In the early 2000s i found a didgeridoo in a second hand shop. I had always been fascinated by that instrument and the aboriginal people in general. I liked the idea of recycled breathing, don't know why, just felt attracted to it. I did some research and found a small book that showed how it worked so I got busy blowing my new didgi. It wasn’t too long before I had some success and it felt so relaxing, the vibration and the concentration on breath.

I was talking to my mate who lived over in WA and he had bought some carved emu eggs from this aboriginal guy who also made didgeridoos. He spoke to him and the aboriginal guy, Mick, offered to make one for me. That was pretty exciting for me as I had no idea if the didgi I had was actually any good, even though I could make sounds that sounded like a didgi to me.

I asked if maybe Mick could take me with him to cut one, I had some air points from a previous trip and it would be cool to go hang out with my mate Dean anyway.   Mick agreed to take me out but he was sometimes transient so it took a few months to hook it up, book tickets and know Mick was going to be around. Finally the trip was on, I packed my bags. At that time I had been a little ill so I was taking hempseed oil, Dolomite, and anti inflammatories. I had limited room in the pack so I put enough dolomite ( a white powder )and anti inflammatories to last the trip in little bags and put them in with the hempseed oil which had a big dope leaf on the front into a bag because I thought I would have to declare it all at WA customs. I also packed a hunting knife because I thought was going into the bush at some point.

  Jumped on the plane and off I went, its fair to say I’ve done a few random things over the years but this really didn’t seem that odd at the time.

I filled out my form on the plane and said I had food, drugs and weapons so I was directed to the red line. I dropped the bag on the counter and as the lady started pulling the stuff out, the little bag of white powder, little bag of pills and a bottle with a dope leaf on it I realised it may not look so good.

  I told her what they were all for and she took them away for testing while I spoke to a young aboriginal woman.   What are you here for she asked, oh Im heading out with this guy to cut didgeridoos I said, she had a bewildered look on her face but after a few minutes I think she was starting to believe me and to my relief the other lady brought my pills, oil and powder back with the all clear, she suggested I should leave them in their packets next time.

As I was about to leave, my bad was x-rayed and the bloke doing that called out, mate you've got a knife in your pack, yep I said, Im going into the bush and over home we always take a knife into the bush. At that point they were chuckling and he suggested I don't take it out of the pack until I got to the bush.

  Dean picked me up and as we drove to his place he told me we were heading inland to Kalgoorlie for the didgi trip. I had no idea where that was, how far or remote. I thought it was a few kms out of the city. The next day we hooked a trailer on the 4x4, picked Mick up and started the 600 kms drive to Kalgoorlie. I started to yak to Mick and asked him if there would be many poisonous critters out where we were going, I had had no contact with anything venomous in my life at that point. Mick said yeah man but a couple of years back me uncle pulled a snake out of my head so they can’t touch me and you’re with me so we’re sweet.

Dean was driving and he look across at me with a smile on his face and at that point I had no tools in the toolbox to even begin to understand where Mick was coming from but when I looked back at him I could see he was just stating a fact.

It was early morning, just getting light and at times we were driving into the sunrise, the site was stunning, this huge sunrise over this barren landscape. Almost hypnotic.

At times we drove alongside a huge pipeline that supplied water to places like Kalgoorlie. Even the  thought of piping water so far was foreign enough let alone snakes in your head.

Six hours later and we pulled into Kalgoorlie and Mick had to visit the council to get tags and fill out forms because he was cutting didgeridoos.

Mick got his tags and we drove him around to his mate Shanes house. It was then that we found out Shane was on the trip too so Mick jumped in with his mate Shane, in his very rusty Toyota and we followed them to the bottle store. I had offered to pay for everything and Dean had lots of food so I bought the beers, dozens of cans that Mick and Shane put in a big chilly bin and we followed them out of town, eventually off the sealed roads and into the bush.

We found a little cut away area that looked like a good place to make a camp.   Mick and Shane pulled a couple of mattresses out their rusty old Toyota, dropped them on the sand, got the esky out and had a few beers while the watched Dean and I put the tent up, a sink, bbq, and set a camp up.

I kind of felt like I wanted to just do what they were doing but Dean had gone to a lot of trouble packing the trailer and he knew about camping out there.

We stayed out there for three days, huge starry skies, searing hot days, sitting around the fire. lots of laughing and a fair amount of drinking.

Mick and Shane were a little weary of us as we were of them. There was a pretty obvious massive cultural divide but we got to know each other a bit and I think eventually they realised I was here for legitimate even if they seemed a little weird reasons. The first night I had a couple of wines with Dean, I hadn’t drunk for over 15 years so I got pretty wasted pretty quickly and went to bed, after all it had been a big day.

Apparently there had been some kind of ruckus in the night and Mick and Shane had run off throwing sticks and yelling in the dark at someone or something. I was out to lunch so didn’t hear a thing but when I woke in I noticed my hunting knife, which I left on the sink was lying by my pillow.

Dean filled me in on the details but really wasn’t sure what happened either as it was pitch black away from the fire. The next day Mick and Shane wanted to move camp but it was a major mission for Dean and I and Dean was keen to stay put which we did. We wandered about that day cutting the odd branch off, hollow from being eaten out by termites and took them back to camp. Mick and Shane opened beers as soon as they were up and took beers with them on the walks but never seemed very affected during the day.   I knew enough about didgis at that point to know these sticks were not going to be much good but it was a cool experience and Mick and Shane were telling some cool stories so I thought what the hell, its cool being here.

I told Dean I didn’t think the didgis we had collected were much good.

At one point on the second day Dean was keen to go for drive and see if we could find some Didgis ourselves. Mick and Shane were not keen on us leaving and were adamant if we did that we didn’t go onto the left side of the road, it seemed pretty weird at the time. We drove a few kms up the track and we could see what looked like some good trees on the left but there was no way I was going over there, the boys said don't go there and I was starting to realise Dean and I were way out of our depth. Me more so than Dean but I could see Mick and Shane were really fluent in the bush. We wandered over to the right for a bit just walking around until we realised we didn’t know which way the car was and that was a pretty revealing moment. Luckily I remembered the sun was in my eyes as we left the 4 x 4 so we walked away from the sun and found the track and could see the 4 x 4 up the track a bit. We drove back and never left the boys side again.

When we got back Shane had lit a fire beside this little tree, he would reach over and snap a branch off now and again and throw it on the fire. It was February, sweltering hot and it seemed pretty weird to be sitting by a fire and the bush was tinder dry. I was a little concerned about the fire risk, especially as he had been drinking through the morning. He was peeling the bark of these branches that were about 50mm round and 600mm long

I watched him for bit, swatting the flies away. The bloody flies were relentless, as soon as I cleared them they were back on me. What are you making I asked Shane. Waddies he replied. What’s a waddie I asked. It’s for whacking someone he said. I though shit there’s only us four here, who’s getting whacked but he seemed the most passive guy, another mystery I thought.

He watched me swatting and said fucking flies eh, I said shit yeah and he showed me how to wipe them off slowly without using so much energy then said come over here. I moved a little closer staying out of the stream of smoke coming off his fire and Shane said na over here in the smoke, I moved over into the stream of smoke and he said no flies eh, its that tree, sit down. Just moments before I was thinking shit this is loose, tinder dry, fire burning, alcohol and at the same time Shane was most likely thinking I lit the fire an the silly buggers not using it. That night we drinking into the night but I only had one glass and went to water but there was point where Mick and I were taking a leak, standing side by side and his pee was spraying all over the show. He laughed and told me he had his dick cut in some kind of ceremony which made him a man and at that point Shane pipped up and said, yeah he’s a man and Im still a boy and they both chuckled.

I was getting to the point where nothing was surprising me, my reality was being constantly challenged, from the heat, the sounds, the difference in the bush but mostly from the growing realisation of the huge cultural divide. Four Humans with so much in common but so different. Day three came and we had run out of beer, Mick and Shane were ready to go, we cooked breakfast as the sun came up and the birds were waking. I could hear this bird and said to Mick, what’s going on there. He said, oh he’s going on about what he’s having for breakfast, ok I said and then we heard some squawking and Mick said yeah and the big mouth just lost his breakfast, his eyes were big and bright like his smile. We both laughed. It felt like I was making a friend. After breakfast we packed up, they watched us for an hour or so cause it only took them a few minutes throw their mattresses and empty esky in the Toyota. Before we left I gave Mick my brand new Swazi jacket and Shane my knife with a cool carved leather pouch my mates Dad had made for me. I thanked them both for giving up their time and taking us into their world for a few days. We followed them out, dust flying.

Down the road but still way out in the middle of nowhere we got to a cross road and the Toyota in front veered right, we followed them and soon came onto a small settlement. It was almost a gated community with pretty rough houses and lots of aboriginal people sitting around. There were many eyes on the white guys in the flash 4 x 4 with all the gear in the trailer, it would be fair to say that Dean and I felt pretty nervous.   Mick spoke to a couple of blokes and pretty soon we were following them through this little settlement and into an area full of rusty old cars and junk everywhere. Mick and Shane got out of the Toyota and pointed to some trees. I knew as soon as I looked up that there were some good branches for didgis here.

We cut a few and they were really hollowed out. One branch was so long we cut two didgis out of the one branch. Mick was smiling away, he knew that I knew these were good. Pretty soon we were on the road back to Kalgoorlie to drop Shane off. We stopped at an outback garage/dairy/takeaway for a shower, it had been three days with no washing. There were two showers and Dean and Mick went first. I was standing near the door and an aboriginal bloke wandered up with a stream of kids behind him. He looked at me and said, you been out the bush with Dina {Mick} he asked, I said yeah, he look after ya he replied. Yeah it was pretty awesome I replied. That’s good he said and wandered into the store followed by his stream of kids.

I thought, shit they all knew we were out there and remembered at one point while we were camping Mick and Shane were talking about one of their mob who had been beaten by some other mob. At that time I had wondered how they knew, there was no cell coverage but it was yet another mystery.

All clean and freshened up we dropped Shane and his Toyota off but he said wait here and went into the house and bought out a didgi that had been in his family and gifted it to me. I was over whelmed, grateful and kind of sad at once. We said our goodbyes and the three of us headed back to Perth.

Mick came around the next day and painted and burnt designs on the didgis. He kept some and I took the two off one branch home. He had decorated them with stories just for me, the big one for me and the smaller one for my son Jacko. Mick had brought a large folder with him and he passed it me and said read this. I opened it and it was maybe a government document full of stuff about him, the trouble he’d been it, the drugs he’d been proscribed and lots of personal information about him. Shit man, I cant read this, its your personal shit. Mick looked right at me and said i want you to know me. It was pretty awkward. I skipped through it while he painted and burned the didgis. His story was similar to so many you hear about, but this time I was looking at the man, the man who opened his world up to a total stranger.

One of last things I remember him saying was he was concerned I would take some bad spirits home. I didn’t know how to respond to that either but appreciated the concern. A few days later I was on the plane heading home and I was sitting next to a guy who was a mining surveyor on his way home for days off. I told him about my trip and he said, you realise no one does that. So may things happened out there that I haven’t mentioned here because I’m not a writer and really its a small book. Maybe one day I will attempt to write it all down. I’ve never seen Mick or Shane since but it was an epic experience and I can’t over state how greatful am for being given that experience and thanks to Dean who made it happen.