I grew up walking around this country with my family. My brother and I (Ian Rictor) have had to climb deep down inside Waalnya to dig for water. It’s a...
I grew up walking around this country with my family. My brother and I (Ian Rictor) have had to climb deep down inside Waalnya to dig for water. It’s a really deep rockhole cut out of the red rocky country. There is a wanampi (serpent guardian) who lives inside. When I was down at the bottom I looked up through a vast red chamber to a window of bright sky. It really is a long way down. Sometime after big rains the rock hole fills up and you don’t need to climb in to get the water as it raises to the surface.
My brother Ian went to visit this place in the helicopter and a camel had fallen into the rock hole.
Noli and Ian Rictor were amongst possibly the last nomadic group to walk into the modern world, when they came in with their immediate family in 1986. Noli knew the country well, living off the land in a traditional way for about twenty years.