After checking out of the hotel, the first order of business
was to get the tyre fixed. We dropped it off at 8.30 only to be told it would
only be ready at lunch time. That meant we had a whole morning to kill before
we could find a place to camp for the night. We went back into town to get our
transit permit extended, for some reason they only gave us until the 3rd.
That done we went back down to the Aboriginal area near the yacht club as we
were told there was a really good café at the nursery. We had a really great
cup of coffee and they recommended we go to an arts and craft centre in a
nearby settlement called Yirrkala.
We expected to find an arts and craft centre – to our
amazement we found a fantastic art gallery with the most incredible art pieces.
All the art was done in the traditional way, with human hair brushes, ochre
ground from rocks painted on bark. There were also fantastic totem pole –
massive hollowed out trees painted in the traditional way.
One of the curators came over to chat to us, we mentioned we
might be interested in a piece by a young upcoming artist. He took us to the
workshop and introduced to an artist who had just won the Northern Territory
art awards – apparently the highest honour in Australia. His work had been bought
by the National Art Gallery and a lot of big companies were contacting them to
commission work by him. He then took us and showed us some of his work, there
were 2 pieces we particulaerly liked – one small, one large. Eventually we
settled on the smaller one – we were more comfortable with the price and felt
the larger one would be too overwhelming in our house.
Very pleased with ourselves we picked up our tyre and drove
to Turtle beach to camp for the night. We had been underwhelmed by the other
beaches, but this was fantastic. It was a small bay and the camping area was
nestled in and under some trees. Nhulunbuy had started to redeem itself. After
setting up we spent the rest of the day, just lazing around, reading and going
for walks on the beach. Very relaxing.
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