Written by Pat Lowe, this text is an excerpt from her ebook, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert (Rosenberg Publishing). Now out of print, chances are you’ll discover it on second-hand web sites. It appeared in Adventure Journal 2007, edited by Lucas Trihey, and he or she has kindly granted permission for me to share it right here, together with quoting it within the third version of my ebook, “How to Navigate” (out July 2025).
About the creator
In the late Eighties, Pat Lowe spent three years dwelling within the Great Sandy Desert along with her Walmajarri companion, artist Jimmy Pike, who was one of many final folks to develop up as a hunter and gatherer in Australia. During that point, Pat learnt concerning the desert lifestyle and noticed in observe the normal abilities of the hunter.
More than tracks
Desert folks, women and men alike, learnt to learn tracks: they had been capable of establish not solely the sort and measurement of animal that had made the tracks, however info 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.
But, regardless of how good your monitoring abilities could also be, they’re of little use if, after catching your prey, you may’t discover your approach residence. No hunter would retrace his personal tracks. In the course 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 course?
For me, the power, after hours of meandering, to move off because the crow flies, unerringly again to camp or automobile, has by no means misplaced its marvel. It just isn’t merely a query of figuring out a bit of nation effectively, or of being attentive to options of the panorama, for folks can obtain the identical feat in nation they’ve by no means visited earlier than.
In 1838, when HMS Beagle, beneath 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 the Beagle’s navigators” in his directional skill.
“Far out of sight of land, and under overcast skies, he could point unerringly in the direction of Swan River—information which the Beagle’s officers only acquired after recourse to charts, compass, long line, sextant and chronometer.”
1838 journal, Assistant Surveyor John Lort Stokes, talking of Swan River man, Miago
It has been advised that some folks inherit an ideal sense of course, like homing pigeons. This appears unlikely. If some folks have it, why don’t all of us? And, if you happen to assume that indigenous folks advanced this further sense over a number of millennia, you could clarify its loss by their city descendants.
I believe sense of course is acquired, not inherited. People who stay outside, continuously conscious of the place of the solar and moon, the course of the prevailing wind, with no maps, roads or man-made indicators to depend on, develop a significantly better sense of area 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 study 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 folks change into confused. They attempt to navigate by the solar, however the arbitrary structure of streets and the obscured horizon typically defeat them. To desert folks, an acute sense of course is nothing out of the atypical. Indeed, the lack of the power to search out one’s approach is diagnostic of dementia: “He went mad, poorfella,” folks say, shaking their heads. “He walked anywhere.”
Whitefella considering
I used to attempt to cowl up my poor sense of course simply as some folks attempt to conceal their incapability to learn and write. When, on an extended stroll within the bush, Jimmy would cease and ask me, “Which way motorcar?”. I’d attempt to keep in mind the place he had been trying simply earlier than he requested, and level that approach. When 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 might say that I did. The dinner he remembered, with particulars concerning 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. As the years handed, my baffling failure to display 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’ll stroll. They don’t have course defined to them formally, however study by means of the only directions adults give them on daily basis. A toddler on the lookout for a plaything on the sand is directed to it: “There it is, north of you, north!”
If a billy of water is about to tip over on the fireplace, somebody will name out, “Quick! Move it to the east!”
Where white Australians converse of left or proper, black ones converse of north or south. Ask them, “Which way’s east?” they usually level with out hesitation. They are at all times spot-on. When I used to be deciding on images for a ebook, I requested Jimmy to establish some tracks. He would say: “It’s a cheeky1 snake heading south”. “How do you know it’s heading south?”, I’d challenged him. He laughed and admitted that he was studying the course from the way in which the {photograph} was oriented.
In Walmajarri, the vocabulary of course is wealthy and detailed. Each 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 no 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 street or river, a shifting particular person or flying fowl. Other phrases, utilizing completely different suffixes, point out whether or not the place or object is close to or far, in or out of sight, shifting in direction of or away from the speaker. One phrase says what in English wants a sentence.
Once I had realised how conscious of course he was, I confirmed Jimmy a compass. I demonstrated how the needle at all times swings to the north. He checked out it onerous for a second, then handed it again. “All right for you,” he mentioned. “Blackfellas know which way we’re going.”
How to develop a way of course
A superb sense of course relies on acute powers of commentary and a very good reminiscence. As folks stroll within the bush, they continuously pay attention to what’s round them. If they see a turtujarti tree with gum seeping from its bark or crop of nuts mendacity beneath it, they may keep in mind the tree and are available again to it later.
One afternoon, Jimmy and I left the automobile beside a mining street and went searching on foot. After two or three hours following tracks, we returned to the automobile. 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 most likely pulled the important thing out with it.
“Well,” mentioned Jimmy, “You’ll have to follow your tracks back till you find it.”
Fortunately, 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 automobile 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 beneath 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 approach, 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.
Another time, our automobile broke down. For the remainder of that day and all the next morning we did all we may 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 might have needed to observe our automobile tracks again alongside the street, however Jimmy headed throughout nation. On the way in which, the canine killed one goanna and Jimmy killed one other. During the night time, we stopped to make a fireplace and cooked them for dinner.
It was onerous to depart the fireplace and get going once more. Luckily, there was a full moon, which helped us make our approach by means of the spinifex. We watched it transfer steadily throughout the sky. Our joints gave us ache however the chilly stored us shifting. It was nearly daybreak once we reached our camp and collapsed fortunately on the bottom.
Aboriginal navigation by the celebrities and sky
The moon was a assist to us that night time, however folks like Jimmy can navigate simply as effectively with out it. Having slept beneath the celebrities for many of their lives, they’re as acquainted with the constellations as one other particular person could be together with his bed room ceiling. They know the time of 12 months, and of night time, that every constellation seems and use them to search out their approach throughout their land.
Pat Lowe, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert
In sizzling climate, folks typically travelled by night time. If that they had an extended strategy to go between waterholes, they carried water. They rested through the warmth of the day and travelled within the morning and late afternoon, into the night time. Occasionally, they ran out of water and needed to resort to excessive measures; thirsty as they had been, they’d 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 may journey on within the security of darkness.
When 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. Only 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 Great Sandy Desert.
Memory of locations and Country
Over three years we explored nation that Jimmy remembered from his youthful days. He needed to return to Japingka, the primary jila or everlasting waterhole of the nation belonging to his father and his grandfather. The roads we used had been seismic strains: sandy tracks pushed straight as spears by means of the desert. We adopted all of them, however none went so far as Japingka. In a single automobile we may 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 pictures. When the utility carrying the gas 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. Below 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 to be the identical. There aren’t any settlements, no mountains, no rivers, no roads. After an extended whereas, Jimmy asks the pilot to alter course a fraction. He research the nation as intensely as a hawk. Again he alerts for the pilot to alter course. Then – “Over there!” In a second we see it: Payarr, the positioning of a narrative that recurs in a lot of Jimmy’s work. From the air it seems to be 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 reveals us a cave, so low we must crawl to enter it. 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 word with a wide range of meanings. In this context. it means ‘venomous’.
2 ‘Jilji‘ is a sand dune. In the Great Sandy Desert the dunes run in common parallel ridges, generally for a lot of kilometres.