Patjarr: In which Emma rides in a helicopter and the future looks grim for camels

We were looking forward to a week at Patjarr. Perhaps it was because of how tiny and remote it was: even by my standards.

Populatipon:30. About 12 of them are children. The government, however, insists there’s only one child there, and as such has closed down the school. Quite literally there is no school there; there empty block behind the friendly, colourful “Patjarr Remote Community School” sign confirmed the government’s “re-allocation of resources”, which in this case meant taking the school building to a community down south.

The community consists, it seems, of one or two extended families plus three whitefellas who combined run the store (open two hours a day), the office (which last year burnt down and has been relocated to a staff member’s kitchen table) and the art centre.

This tiny, very functional and largely self-reliant community confirmed what we have already heard in terms of the improved health and social engagement in the smaller homelands and communities not over-serviced by government agencies.

Each day when the shop opens, a group of kids and adults will wander down and help sweep, stack shelves, flatten boxes then quickly do their shopping so the store manager- who is also the office manager- can lock up and go back to her other job.

The adults as much as possible try to compensate for the lack of school by organising bush trips for the kids and involving them in the daily jobs around the community.

When we arrived and went looking for the key to what would be our house for the week, we were told the house didn’t lock. In the months since the lock had broken, nobody had gone into the place, nothing was stolen, so they figured they wouldn’t bother with locks anymore.

This contrasts enormously with the “whitefella houses” in most communities, which feature deadlocks, bolts, and often a padlocked cage around the front door.
But what about the camels? And the helicopter?!

We saw many camels- and camel tracks- on our drive to Patjarr, though deep red sand and over steep sandhills. They like walking and sleeping on the soft sand of the tracks, so one needs to take care when going over crests.

Camels look like they belong in this arid country but they were introduced by explorers who recognised their advantages over horses in this landscape and, more numerously, by Afghan camel drivers who have a rich history intertwined with the history of colonisation, of “opening up” of the Centre, starting in the 1840s.

Australia is now the only country in the world where camels live and breed in the wild. In fact, Australian camels are in demand from tourist operators around the world. There are specially converted aeroplanes to transport them in comfort and safety.

But these majestic, entertaining characters of the desert are endangering the original animal inhabitants. Indeed, this time round we have seen no emus and only one kangaroo in the 1000+ kilometres we’ve travelled so far.

That’s a huge change from 10 years ago when I would see mobs big and small of the native creatures – and the occasional camel.

And hence the Camel Management Program, the government’s pseudonym for culling what are indeed pests in this delicate ecosystem- very large , somewhat endearing pests, but nonetheless…

On a quiet Patjarr morning, the arrival of a helicopter- which landed just metres from the store- caused much excitement. It was the camel management blokes, flown in from Kalgoorlie to fly over country with the owners of the land around there, plotting the likely camel habitats and seeking permission to come back later in the year to do an air-to-ground cull.

I learnt that in most parts of the Australian desert, you can tell whether a body of water is salty or fresh from the air. There is something unique about the country around Patjarr though, and the only way to predict if the camels will come back to a certain lake or waterhole in the dry is to land the helicopter and test the water the old-fashioned way.

I was struck by the seriousness and sensitivity with which these two ex-army, frontiersmen who shoot large animals for a living approached the task of building relationships with elders, learning the laws and culture for the area, and ensuring land owners knew what they were agreeing to as they flew over their vast estates and gave permission for them to come back later and shoot the camels.

Just goes to show, I guess…

So for three days, the helicopter arrived early in the morning, swooping low over the houses to wake people up, then landing to pick up two men who would spend the day flying over with them.

I thought about these old fellas, the first time they see their country from a chopper or plane. Country they have walked over since the beginning of time. Somehow, having never been airborne, the people already have aerial views of their country: when they paint, they paint as if looking down on the earth.

So I wondered what it must be like being up there in the sky, looking down on it for the first time. Would it be like… an epiphany? An exciting moment of seeing something so close to them from a whole new perspective? But Pete pointed out they know the country so well, they probably just nod and say “Yep. That’s it.”
Be that as it may, they still took more than 300 photos with the camera we lent them, and other family members painstakingly arranged them in the appropriate order into a stunning slideshow.

And, also? I got to ride in the helicopter. Just for the hell of it, because I could. Because I looked jealously at the guys getting in and said “I’ve always been fascinated with, and a bit scared of , the idea of riding in a chopper”. And the boss said he’d take me for a quick spin, up to the airstrip to re-fuel. Possibly because he was about to ask us to make a short promotional film about the project which he could show other communities. Whatever. The six-year-old in me was rapt.

And flying in a tiny helicopter, over amazing country, with a pilot who quite possibly wanted to show off, was as terrifying and breathtaking and fun as I always thought it would be.