A Blog All About Bolo

Hello, you may be wondering who is Bolo? Bolo is a Bardi Jaawi local. Yesterday we went on this tour and the tour guides name was Bolo he taught us lots of things. Let’s start

So first we had to drive to were the track starts and Bolo lost the keys to the truck as you do. So we had to ride in the back of the ute which was bumpy but we made it.

So after the bumpy ride we went into this place called the stock yard were in the 1800s somebody thought that it was a good idea to raise cattle in a paddock that at high tide nearly all of if floods and has no grass?

So on the other side of the stockyard there was a mangrove were we caught crabs. What Bolo did was he flipped the crabs out in the open and I speared them. We caught 2 crabs. One I speared and the other we we kept alive and practiced picking it up. They are quite funny because what you need to do is press the back down and pick up the back 2 legs. When you try to push their back down they bend over to nip your fingers. It’s so funny😆.

Next we learnt how to find fresh water by finding algae. How? Because algae only grows in fresh water.

After that we learnt how to use wood for pretty much anything shelters, cooking, medicine, sandpaper, shields and spears. We learnt about helicopter trees. If you cut of a bit of bark and boil it till the water turns a grey colour then dab wounds with it and in a couple days, its all better. He also told us how to make axes out of stones. Here all the 5 uses of paper bark trees.

1. Cooking fish

2.water💧

3. If you crunch up the leaves it makes a lemony smell🍋

4. shelter roofs

5. Mosie repellent

They had different shelters for different times of the year.

We moved on to another mangrove were we looked for these shells called bomber shells. They have 2 versions one is like a crab and the other was like a snail. So we collected them up and moved on to the beach were we found a pandanas fruit that had fallen. Bolo gave us all got a piece of fruit.

After that we had to do some rock scrambling to get to the other side of the beach. That was pretty tricky so after 20 minutes of rock scrambling we took a little stroll on the beach back to Bolos outdoor kitchen.

Waiting for us was freshly made damper which we also had with fish, crabs and bomb shells. Bolo served it on wattle leaves and it was delicious. The damper got demolished.

I learnt so many lessons on this tour. The best one?

I asked if I could keep a certain stone. He taught us that you can’t take stones because they have stories of the country surrounding. He said i can take shells because they get washed away and can’t contain those important stories. We all had a great time and we learnt a important lesson if you look after the country, country will look after you.