Trip to Borroloola

As many of you may have known, Nelita's father passed away just before Christmas. We took Nelita to be with her family at this time. She stayed there for Christmas and the New Year. We left home to pick her up on the 8th January.

We stayed in Borroloola until the 18th. This was a time to renew relationships with the people there, and enjoy their friendship and company.

While we were there, we shared about our new work. We showed many people the 5fish app and helped many download the app. We were even fortunate enough to test Dennis' recording skills, and tested some of the scripts Glenys had written.

The language groups there are Garrawa, Yanyuwa, Mara and Gudunji. There is a fair amount of material recorded in Yanyuwa, but the recorded material in Garrawa has been lost over the years. This is a language we would like to start with. Along with Garrawa, we would like to do a lot of work in what is called Aboriginal English.

This is not Kriol, which is a language spoken in many places in the Territory and Western Australia. Aboriginal English is a bit like pidgin. It contains many English words, but sentence structure and the way it is spoken is different to main stream Australia.

Many younger people would speak Aboriginal English. As GRN seeks to have recorded material in the heart language of the people, we would like to start here.

A lot of the teenagers are ashamed to speak to Christians, so having the gospel on the phone means they can listen without embarrassment.

Dennis was able to spend some time recording some of the scripts we prepared. It was a great chance to put the training to the test. As most of the training was studio, it was good to see what we needed to do on field. Naturally, we are going back to the office with lots of questions.

 This is Vincent Charlie. He is the church leader at the AIM church in Borroloola. Vincent has a lot of respect in the town as a very strong Christian.

Vincent has a great reading voice, so we would like to use him for the scripture reading recordings.

Other people we will use to help with writing, translating and checking.

When a person cannot read well, we say the words out loud and they repeat the words. Our voices are then cut out of the recording. This is a lengthy process, but it works!

While we were recording, we had cicadas in the
trees, cockies squawking and kids yelling in the background.

This was a useful test, as we now can go back to the studio and work out how to either remove the noises or ideas on how to record reducing the noise in the recordings.

This may sound a bit slow, but we were recording as a trial for ourselves, and for the people, so they could experiment and see if they wanted to help in this area.

When we were recording in a community called Wandangula, we encountered other problems. Have you noticed that when you are doing something, kids come from everywhere, and are underfoot. They were having a lot of fun running through the shed we were using, then the dogs followed the kids.

It was all good, as we were just experimenting. Notice Dennis is sitting on the chair. There are not many in the communities, but because Dennis is an old man, he is given the chair!
The lady sitting in front of the recorder is Nelita's mother, Fiona. The other person is Nelita's sister, Lowana

Some of the fun things we did, was take the kids swimming. This is a great way to spend the day. The weather is hot, and sitting in the water with people is a great way to talk and share about different things.

This young girl is Lashara Rory. She is a cousin of Nelita's. They were almost inseparable while Nelita was there.

On this day, we took about 5 kids swimming. While we were there, Dennis went into town.  While he was there, it started to rain.

We all ran for the Mc Arthur bridge. It was very interesting sitting on a great pile of rocks, trying to shelter from rain and lightning. This did seem a bit futile as the water was blown under the bridge with every gust of wind.

One thing about wet season rain storms, it is not that cold, and while wet we were quite comfortable.

While we were at Borroloola, we stayed at an outstation called Sandridge. The traditional owners of this outstation are Nelita's grandparents - Stewart and Nancy.








Cooking was done on a wood fire. One thing you learn quickly when living out bush, is to use a small amount of wood to cook. Our food was well cooked, the billy can provided a great cuppa, and the grill did our toast beautifully!













 As we flew to Darwin, we needed a car. Our youngest son, Benjamin lives in Darwin, so he lent us his car.

We were very grateful for this. While it was a 4WD, it did not like a lot of the roads we had to travel, especially after a big rain.

Dennis had to spend a lot of time at the car wash in Darwin to restore it to its pre-Borroloola condition