Florian and Anna
When I give a hand to Terry to feed the roos, he always introduce me saying that I’m from France. Or from Canada. We don’t really know. He then adds that I’m here to help for a little while. Quite often, people come to me after the feeding, and ask me a few questions. Asking me if I like my experience, how I end up working in a kangaroos orphanage, or if I like leaving with roos. Mots of the time (would say 9 out of 10), people who comes to me are from France. I usually complete the information, as Terry usually speaks quite fast, and might be sometime hard to understand. In a place like Coober Pedy, there’s not so much opportunities to meet people. Which is just perfect, as it is what I was looking for. But at the same time… well, talking with new people, from time to time, is nice too! Usually, we have a 5 minutes chat, and it’s enough.
I didn’t have a beer for quite a while. I mean a beer in a bar. Going to a bar when you’re alone is always strange… but today, I had quite a nice chat with Anna and Florian, and I decide to offer them to discover “Coober Pedy ‘ Night Life”. When I ask Terry if he can suggest us a bar, the question seems to surprise him. As he told us, on a sunday evening, we might find only one or two place open. Until 9PM. We decided to go to the Opal Inn, where we celebrate until it closed. At 10PM! Long time since I closed a bar!
Anna is in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa. Here for a few months already. Florian, his brother, is visiting her for a few weeks. They have a van, and they are on a rod trip to Darwin. After sharing or schedule, we discovered that we might bump into each other later in Alice Springs. Or somewhere else… it was a quite evening, with a few interesting chat. Including the “aboriginal subject”. I still want to take my time about that. After living in Quebec for 10 years, I heard hips of thing about the “amerindian subject”. In a lot of different way. It didn’t take me a long time before I understand that it was a very sensitive subject, as people usually have quite extreme opinion on the question. It didn’t take me much more time to understand that it was exactly the same here, in Australia. Same interactions, same tensions… Here too, opinions are often quite extreme, on a subject that it’s wiser to avoid. Anna and Florian, just like me, seem to be really interest by the culture and the tradition…
Just before leaving the bar, Robert came to talk with us. In an approximate english, with an approximate pronunciation. We tried to exchange with him, as much as possible, without really understanding each other. Then Kinki join. Kinki is her aboriginal name. I tried to explain her that I really like the way it sounds, but she didn’t understand.
When we leave the bar, we ended up talking with a group of aboriginal. It was quite hard but, like in Alice Springs with Gabrielle, behind the unsure word, I was seeing amazing smiles. I still ended up feeling a little bit not really comfy. In a middle of 10 people, all quite drunk; even if they were all really friendly, I never like being with to much drunk people. We never know how they could react… any way, it confirmed me that I’m really interested to learn more, to understand more. If amerindian used to leave me coldly indifferent, I’m discovering that aboriginal intrigues me. In a way I don’t really fully understand. There’s a few aboriginal community and cultural center on Helpx. I think it could be a nice opportunity. We’ll see!
I share a few more words with Anna et Florian, and contact details to. Just in case!