Written by Pat Lowe, this text is an excerpt from her guide, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert (Rosenberg Publishing). Now out of print, it’s possible you’ll 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 guide, “Easy methods to Navigate” (out July 2025).
In regards to the creator
Within the late Nineteen Eighties, Pat Lowe spent three years dwelling within the Nice Sandy Desert along 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 observe the normal expertise of the hunter.
Greater than tracks
Desert individuals, women and men alike, learnt to learn tracks: they have been in a position to establish not solely the kind and measurement of animal that had made the tracks, however data reminiscent of 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 expertise could also be, they’re of little use if, after catching your prey, you’ll be able to’t discover your method residence. No hunter would retrace his personal tracks. In the midst 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 path?
For me, the power, after hours of meandering, to go off because the crow flies, unerringly again to camp or automotive, has by no means misplaced its surprise. It’s not merely a query of realizing a chunk of nation effectively, or of paying attention 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, primarily based on the journals of Assistant Surveyor John Lort Stokes, says that Miago “surpassed all of the Beagle’s navigators” in his directional capability.
“Far out of sight of land, and underneath overcast skies, he might level unerringly within the path of Swan River—data 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 path, like homing pigeons. This appears unlikely. If some individuals have it, why don’t all of us? And, in the event you assume that indigenous individuals advanced this additional sense over a number of millennia, you will need to clarify its loss by their city descendants.
I believe sense of path is acquired, not inherited. Individuals who stay outside, consistently conscious of the place of the solar and moon, the path of the prevailing wind, with no maps, roads or man-made indicators to depend on, develop a a lot better sense of house than those that stay in cities, with no horizon and little alternative to look at photo voltaic and planetary actions. As babies, city-dwellers are given no details about instructions, and once we find out about them at college we achieve this 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 change 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 path is nothing out of the extraordinary. Certainly, the lack of the power to seek out one’s method is diagnostic of dementia: “He went mad, poorfella,” individuals say, shaking their heads. “He walked wherever.”
Whitefella considering
I used to attempt to cowl up my poor sense of path simply as some individuals attempt to conceal their incapacity to learn and write. When, on a protracted stroll within the bush, Jimmy would cease and ask me, “Which method motorcar?”. I’d attempt to keep in mind the place he had been wanting simply earlier than he requested, and level that method. After we drove alongside one of many seismic strains and Jimmy pointed to a tree and requested if I remembered as soon as having had dinner there. I’d 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, could 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 kids taught navigation?
Desert kids study the which means of north, south, east and west nearly as quickly as they will stroll. They don’t have path defined to them formally, however study via the only directions adults give them each day. A toddler searching for 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 fireplace, somebody will name out, “Fast! Transfer it to the east!”
The place white Australians converse of left or proper, black ones converse of north or south. Ask them, “Which method’s east?” they usually level with out hesitation. They’re at all times spot-on. Once I was choosing pictures for a guide, I requested Jimmy to establish 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 path from the way in which the {photograph} was oriented.
In Walmajarri, the vocabulary of path 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 offer the phrase precision. There are not less than 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 should apply to a highway or river, a transferring particular person or flying hen. Different phrases, utilizing completely different suffixes, point out whether or not the place or object is close to or far, in or out of sight, transferring in the 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 path he was, I confirmed Jimmy a compass. I demonstrated how the needle at all times swings to the north. He checked out it arduous for a second, then handed it again. “All best for you,” he mentioned. “Blackfellas know which method we’re going.”
Easy methods to develop a way of path
sense of path is dependent upon acute powers of statement and a very good reminiscence. As individuals stroll within the bush, they consistently pay attention to 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’ll keep in mind the tree and are available again to it later.
One afternoon, Jimmy and I left the automotive beside a mining highway and went searching on foot. After two or three hours following tracks, we returned to the automotive. 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 in all probability pulled the important thing out with it.
“Properly,” mentioned Jimmy, “You’ll must observe your tracks again until you discover it.”
Happily, 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 automotive 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 could have been a month or longer earlier than we subsequent travelled the identical method, however Jimmy would keep 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 automotive 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 canine, carrying a water bottle and rifle. As quickly because the solar went down, chilly descended. Had I been alone, I’d have needed to observe our automotive tracks again alongside the highway, however Jimmy headed throughout nation. On the way in which, the canine killed one goanna and Jimmy killed one other. In the course of the night time, we stopped to make a hearth and cooked them for dinner.
It was arduous to go away the fireplace and get going once more. Fortunately, there was a full moon, which helped us make our method via the spinifex. We watched it transfer steadily throughout the sky. Our joints gave us ache however the chilly saved us transferring. It was nearly daybreak once 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 night time, 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 conversant in the constellations as one other particular person is perhaps along with his bed room ceiling. They know the time of yr, and of night time, that every constellation seems and use them to seek out their method throughout their land.
Pat Lowe, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert
In scorching climate, individuals usually travelled by night time. If they’d a protracted approach 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 night time. 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 they usually 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, once we checked out maps collectively, did I realise that his understanding of the connection between completely 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 principle jila or everlasting waterhole of the nation belonging to his father and his grandfather. The roads we used have been seismic strains: sandy tracks pushed straight as spears via 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 photographs. When the utility carrying the gasoline 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 vary path a fraction. He research the nation as intensely as a hawk. Once more he indicators for the pilot to vary 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 exhibits 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.
