbara showed us how to prepare the pandanus leaves for basket-weaving and we watched her making string from thin strips of bark by rolling it on her knees. Ruth also showed me how to make baskets and let me work on hers for a while. They are made using blanket stitch.

Barbara made damper out of flour, water and milk by smearing the dough between two large leaves and baking them on the fire. We ate the pieces with honey. We also tried baked fish and then Barbara took us down to the water and used a hammer to knock the top shell off the oysters clinging to the rocks. I scooped them off the rocks and straight into my mouth. I felt like a predator, which I suppose I am, even if I do buy my meat at the supermarket and my oysters in a restaurant (I like them smoked or with bacon).

After lunch we chatted with the women while we waited for the men to bring the stingray back. Barbara had a nap lying on the tarp, Jenny played with Gracie and Ruth told me how she learned computers at TAFE in Nhulunbuy. I asked about their relationships again and she told me that Gracie was her niece and the other little girl was her granddaughter. She looked to be in her thirties so I was surprised she was a grandmother. Possibly some of the claims of child abuse may be due to the fact that children are married young, though the news makes it clear actual abuse of children does go on. A few hundred years ago, European aristocrats were doing the same thing, both the marrying girls young and the abusing of female children, so I can understand why blacks consider Howard’s response offensive.

When the men still hadn’t come, the women drove us out along the beach to collect hermit crabs. These turned out to be shellfish which turned orange when roasted. Then Barbara decided the women would drive us home as it was getting late. On the way back along the beach we saw a fire across the bay. The women said it was the men notifying us they were stuck on a sandbar. Since white people aren’t allowed on the land without a permit, they usually know who is lighting the fires.

We stopped to light a fire to let them know we understood, then drove back to Nhulunbuy. The nearer we got to town, the better the roads became. On the way, Jenny and I shared ‘seat duty’ again, so my legs were well stretched by the time we got home.

Dinner that night was at the yacht club where they have dragonboat races. On this night, several of the blacks were drinking there so, as Allen pointed out, in one day we saw the best and the worst. One of the blacks introduced himself, then asked for money and when we said no, sat and watched us eat. It bothered Allen because Melanie was a little scared, so he asked the man to leave. He then asked the staff to ask the man to leave. The man took this as an invitation to sit at the table with us, so again we had to ask him to leave. After eating, we moved to another table nearer the water, in time to witness another group threatening each other with broken glasses. Club management called the police. Jenny and Allen told me that several of the blacks in town were itinerants from other areas, not part of the Yolngu communities. They weren’t that different from drunks everywhere.

On my last day in Nhulunbuy, Jenny and I drove up to the hill or nhulun from which Nhulunbuy gets its name. We climbed to the lookout and I took pictures of everything. After a week in Nhulunbuy, I recognised a lot of it. In the evening, I went with Jenny to belly dancing.

I got up early on Wednesday morning to spend my last few hours with Jenny and Melanie. While Jenny washed the dishes and tidied the kitchen and Melanie watched cartoons, I sewed the lace panel onto Melanie’s tutu for her ballet concert. I hope I did a good enough job and Jenny didn’t have to redo it. Then we were off to the airport and I was on the plane to Cairns.