Pre-Project Ramble
Thursday to Saturday 21st - 23rd September
Cairns marina was abuzz with activity on Thursday 21 Sep when I flew in from Melbourne to begin the ANZ Hope Vale 2006 Pelican project. For a month Garry, and Ini Wijnen, our new skipper, have had Pelican up on the slip for her annual maintenance and upgrade.
The delightful news, for anyone who isn’t close to us all, is that Garry’s partner Lara Crew, recently gave birth to a beautiful boy, Finnley Sunlight McKechnie. A future skipper of Pelican 1, perhaps?
The last days of preparation of a 19m vessel departing on an 18-day expedition involving over 200 people resembles what it’s like to move house after living somewhere for 20 years (remember the agony?), but with a buzz of excitement and expectation in the air as departure on the journey looms.
Ini is taking over from Garry as skipper for this expedition. A tall, lean Dutchman, Ini is an ex UN Peace Keeper, boat builder and sailor person extraordinaire. His 7 year old son JJ will join us next week. Garry’s effort has been nothing short of heroic on the Pelican project, and it’s taken Finnley’s birth to see him step back from his fibreglass Baby for the first time. Garry has lived and breathed Pelicans, (that’s two hulls) for more than 8 years. From design, to the laying of the first plank of western red cedar in 1998, to sea trials she was five and a half years in construction. After a quick circumnavigation of Australia and two and a half years as skipper, Garry has covered a total of 24,000 nautical miles on Pelican projects. He has earned a break from the wheelhouse although he continues in his role as director of Pelican Expeditions. Lara, Finnley and he will camp with their great friends the Guugu Yimidhirr people at Cape Flattery next week.
Colin, our trusted First Mate, has already clocked up many Pelican miles. Our beloved Nick, who voluntarily put in the entire electrical system and donated countless hours of IT genius, is onboard to help crew, as is Estelle and her partner Raf, who also volunteered after forming close ties with the Bama (Aboriginal people) during last year’s voyage. Anna, our new cook, has already done an incredible job provisioning this boat, due to the totally arbitrary nature of the number of person meals in an arbitrary number of project feeding days!
A big challenge for us white honkies is that although we are developing a plan with Coraleen’s parents Estelle & Des we still don’t know what is really going to happen. Part of our way in working with this Aboriginal-led project is to trust; BE in the unknown comfortably. Our job is to remain flexible, open hearted and prepared to change plans at any moment, to suit the needs and wants of this Aboriginal group.
The basic 14-day plan is two days of short-sails out of Cooktown, then three sails to Lizard Island from Tues 26 Sep to do a bunch of activities on Lizard in close consultation with the Dingaal Elders, the Traditional Owners. We’ll then sail to Cape Flattery on Sun and Mon 30 Sep/1 Oct to meet up with a large community camp now being set up to cater for around 150 -200 people, before returning to Cooktown Thur 5 Oct. We’ll finish off with two more days of short sails and a huge Community barbeque for all participants plus friends and family on Fri 6th evening at Hope Vale.
Deanna,left, and Mariah during the first day-sail 2600
Pelican is in her last day of preparation when Sara and I catch the dawn flight to Cooktown. Sara helped us fundraise in Sydney and wants to meet the Hope Vale people with a view to possible future work and projects.
The early morning flight is an exquisite experience as we leave Australia’s last north-eastern city behind, circle out over the turquoise fringing coral reefs, and climb up to 6,000ft. We fly alongside the tropical rain forested mountains that drop directly into the Coral Sea. We pass over a container ship, looking like a kids toy beneath us before we drop down over the tiny town of Cooktown and are suddenly on the runway.
Carl, the non-indigenous Hope Vale CDEP program coordinator, drives us to Hopevale. He’s worked in Aboriginal Communities across Australia for 15 years, and has a reputation for delivering what he says, fast. He’s finishing off building his beautiful house close to the Endeavour River, having chosen this paradise as his home. Shortly after the airport the bitumen road ends and we’re on dirt.
I’m keenly aware that Des & Estelle’s son Mark died whilst being driven in the back of a Community Police van, along this very road. Mark had hanged himself by leaning back on his belt, and the Bowen nightmare of losing their kids to suicide began.
We come over the hill and there’s Hope Vale nestled in amongst the lush tropical forest on all sides, a few rooftops poking out above the tree line, a bit of smoke drifting into the morning air. You’d never believe that 1,600 people live here. The first building that strikes you is the million-dollar Police complex on the right. How many Bama buildings could that have financed, given that a major cause of unrest in this Community is overcrowding due to inadequate housing? Of course there is more to it than that, but I can’t help reflecting on this when I see the run-down quality of almost all other buildings in Hope Vale. The good news is that 10 new houses are being built, their bright blue steel structures standing out against the ramshackle appearance of most homes.
Carl drops us off at Estelle’s Life Promotions work place. On the last day of the project 2005 we were taken in as family by the Bowens, a deep honour and one that comes with responsibility. Earlier this year, Garry had taken Coraleeen’s son Jazzmin onboard as crew whilst Pelican was filming the ABC doco on blue whales called “Big Blue”, due out in Nov this year. And my wife Davini and our family had one of Coraleen’s sisters Julianne stay at our home for six weeks over Christmas/New Year, because she was seriously at risk.
Hazel, Abbey & Jerome - kids of Coraleen, Mark and Julianne respectively
Coraleen started this whole Pelican Hope Vale thing when she saw our youth doco on SBS and wrote to us asking for help. This was on the day she witnessed her 15-year-old cousin being buried following suicide; there were 3 other suicides in her extended family alone in the previous four years. (See this story as part of last year’s coverage of the project.) I regret deeply that after ringing her back and saying that we as Pelican Expeditions could help once we had finished building this boat, that I hadn’t stayed in regular contact. It was a long struggle to finish the boat and I didn’t want to raise Coraleen’s hopes in case we didn’t succeed. When our Patron Andrew Denton finally launched Pelican I rang Coraleen, to find that she had also tragically taken her own life. In shock I rang her Mum Estelle and now here we are on our third voyage with her community.
It feels good to be sitting down with Estelle in her office, after countless organisational phone calls. We spend the afternoon and evening discussing this year’s plan. Our job is to be of service to the Guugu Yimidhirr people. We’re NOT here to fix anything at all, we were invited to be here and because we have never imposed our will on any part of the operation but respect and abide by the wisdom of the Elders and more recently the Hope Vale Council, we have built up trust and love between us all. The Bowens are family – what an absolute privilege for us Wangarr (white people in their language).
Much has changed since last year. During our 2005 project, Des came out of a reclusive, grief-stricken period to become more active in his family and his Community. A builder called Colin had helped him pen his vision for the Community which as I read it now for the first time, was a stirring ‘speech’ for turning his Community around so that their young people had jobs, dignity and self-respect like Des’s parents had had, but without the more disciplinarian guidelines of the Lutheran Missionary control. It read more like a Martin Luther King speech, albeit in it’s first draft. That paper was emailed around government departments and God knows where else, and due to its inspirational quality Des, to his great surprise, was elected onto the Hope Vale Council. Fate, and perhaps the help of his ancestors, has seen Des become one of the key voices of hope and progress at Hope Vale. He’s standing beside people like Noel Pearson in this regard.
Last year in a dream, a Dingaal ancestor came to Des telling him that the Dingaal ancestors in spirit were taking over with the Lizard part of the project and he needed to bring in the Dingaal living Elders to help with this side of the project.
It’s wonderful to be with Des again, and we discuss the possibility of doing a gentle Rite of Passage activity with the youngsters when we go to Lizard Island, traditionally a boys’ initiation site for the Dingaal clan. There are about 31 clans or language groups of the Guugu Yimidhirr people who were killed, raped and abused, then herded off their lands and eventually into a mission. Until this tragic junk of their history they were a tribal people with intricate systems of cultural lore in this region going back somewhere around 40,000 years that we know of.
The Lutherian German missionaries had come to their assistance, but conversion to Christianity went with hard discipline and the banning of most of their traditional cultural practices, including dances, ceremony, ritual and boys initiation. But some of this is changing now after the Bama were given back large sections of their lands, now under the control of the respective traditional owner groups.
The planning meeting: Nick, Ini, Abbey, Peter, Estelle, Anna behind with young Estelle & Raf
(out of sight) Des and Colin
One of the female Dingaal Elders had said “no” to Rite of Passage, so we rethought our plan. Step one on Lizard Island is to talk to the Dingaal Elders who will be with us to see what they would like to do and us to do. We decide that maybe we’ll introduce a Rite of Passage event on Des’s Daarba land later this year, if it meets with Elder approval.
The next day Pelican arrives in Cooktown, where Rex, a hard working, sunburnt local has generously let us come alongside his Cook’s Landing floating jetty at a heavily reduced rate. Thank you, Rex, and thank you to all the Cooktown locals who keep opening their hearts to us and this project.
In the afternoon Des & Estelle come onboard to meet our new crew members and we all sit down for a planning meeting to discuss several project details.
Peter Malcolm, Project Leader
Cairns marina was abuzz with activity on Thursday 21 Sep when I flew in from Melbourne to begin the ANZ Hope Vale 2006 Pelican project. For a month Garry, and Ini Wijnen, our new skipper, have had Pelican up on the slip for her annual maintenance and upgrade.
The delightful news, for anyone who isn’t close to us all, is that Garry’s partner Lara Crew, recently gave birth to a beautiful boy, Finnley Sunlight McKechnie. A future skipper of Pelican 1, perhaps?
The last days of preparation of a 19m vessel departing on an 18-day expedition involving over 200 people resembles what it’s like to move house after living somewhere for 20 years (remember the agony?), but with a buzz of excitement and expectation in the air as departure on the journey looms.
Ini is taking over from Garry as skipper for this expedition. A tall, lean Dutchman, Ini is an ex UN Peace Keeper, boat builder and sailor person extraordinaire. His 7 year old son JJ will join us next week. Garry’s effort has been nothing short of heroic on the Pelican project, and it’s taken Finnley’s birth to see him step back from his fibreglass Baby for the first time. Garry has lived and breathed Pelicans, (that’s two hulls) for more than 8 years. From design, to the laying of the first plank of western red cedar in 1998, to sea trials she was five and a half years in construction. After a quick circumnavigation of Australia and two and a half years as skipper, Garry has covered a total of 24,000 nautical miles on Pelican projects. He has earned a break from the wheelhouse although he continues in his role as director of Pelican Expeditions. Lara, Finnley and he will camp with their great friends the Guugu Yimidhirr people at Cape Flattery next week.
Colin, our trusted First Mate, has already clocked up many Pelican miles. Our beloved Nick, who voluntarily put in the entire electrical system and donated countless hours of IT genius, is onboard to help crew, as is Estelle and her partner Raf, who also volunteered after forming close ties with the Bama (Aboriginal people) during last year’s voyage. Anna, our new cook, has already done an incredible job provisioning this boat, due to the totally arbitrary nature of the number of person meals in an arbitrary number of project feeding days!
A big challenge for us white honkies is that although we are developing a plan with Coraleen’s parents Estelle & Des we still don’t know what is really going to happen. Part of our way in working with this Aboriginal-led project is to trust; BE in the unknown comfortably. Our job is to remain flexible, open hearted and prepared to change plans at any moment, to suit the needs and wants of this Aboriginal group.
The basic 14-day plan is two days of short-sails out of Cooktown, then three sails to Lizard Island from Tues 26 Sep to do a bunch of activities on Lizard in close consultation with the Dingaal Elders, the Traditional Owners. We’ll then sail to Cape Flattery on Sun and Mon 30 Sep/1 Oct to meet up with a large community camp now being set up to cater for around 150 -200 people, before returning to Cooktown Thur 5 Oct. We’ll finish off with two more days of short sails and a huge Community barbeque for all participants plus friends and family on Fri 6th evening at Hope Vale.
Deanna,left, and Mariah during the first day-sail 2600Pelican is in her last day of preparation when Sara and I catch the dawn flight to Cooktown. Sara helped us fundraise in Sydney and wants to meet the Hope Vale people with a view to possible future work and projects.
The early morning flight is an exquisite experience as we leave Australia’s last north-eastern city behind, circle out over the turquoise fringing coral reefs, and climb up to 6,000ft. We fly alongside the tropical rain forested mountains that drop directly into the Coral Sea. We pass over a container ship, looking like a kids toy beneath us before we drop down over the tiny town of Cooktown and are suddenly on the runway.
Carl, the non-indigenous Hope Vale CDEP program coordinator, drives us to Hopevale. He’s worked in Aboriginal Communities across Australia for 15 years, and has a reputation for delivering what he says, fast. He’s finishing off building his beautiful house close to the Endeavour River, having chosen this paradise as his home. Shortly after the airport the bitumen road ends and we’re on dirt.
I’m keenly aware that Des & Estelle’s son Mark died whilst being driven in the back of a Community Police van, along this very road. Mark had hanged himself by leaning back on his belt, and the Bowen nightmare of losing their kids to suicide began.
We come over the hill and there’s Hope Vale nestled in amongst the lush tropical forest on all sides, a few rooftops poking out above the tree line, a bit of smoke drifting into the morning air. You’d never believe that 1,600 people live here. The first building that strikes you is the million-dollar Police complex on the right. How many Bama buildings could that have financed, given that a major cause of unrest in this Community is overcrowding due to inadequate housing? Of course there is more to it than that, but I can’t help reflecting on this when I see the run-down quality of almost all other buildings in Hope Vale. The good news is that 10 new houses are being built, their bright blue steel structures standing out against the ramshackle appearance of most homes.
Carl drops us off at Estelle’s Life Promotions work place. On the last day of the project 2005 we were taken in as family by the Bowens, a deep honour and one that comes with responsibility. Earlier this year, Garry had taken Coraleeen’s son Jazzmin onboard as crew whilst Pelican was filming the ABC doco on blue whales called “Big Blue”, due out in Nov this year. And my wife Davini and our family had one of Coraleen’s sisters Julianne stay at our home for six weeks over Christmas/New Year, because she was seriously at risk.
Hazel, Abbey & Jerome - kids of Coraleen, Mark and Julianne respectively Coraleen started this whole Pelican Hope Vale thing when she saw our youth doco on SBS and wrote to us asking for help. This was on the day she witnessed her 15-year-old cousin being buried following suicide; there were 3 other suicides in her extended family alone in the previous four years. (See this story as part of last year’s coverage of the project.) I regret deeply that after ringing her back and saying that we as Pelican Expeditions could help once we had finished building this boat, that I hadn’t stayed in regular contact. It was a long struggle to finish the boat and I didn’t want to raise Coraleen’s hopes in case we didn’t succeed. When our Patron Andrew Denton finally launched Pelican I rang Coraleen, to find that she had also tragically taken her own life. In shock I rang her Mum Estelle and now here we are on our third voyage with her community.
It feels good to be sitting down with Estelle in her office, after countless organisational phone calls. We spend the afternoon and evening discussing this year’s plan. Our job is to be of service to the Guugu Yimidhirr people. We’re NOT here to fix anything at all, we were invited to be here and because we have never imposed our will on any part of the operation but respect and abide by the wisdom of the Elders and more recently the Hope Vale Council, we have built up trust and love between us all. The Bowens are family – what an absolute privilege for us Wangarr (white people in their language).
Much has changed since last year. During our 2005 project, Des came out of a reclusive, grief-stricken period to become more active in his family and his Community. A builder called Colin had helped him pen his vision for the Community which as I read it now for the first time, was a stirring ‘speech’ for turning his Community around so that their young people had jobs, dignity and self-respect like Des’s parents had had, but without the more disciplinarian guidelines of the Lutheran Missionary control. It read more like a Martin Luther King speech, albeit in it’s first draft. That paper was emailed around government departments and God knows where else, and due to its inspirational quality Des, to his great surprise, was elected onto the Hope Vale Council. Fate, and perhaps the help of his ancestors, has seen Des become one of the key voices of hope and progress at Hope Vale. He’s standing beside people like Noel Pearson in this regard.
Last year in a dream, a Dingaal ancestor came to Des telling him that the Dingaal ancestors in spirit were taking over with the Lizard part of the project and he needed to bring in the Dingaal living Elders to help with this side of the project.
It’s wonderful to be with Des again, and we discuss the possibility of doing a gentle Rite of Passage activity with the youngsters when we go to Lizard Island, traditionally a boys’ initiation site for the Dingaal clan. There are about 31 clans or language groups of the Guugu Yimidhirr people who were killed, raped and abused, then herded off their lands and eventually into a mission. Until this tragic junk of their history they were a tribal people with intricate systems of cultural lore in this region going back somewhere around 40,000 years that we know of.
The Lutherian German missionaries had come to their assistance, but conversion to Christianity went with hard discipline and the banning of most of their traditional cultural practices, including dances, ceremony, ritual and boys initiation. But some of this is changing now after the Bama were given back large sections of their lands, now under the control of the respective traditional owner groups.
The planning meeting: Nick, Ini, Abbey, Peter, Estelle, Anna behind with young Estelle & Raf(out of sight) Des and Colin
One of the female Dingaal Elders had said “no” to Rite of Passage, so we rethought our plan. Step one on Lizard Island is to talk to the Dingaal Elders who will be with us to see what they would like to do and us to do. We decide that maybe we’ll introduce a Rite of Passage event on Des’s Daarba land later this year, if it meets with Elder approval.
The next day Pelican arrives in Cooktown, where Rex, a hard working, sunburnt local has generously let us come alongside his Cook’s Landing floating jetty at a heavily reduced rate. Thank you, Rex, and thank you to all the Cooktown locals who keep opening their hearts to us and this project.
In the afternoon Des & Estelle come onboard to meet our new crew members and we all sit down for a planning meeting to discuss several project details.
Peter Malcolm, Project Leader
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