Written by Pat Lowe, this text is an excerpt from her e-book, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert (Rosenberg Publishing). Now out of print, you could discover it on second-hand web sites. It appeared in Journey Journal 2007, edited by Lucas Trihey, and she or he has kindly granted permission for me to share it right here, together with quoting it within the third version of my e-book, “Find out how to Navigate” (out July 2025).
In regards to the creator
Within the late Eighties, Pat Lowe spent three years dwelling within the Nice Sandy Desert together with her Walmajarri companion, artist Jimmy Pike, who was one of many final individuals to develop up as a hunter and gatherer in Australia. Throughout that point, Pat learnt in regards to the desert lifestyle and noticed in apply the normal abilities of the hunter.
Greater than tracks
Desert individuals, women and men alike, learnt to learn tracks: they have been capable of determine not solely the kind and dimension of animal that had made the tracks, however info corresponding to its age and gender. They may inform what the animal had been doing at every stage of its journey: when it had run, walked or stopped, encountered one other animal or caught prey, engaged in courtship behaviour, had a feed or gone to sleep.
However, regardless of how good your monitoring abilities could also be, they’re of little use if, after catching your prey, you may’t discover your approach dwelling. No hunter would retrace his personal tracks. In the middle of a day, he goes wherever an animal leads him. He can’t afford to cowl all that floor once more simply to get again to camp.
Are you born with sense of route?
For me, the power, after hours of meandering, to go off because the crow flies, unerringly again to camp or automobile, has by no means misplaced its marvel. It’s not merely a query of figuring out a bit of nation effectively, or of being attentive to options of the panorama, for individuals can obtain the identical feat in nation they’ve by no means visited earlier than.
In 1838, when HMS Beagle, underneath Captain Wickham, was exploring the north-west coast of Australia, a Swan River man named Miago was recruited as gunroom steward and to assist make contact with ‘the tribes’. Marsden Hordern, in his account of the voyage, based mostly on the journals of Assistant Surveyor John Lort Stokes, says that Miago “surpassed all of the Beagle’s navigators” in his directional skill.
“Far out of sight of land, and underneath overcast skies, he might level unerringly within the route of Swan River—info which the Beagle’s officers solely acquired after recourse to charts, compass, lengthy line, sextant and chronometer.”
1838 journal, Assistant Surveyor John Lort Stokes, talking of Swan River man, Miago
It has been prompt that some individuals inherit an ideal sense of route, like homing pigeons. This appears unlikely. If some individuals have it, why don’t all of us? And, for those who assume that indigenous individuals developed this further sense over a number of millennia, you will need to clarify its loss by their city descendants.
I feel sense of route is acquired, not inherited. Individuals who reside outdoor, consistently conscious of the place of the solar and moon, the route of the prevailing wind, with no maps, roads or man-made indicators to depend on, develop a significantly better sense of area than those that reside in cities, with no horizon and little alternative to watch photo voltaic and planetary actions. As young children, city-dwellers are given no details about instructions, and after we study them in school we accomplish that in relation to a map, not the on a regular basis world. We get round cities by studying the names of streets.
Cities are the one place the place desert individuals turn into confused. They attempt to navigate by the solar, however the arbitrary format of streets and the obscured horizon usually defeat them. To abandon individuals, an acute sense of route is nothing out of the abnormal. Certainly, the lack of the power to search out one’s approach is diagnostic of dementia: “He went mad, poorfella,” individuals say, shaking their heads. “He walked anyplace.”
Whitefella considering
I used to attempt to cowl up my poor sense of route simply as some individuals attempt to conceal their incapability to learn and write. When, on a protracted stroll within the bush, Jimmy would cease and ask me, “Which approach motorcar?”. I’d attempt to bear in mind the place he had been wanting simply earlier than he requested, and level that approach. After we drove alongside one of many seismic traces and Jimmy pointed to a tree and requested if I remembered as soon as having had dinner there. I might say that I did. The dinner he remembered, with particulars in regards to the variety of goannas, cats or snakes we had killed and cooked that day, might have taken place 10 or 15 years earlier than.
Jimmy discovered my directional blindness humorous at first and regaled buddies with tales about me getting misplaced. “Ah, poorfella,” they’d say. Because the years handed, my baffling failure to exhibit any enchancment grew to become a supply of irritation and, lastly, only a cross to be borne.
How are Aboriginal youngsters taught navigation?
Desert youngsters be taught the which means of north, south, east and west virtually as quickly as they will stroll. They don’t have route defined to them formally, however be taught by way of the only directions adults give them every single day. A toddler in search of a plaything on the sand is directed to it: “There it’s, north of you, north!”
If a billy of water is about to tip over on the hearth, somebody will name out, “Fast! Transfer it to the east!”
The place white Australians communicate of left or proper, black ones communicate of north or south. Ask them, “Which approach’s east?” and so they level with out hesitation. They’re at all times spot-on. After I was deciding on photographs for a e-book, I requested Jimmy to determine some tracks. He would say: “It’s a cheeky1 snake heading south”. “How have you learnt it’s heading south?”, I’d challenged him. He laughed and admitted that he was studying the route from the way in which the {photograph} was oriented.
In Walmajarri, the vocabulary of route is wealthy and detailed. Every of the six instructions - the 4 cardinal compass factors and 'up' and 'down' - has a phrase stem, which takes quite a lot of suffixes to provide the phrase precision. There are at the very least a dozen such suffixes. For instance, kakarra means east. Kakarrara means in or across the close to east, say inside a brief strolling distance. Kakarrampal means to the east of the speaker however working north-south, and will apply to a highway or river, a shifting particular person or flying fowl. Different phrases, utilizing totally different suffixes, point out whether or not the place or object is close to or far, in or out of sight, shifting in direction of or away from the speaker. One phrase says what in English wants a sentence.
As soon as I had realised how conscious of route he was, I confirmed Jimmy a compass. I demonstrated how the needle at all times swings to the north. He checked out it laborious for a second, then handed it again. “All best for you,” he mentioned. “Blackfellas know which approach we’re going.”
Find out how to develop a way of route
A superb sense of route will depend on acute powers of remark and a very good reminiscence. As individuals stroll within the bush, they consistently be aware of what’s round them. In the event that they see a turtujarti tree with gum seeping from its bark or crop of nuts mendacity beneath it, they are going to bear in mind the tree and are available again to it later.
One afternoon, Jimmy and I left the automobile beside a mining highway and went searching on foot. After two or three hours following tracks, we returned to the automobile. I felt in my pocket for the important thing; it wasn’t there. I remembered pulling some dried fruit from my pocket and sharing it with Jimmy; I had most likely pulled the important thing out with it.
“Effectively,” mentioned Jimmy, “You’ll should observe your tracks again until you discover it.”
Luckily, he relented and off we set, ignoring our personal earlier tracks, straight throughout nation. After a while, with out breaking stride, Jimmy nodded on the floor. “There’s your key,” he mentioned, with maddening nonchalance – a single automobile key mendacity flat on the sand.
Pat Lowe, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert
On different events I left a hammer or a searching stick underneath a tree and solely missed it later, again at camp. It might have been a month or longer earlier than we subsequent travelled the identical approach, however Jimmy would bear in mind the very tree the place I had left the lacking merchandise, and we at all times discovered it there.
One other time, our automobile broke down. For the remainder of that day and all the next morning we did all we might to get it going once more. After lunch on the second day, Jimmy introduced that we must stroll. We set off with our two canines, carrying a water bottle and rifle. As quickly because the solar went down, chilly descended. Had I been alone, I might have needed to observe our automobile tracks again alongside the highway, however Jimmy headed throughout nation. On the way in which, the canines killed one goanna and Jimmy killed one other. Throughout the evening, we stopped to make a fireplace and cooked them for dinner.
It was laborious to go away the hearth and get going once more. Fortunately, there was a full moon, which helped us make our approach by way of the spinifex. We watched it transfer steadily throughout the sky. Our joints gave us ache however the chilly stored us shifting. It was virtually daybreak after we reached our camp and collapsed fortunately on the bottom.
Aboriginal navigation by the celebs and sky
The moon was a assist to us that evening, however individuals like Jimmy can navigate simply as effectively with out it. Having slept underneath the celebs for many of their lives, they’re as acquainted with the constellations as one other particular person is likely to be along with his bed room ceiling. They know the time of yr, and of evening, that every constellation seems and use them to search out their approach throughout their land.
Pat Lowe, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert
In sizzling climate, individuals usually travelled by evening. If that they had a protracted strategy to go between waterholes, they carried water. They rested throughout the warmth of the day and travelled within the morning and late afternoon, into the evening. Often, they ran out of water and needed to resort to excessive measures; thirsty as they have been, they might bury themselves in cool sand close to the bottom of a tree, and lie there with solely their heads uncovered, conserving physique moisture, till the warmth had handed and so they might journey on within the security of darkness.
After we first lived within the desert, we noticed jet plane crossing the sky. “That one’s going to Sydney,” Jimmy would say. “That one’s going to Singapore.” Since Jimmy at the moment had been to neither Sydney nor Singapore, I took these pronouncements with a grain of salt. Solely later, after we checked out maps collectively, did I realise that his understanding of the connection between totally different locations prolonged far past the Kimberley and the Nice Sandy Desert.
Reminiscence of locations and Nation
Over three years we explored nation that Jimmy remembered from his youthful days. He wished to return to Japingka, the primary jila or everlasting waterhole of the nation belonging to his father and his grandfather. The roads we used have been seismic traces: sandy tracks pushed straight as spears by way of the desert. We adopted all of them, however none went so far as Japingka. In a single automobile we might go no additional and had to surrender.
In 1988, a movie crew made a documentary about Jimmy, the main target of which, at our suggestion, was a journey to Japingka. We took three four-wheel-drive automobiles, with a helicopter for backup and aerial pictures. When the utility carrying the gas drums grew to become hopelessly bogged on prime of a jilji2, the remainder of the journey needed to be made by helicopter.
Jimmy sits subsequent to the pilot and directs him to fly south. Under stretch parallel ridges of sand so far as the attention can see. Jimmy final walked this land as a boy; he has by no means seen it from the air. To the untrained eye, all of it seems the identical. There are not any settlements, no mountains, no rivers, no roads. After a protracted whereas, Jimmy asks the pilot to alter route a fraction. He research the nation as intensely as a hawk. Once more he alerts for the pilot to alter course. Then – “Over there!” In a second we see it: Payarr, the positioning of a narrative that recurs in lots of Jimmy’s work. From the air it seems like a miniature Uluru rising from the sands. We land on nation that has not been walked for 40 years. Jimmy leads us up the rock as if he had climbed it yesterday. He reveals us a cave, so low we must crawl to enter it. Right here, in one other life, Jimmy’s mom slept with him and his little brother on wet nights.
From Payarr, one other 5 minutes’ flight takes us to Japingka.
Pat’s different books, together with these in collaboration with Jimmy Pike, can be found at Magabala Books and Backroom Press.
1 ‘Cheeky‘ is a Kimberley Kriol phrase with a variety of meanings. On this context. it means ‘venomous’.
2 ‘Jilji‘ is a sand dune. Within the Nice Sandy Desert the dunes run in common parallel ridges, typically for a lot of kilometres.
