As part of my World Nomads film-making scholarship I travelled to East Arnhem Land in the Top End of Australia. What an amazing place!
Our trip was broken into visiting a indigenous community called Niynikay. Which is a small family that live about 350km on a hellish 4WD track from Nhulunbuy. The family live a semi traditional life. Which means although they have a generator to provide power to run lights at night. They mostly use traditional means of hunting and gathering to live their everyday life. We learnt about certain "bush medicines" and spent a whole day weaving baskets with the woman elders who told use fascinating stories about the land and life. After a cruisy couple of days we set out on the real adventure!
Scrambling back into the 4WD from hell we took bounced back to town to meet the Dhimurru Land Management Rangers. This mob works with the Yolngu aboriginal traditional owners to preserve, protect and conserve parts of Arnhem Land. As part of our trip we were going to help them pick up marine debris and ghost nets that wash up on the pristine coastlines of Cape Arnhem.
So we set out on the bumpy track once again. I was certain my camera was going to have a line of dead pixels through it from all of the knocks it had taken on along the way. we drove and drove and drove, deeper and deeper and deeper into the bush until we hit the ocean! We set up camp and pretty much got straight to work on the beach. Over three days we pulled up 750KG of rubbish, countless amounts of plastic water bottles, thongs and fishing nets. It was devastating to see how much rubbish actually washed up on the beaches and more devastating to know that none of the rubbish came from the local area. Most of it floats through the currents from South East Asia and then washes up on these remote beaches - unbelievable. According to the Land Management team they pick up about 4 tonnes of marine debris every year!
Now I am back in Melbourne. I've just finished going through all the footage I shot and have started the editing process. Because we didn't have power when we were away filming was even more challenging than usual. Having to conserve batteries and cards was something I learnt how to do very quickly! So, look out for the video its coming soon!
