I should be so Injalak-y: Part the Second

Work

I work at Injalak Arts and Craft Centre. It’s named after the hill that sits behind the arts centre. Injalak is pronounced Inyaluk (thanks again, sadistic linguists), which, you will see, makes the title of these rantings hilariously puntastic. Injalak is a community arts organisation that buys paintings on bark and paper, as well as fibre art (otherwise known as baskets) from local artists, and markets and sells it to the wider public. More importantly, it is the only source of cash income in the entire community. Most of the Aboriginal people in Gunbalanya are on CDEP, an indigenous work for the dole programme, which pays $350 per fortnight. Pity the liberals don’t like Aboriginal people; otherwise they could trumpet their hardships along with those crazy single aged pensioners. So for most, Injalak serves to supplement their meagre income.

As workplaces go, it’s absolutely nuts. There are only three of us that work full time. To put it very basically, Murphy is the manager, Rebecca buys all the art and I sell it. This does not begin to explain what all of us do, but every time I’m asked what I do, I draw a blank. I think it’s because I have no way of anticipating what any day will involve. To serve as an example, take my first week.

I arrived at my first full day at work bright and shiny and prepared for everything it could throw at me… except hearing as I walked in the door that one of the artists had died at the age of 37 and that I needed to get every piece of his artwork out of the gallery before anyone saw it and the smoking ceremony began. This might not have been so hard in a normal gallery, where less is more and art is hung sparsely. Injalak hardly fits this description. Unlike most art centres, which attract very few visitors and do most of their business remotely, Gunbalanya sits 40 minutes drive from Kakadu National Park and right in front of one of the most breathtaking rock art sites in the world. As the most accessible place in Arnhem Land, people are dying to get to Gunbalanya to experience Aborginal Cultcha first hand, and tourists visit en masse every day. As a result, the gallery that I look after is absolutely chock full of art. The best work is displayed in a small fine art section attached to the main gallery, but everywhere else shelves groan under stacks of paper, barks hang off every surface, carvings are stacked against every bit of wall not already taken up by bark and the floor is covered with baskets. This is not to mention the prints, spears, spear throwers, didjeridus and books. To his credit and my exasperation, this artist (whose name is still not said) was very diverse and thus produced ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING except baskets. It was a tough task, especially as at this stage I had no eye for the distinctions between artists and thus had to check the accreditation of almost every piece. Picture me manically peering at the back of every piece of paper in a huge pile, throwing baskets over my shoulder the whole time. In the middle of all this, there was suddenly, a didjeridu playing, a whole heap of smoke and everybody was standing completely still. I was able to compose myself and do the same and next thing I knew, someone was going over my whole body with a leafy branch. I then realised he was doing this to everything and everyone in the centre. That is a lot of branching, let me tell you. This was, of course, the point at which the tourists turned up and had to be unceremoniously booted out before they got their zoom lenses smashed over their heads. It was tragic and confusing and for days after I was still finding things that the artist had done and running them out of the gallery as fast as my freakishly elongated legs would take me.

I arrived at my second full day at work quiet and wary and pretty sure that my university education and globe-trotting had left me entirely unprepared for what was waiting for me. All went as normally as I hoped for the first hour or so, I attacked some enormous cobwebs with a broom and got covered in crap, but at least I wasn’t breaking any taboos. I tried to help out in the shop and learn as may stories as I can. I packed up artwork, I organised freight. So far, so good. Then my manager turns round and says “how do you fancy going for a plane ride over Arnhem Land to deliver some stuff to an outstation?” I nodded my head up and down until I thought it might fall off when he hesitated “just to let you know…” What, I thought, I’m going to have to fly the plane myself? It’s a one way trip and I have to hitch home? I have to hunt and kill an emu/buffalo/wild pig and bring it back? “… You won’t get a lunch break.” No worries, Mr Manager.

He informed me that I had to do a shopping run for someone at the outstation, which is called Gumarringbang, so off I go to acquaint myself with the community store. Coming back with my booty, I am greeted by two men in blue uniform who I assume are the police, but turn out to be the pilots. I still haven’t worked out exactly what is going on, but I don’t ask questions at this point and we load the food into the back of a van and speed off to the airport where I am greeted with the tin can I will be hurtling through the air in. No Boeings out here. Thankfully, the flight was smooth and Arnhem Land from the air is breathtaking. Towering escarpments climb backwards across the landscape, never flattening off enough to constitute anything other than outcrops and waterfalls and cliffs and fissures. The floodplains are impossibly green and dotted with cows and brumbies, the rivers are dry, brown ribbons snaking through the trees. We pass an abandoned mine and a number of other outstations, all the while following the path of a cyclone whose devastation is still apparent.

As we come in to land at Gumarringbang I suddenly remember that I am in a tin can and freak out momentarily but the landing is smooth and soon we are being greeted by a man, Jeremiah, a woman, Louise and a huge gaggle of kids who are into the boxes of food before they even touch the ground. Jeremiah quietly tells us that the Outstation Resource Truck didn’t come this week and it occurs to me that these people are very hungry. The improbably large family (I later discover that only two of the children belong to Jeremiah and Louise and the rest have been left there, making the lack of resources more acute) goes off to their house and Rebecca and I visit a man known as Old Timothy with a care package. Old Timothy was, unfortunately, very unwell and unable to leave his bed. Rebecca went into his room to chat to him for a while and I leaned in to hear what he had to say but I couldn’t get close enough so I look around his room and am surprised to see my old fave the Virgin Mary hanging out on the wall with Jesus. Never doubt the penetrative powers of Christianity. Outside Timothy’s, three overweight old white people sit on camping chairs and play cards. The man tells us defensively that he is Timothy’s old friend of 20 years and makes it clear that we are most unwelcome and the women tell us that there is amazing rock art in the surrounding bush and they are the only white people to have seen it. But, alas, it is time to go back to work, and we go back to the plane. The trip home is just as beautiful, but feels less like a treat and more like an unnecessary chore undertaken due to governmental incompetence. Jeremiah paid $600 for that basic grocery run using royalties from an amazing burial coffin entered into the Telstra Art Awards that I’m sure could have been better spent fixing their generator, which had been broken for months, leaving them with no power.
Other days at work have been less exciting and more trying. One that comes to mind is a day spent physically picking up a young lad who had fried his brain with petrol sniffing when he was younger and as a result has episodes of psychosis that mainly involve him throwing himself onto the nearest available patch of ground, be it in the middle of the road, under a sprinkler or onto someone’s painting, and putting him back inside. All that said, my job mainly comprises working in the gallery, selling art, packing it up and sending it where it needs to go, as well as other basic admin duties and sometimes I actually find myself twiddling my thumbs in boredom. On those days I do not stress, because I am sure that something bizarre will no doubt happen tomorrow.

Aside from Murphy and Rebecca, there are always a huge number of people at Injalak. Some artists choose to work on site, some live there and some people help out round the centre. One of these people is Thomas ‘Bundine’ Nabegeyo, a tour de force, without whom the arts centre slowly begins to fall apart as we realised that nothing has been labelled, is where it should be and we have no mail. He is one of the best dancers in the community and speaks little English, so communicates largely with hand gestures worthy of a fiery Italian. When it comes to me, these gestures usually involve him hitting or poking me shouting “hey!” and pointing me in the direction of the place he requires me to be. He also does the best air guitar I have ever seen.

Kathy works in the shop with me. She is a no nonsense lady who is slowly and patiently teaching me Kunwinjku and is indispensable when it comes to dealing with irritating, patronising tourists. Once, a doddering middle aged woman tottered over to her with a very basic, small painting of an egret. She looked at Kathy very intently for a while, leaned in conspiratorially and said “tell me, are these good spirits or bad spirits?” Kathy fixed her with a withering look, cleared her throat and in a tone as patronising as the woman’s said “That is a BIRD.” Kathy is in her forties, but apparently according to my skin name she is my granddaughter. ¿Qué?

It’s a good job I enjoy my work, as I’m there six days a week. If you’re wondering why I’m as pasty as I was the day I left next time you see me – it’s because I spend most of my time inside, doing whatever it is I do all day.