Rockhampton
9/7/00
Thursday 1:35 PM
OK, now I’m sort of glad I’ve spent some time here in Rocky. I just finished my guided tour of the Dreamtime Cultural Center. Very interesting place. I took the bus up here & I missed the beginning of the tour. I came in on the talk by a lady from the Torres Straits. A nice lady. She was. From there in the hut we went into a giant dagong (or dangal, in her language). [Editor: Can’t find info on dangal or dagong?] They had some pictures & artifacts in there to look at. The tour finished with a boomerang lesson and didgeridoo demonstration. I then had an hour until the start of the next tour, so I milled around a bit, bought a few boomerangs, had some ice cream, and the like. I wanted to buy a bull roarer, but they weren’t selling any at the time. I also wanted an authentic didgeridoo, but they were $160 US and I don’t know how I’d get it home. So anyhow, I went back for the first half hour of the tour at 1:00 … and I was the only one. It was nice, though. The girl was new but she did a good job. The talk was mainly about the people of the Great Sandstone Belt (or something), also known as the Stencil People. They are responsible for the majority of the stencil wall paintings. The reason is that the sandstone is great for stencilling, but terrible for any dark image or brush paintings. They finished with a tale about a lake (Nagga Nagga or the like) [Editor: Lake Nuga Nuga] that dried up overnight in 1942, but then water returned within 24 hours. An Aborigine said the Rainbow Serpent was angry about the abuse the lake had suffered, so it drank all the water up. To this day they don’t know what happened. Maybe it was a serpent.