SNEZ Winter Tour News - Big puddles and dirty roads

On our way to Arnhem Land, Numbulwar NT

 Well we're on the last leg of our tour and for the first time in the last 5 years of touring in winter, I feel ready to come home.  We're in a small remote indigenous community called Numbulwar, in Arnhem Land. The next two weeks we'll be teaching storytelling/songwriting, performance and then recording the young people's songs and getting ready for a concert performed by all the young people.....yikes!. We met Selena, a teacher at Numbulwar School, in Cambodia, of all places in the world. She was taking two of her students from Numbulwar School on a cultural excursion through Cambodia and they dropped into Green Gecko, where we were teaching. It's there, that Selena mentioned 'We love people coming to our community to teach, but it's so out of the way, nobody wants to come'....well, that's when I latched on to the poor woman, got all her contact details with the view of coming to the Numbulwar community on our next tour.....and so here we are. CHECK OUT THE VIDEO

Stew, at Katherine Springs

 We checked with Selena about the road conditions about 5 times and she assured us we'd get here in one piece. It was about 800 km from Katherine, and most of it dirt road, 4WD is recommended. We knew there were two river crossings, but what we didn't expect all the other little hiccups along the way - big puddles across the dirt roads which made it difficult to cross, rocks flying everywhere, the van being shook to a point where the front lights were coming off....anyway after 2 days of driving, we made it to Numbulwar alive.

It's a small community with 2 small grocery stores, a police station, school, church and a few other small community type sheds set by a beautiful beach. Unfortunately we've gotten so many mixed messages about whether we are able to swim or not, but the concensus is NO!!  BEWARE of CROCODILES!

Stews brothers family

We've spent our time here getting to know the kids, the community, going for walks along the sandy bushland and beach with the other staff at the school and feeding two street dogs Nina and Dingo. You would think in a small indigenous community with two small shops, there wouldn't be a chance of getting m&m's, but you would be wrong!!!!

Our next video will include some footage of the school, the kids and the community.

smell ya later
snez & stew