Ready to hit the road - March 17

Blog by Aya Serikova '18 and Ryan Lee '21

Today our day consisted of a mine tour, KJ Aboriginal Center visit, a supermarket van, and a local festival. This morning after breakfast, we have loaded up on the bus and headed out to the Newman visiting center. We received safety glasses, along with mining jackets and vests, and transferred to a tour bus, meeting our guides. The air conditioner on the bus made it less sufferable to wear long sleeved shirts, long trousers, and closed toed shoes, as our tour began. We were shown various locations on the mining perimeter and eventually stopped at a cliff, overlooking the iron ore mine. One of the first sights we saw as we exited the bus, was a giant excavator bucket that took everybody by awe. We immediately piled into it for a group photo and surprisingly fit with a lot of room to spare. Looking out from the cliff, we saw two locations that mined two different sorts of iron, yellow and blue. We learned that the two types need to be combined, in the grinder, in order to make perfect iron ore, either lumped or fined.

From the mine, we drove down to the KJ Aboriginal Center to talk with some indigenous people about their culture. We reviewed traditions of the Martu people that we learned about in days previously, but we also learned about different indigenous languages. We were told that there are 400+ aboriginal languages and there are 7 Martu languages. We were shown different communities and discussed the differences and similarities between each. At the end of the lecture, we were shown indigenous weapons and the different uses of them.

Later today we visited the art gallery again for the local festival. The festival was for different international communities of Western Australia and our group was personally invited to attend. The word around town spread quickly that there is a group of Hawaiian students in Newman, singing chants in Hawaiian. At the festival, we were in charge of the kids’ section, such as games, temporary tattoos, and face painting. I, Ryan, helped out with a piñata; we held the rope while kids were swinging wildly, trying to get the sweets inside. While Ryan entertained kids with some candy, I, Aya, was part of the face painting crew with Sammy and Bobby. I had three kids come up to me and while Sammy next to me was creating masterpieces, I tried my best with one tiger face and two lion faces. At the festival, our group got to sing Hole Waimea to represent Hawaii.

Overall the rose of the day for Ryan was the local festival, specifically playing with little kids. For Aya it was learning about the different weapons and tools and their uses even in today’s culture. The thorn today for both of us was the heat of the day. The bud for tomorrow is experiencing a new place and hittin’ the road.