Written by Pat Lowe, this text is an excerpt from her e book, 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 Adventure 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 e book, “How to Navigate” (out July 2025).
About the writer
In the late Nineteen 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 individuals to develop up as a hunter and gatherer in Australia. During that point, Pat learnt in regards to the desert lifestyle and noticed in observe the standard abilities of the hunter.
More than tracks
Desert individuals, women and men alike, learnt to learn tracks: they had been capable of establish not solely the sort and dimension of animal that had made the tracks, however info equivalent to its age and gender. They might 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, irrespective of how good your monitoring abilities could also be, they’re of little use if, after catching your prey, you’ll be able to’t discover your means dwelling. 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 a very good sense of path?
For me, the flexibility, after hours of meandering, to move off because the crow flies, unerringly again to camp or automobile, has by no means misplaced its surprise. It is just not merely a query of realizing a bit of nation nicely, or of being attentive 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, 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, based mostly 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 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, for those who assume that indigenous individuals advanced this further sense over a number of millennia, you have to clarify its loss by their city descendants.
I feel a very good sense of path is acquired, not inherited. People who stay outdoor, continually 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 watch photo voltaic and planetary actions. As young children, city-dwellers are given no details about instructions, and after we study them in school we accomplish that 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 develop into confused. They attempt to navigate by the solar, however the arbitrary format of streets and the obscured horizon usually defeat them. To desert individuals, an acute sense of path is nothing out of the unusual. Indeed, the lack of the flexibility to search out one’s means is diagnostic of dementia: “He went mad, poorfella,” individuals say, shaking their heads. “He walked anywhere.”
Whitefella considering
I used to attempt to cowl up my poor sense of path simply as some individuals 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 bear in mind the place he had been wanting simply earlier than he requested, and level that means. When we drove alongside one of many seismic traces 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 mates with tales about me getting misplaced. “Ah, poorfella,” they’d say. As 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 youngsters taught navigation?
Desert youngsters be taught the that means of north, south, east and west virtually as quickly as they’ll stroll. They don’t have path defined to them formally, however be taught via the best directions adults give them on daily basis. A toddler in search of 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 communicate of left or proper, black ones communicate of north or south. Ask them, “Which way’s east?” and so they level with out hesitation. They are all the time spot-on. When I used to be deciding on photographs for a e book, 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 path from the best way the {photograph} was oriented.
In Walmajarri, the vocabulary of path 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 present 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 will apply to a highway or river, a shifting individual or flying chicken. Other phrases, utilizing totally 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 path he was, I confirmed Jimmy a compass. I demonstrated how the needle all the time swings to the north. He checked out it laborious for a second, then handed it again. “All right for you,” he stated. “Blackfellas know which way we’re going.”
How to develop a way of path
A very good sense of path is dependent upon acute powers of statement and a very good reminiscence. As individuals stroll within the bush, they continually be aware of what’s round them. If they see a turtujarti tree with gum seeping from its bark or a very good crop of nuts mendacity beneath it, they are going to bear in mind the tree and are available again to it later.
One afternoon, Jimmy and I left the automobile beside a mining highway and went looking 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 in all probability pulled the important thing out with it.
“Well,” stated 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 stated, 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 looking 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 means, however Jimmy would bear in mind the very tree the place I had left the lacking merchandise, and we all the time discovered it there.
Another time, our automobile 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 canines, 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 automobile tracks again alongside the highway, however Jimmy headed throughout nation. On the best way, the canines killed one goanna and Jimmy killed one other. During the evening, we stopped to make a hearth and cooked them for dinner.
It was laborious to depart the fireplace and get going once more. Luckily, there was a full moon, which helped us make our means via the spinifex. We watched it transfer steadily throughout the sky. Our joints gave us ache however the chilly saved us shifting. It was virtually daybreak after 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 evening, however individuals like Jimmy can navigate simply as nicely with out it. Having slept beneath the celebs for many of their lives, they’re as aware of the constellations as one other individual could be together with his bed room ceiling. They know the time of yr, and of evening, that every constellation seems and use them to search out their means throughout their land.
Pat Lowe, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert
In sizzling climate, individuals usually travelled by evening. If they’d an extended approach to go between waterholes, they carried water. They rested in the course of the warmth of the day and travelled within the morning and late afternoon, into the evening. Occasionally, they ran out of water and needed to resort to excessive measures; thirsty as they had 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 and so they might 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, after we checked out maps collectively, did I realise that his understanding of the connection between totally 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 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 had been seismic traces: sandy tracks pushed straight as spears via the desert. We adopted all of them, however none went so far as Japingka. In a single car we might go no additional and had to surrender.
In 1988, a movie crew made a documentary about Jimmy, the main focus 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 vary path a fraction. He research the nation as intensely as a hawk. Again he alerts for the pilot to vary course. Then – “Over there!” In a second we see it: Payarr, the location 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.