Life in the Land Down Under: The Mango Orchard Month

The first time I heard the curlews, they kept me awake in the nervous, spooked, troubled-sleep sort of way that you have when overnighting in a new place for the first time. They sound almost like a pack of coyotes in the way that their wailing starts out as a solo and crescendos into a cacophony of high-pitched chaos. My wakeful night also found me wondering about the hospitality of the 30+ spiders who’s ceiling home I have recently moved in beneath. Are these the sort of spiders who you can count on to be in their corner every time you look? Or are they the ones who stealthily disappear and leave you contemplating whether you’ve swallowed them in your sleep, if they’ve taken up residence in your sheets or if they’ve simply gone out for a bit and will return to their corner soon. In any case, they take care of most of the mozzies. Also in residence, helping with the mozzy situation is a tail-less gecko who spends most of his time on Aubrey’s wall and on one occasion, decided to launch himself onto my thigh causing a startled outburst and fits of giggles.

One morning, we woke up before sunrise to beat the heat and finish some mulching. Equipped with head lamps and ipods, we begin the meditation of spreading hay below each mango tree. We had placed the bales the previous day, using the “ninja” technique we perfected during our month on the farm. One of us would carefully navigate the hay filled ute through the orchard, swerving around low hanging branches so as not to clothesline the other – who was perched atop the stack of bales, tossing, kicking or hip checking the bales off the moving ute towards the tree trunks. That done, all that was left for the morning was to pop the twine from each bale, peel apart the flakes and squat beneath the branches, fluffing each flake out in overlapping patterns to encircle the trunk and reach out towards the tips of the branches. We get into our rhythm and barely notice the highways of feisty green ants running up and down the trunks. Or maybe they’re just less feisty when the sun’s not up yet. As we work our way down the rows, the sun rises through the leaves of the mango trees, illuminating the tiny, grape-sized mangoes and reminding us to finish up quickly so as to get on the road towards our weekend adventure in Kakadu National Park.

Michael the mango farmer is a tall, lanky, bespectacled man who would rather be strolling through his orchard with Madam, his dog, than doing anything else. He works for a branch of the government that does things like implement water saving strategies throughout public spaces in the city of Darwin. He has lent us his old ute for adventuring around the Northern Territory so when we’re not loading up the bed with hay or fertilizer, we’re coaxing it along the dry, open road. The ute is old. It has wires dangling beneath the steering wheel. The radio sometimes works. Loading it up with camping supplies and several liters of frozen mango puree, we’re ready to hit the road. We point ourselves towards Kakadu and we’re off.

That night, we walk up a rocky hill at Ubirr – a place where ancient aboriginal paintings dance across the rock. We see the rainbow serpent arching in orange and red across the rock wall and learn of its power and significance as a deity in dreamtime stories of creation. The rainbow serpent replenishes water, the all important life source in this cracked, dry country. At the top of the rock, we look out over the floodplains below while the sun slowly sinks, turning everything to gold. I wonder what this scene would have looked like before it was filled with tourists. Back when the rock art was being painted. I imagine children clambering around the rocks, parents calling them over to the fire for dinner. I imagine families preparing meals, chatting and sending laughter echoing across the plateau.

But the sun has now all but disappeared leaving only a liquid line of molten gold on the horizon. We head back to our ute, park it under a branch and hang our mosquito netting, draping it around the ute bed. With my sleeping mat unrolled, I drift off to sleep thinking of how glad I am that I took time to appreciate a sunrise and a sunset in the same day.