Vignettes of the World
Perhaps I can take a break from the history, culture and the nature and discuss the food that I had in this part of Australia. Surely, I heard all about the bush tucker and the kangaroo tail, which are considered essential and delicacies in Aboriginal …
Located right next to the Bethanie in Pok Fu Lam, the Old Dairy Farm of Pok Fu Lam is a wonderful lesser-known heritage that tells plenty about the history of Hong Kong’s milk production. Along with the Former Cowsheds, which is now within the administration of …
Due to this part of the Uluru being the women’s section, there is no photo on the safe site for women. The Kitchen Cave could be photographed on the inside and the outside. Please respect the rule.
Up close at the Uluru, you would naturally focus attention on the geological features of the monolith. But don’t miss the amazing flora and fauna that make the rusty desert their home. There are 546 kinds of birds, 4 types of frogs, 12 types of snakes, 7 types of which are the most venomous snakes of the world. Besides, there are foxes and dingoes, etc., although no kangaroos. More than 400 types of plants thrive here as well.
Let’s just say this is a full food chain as far as survival goes. There is a practice for the nomadic life at the Uluru. The Aboriginals venture the area, from Uluru to Kata Tjuta, following water and food. When they did leave a habitat behind, they burned it. By the time the tribe returned, the environment would have regenerated, the plants thriving again to welcome them back.
The final walk at the Uluru tour is a visit to the kitchen cave. As kulpi minymaku in the native language, the kitchen cave is the province of the women, who also camped around this area. When it comes down to food, the division of labor is also clear as between men and women. The men brought over the meat of the games they hunted. Women took the girls along in search of bush tucker in the wild.
For the girls’ training, the mothers imparted upon them the knowledge of the bush tucker and what was safely edible. This is the knowledge that is expected upon the Aboriginal girls and it is passed down as age old wisdom of survival (even now). For there are poisonous fruits in the wild.
Once picking the edible bush tucker, then the women and the girls would be cooking at the kitchen cave, where they pounded the seeds (such as the Mulga Tree seeds) with round stones. The resulting flour was then made into flatbread. The menu would feature the flatbread, meat, fruits (such as the sweet native fig and bush plum) and other bush tuckers. When the men brought over the game of the day, the community gathered to share food. The families took their share of the food home to the older members of the community. Everybody was taken care of.
On the floor of the kitchen cave one can still see the smooth surface that resulted from the stone pounding in making flour. The cave shows honeycombed structures.
Today the community of the Anangu peoples still live here. Men do outdoor work while the women make arts and crafts.
We visited the Cultural Centre as our last stop at Uluru and bid farewell to a day-long adventure shuttling between the manifold secrets amidst the Uluru’s natural and cultural crevices.
The thought of food came to mind at the Kitchen Cave, and our dinner was half-way Aboriginal, as in an open charcoal fire barbecue in a semi wild setting, in a large parking lot facing the monolith afar.
I must say the hospitality exceeded expectations. We literally wined and dined with generous servings of steak.
The sunset viewing was great at the Uluru, although the views were not as dramatic as I’d hoped. It was a long day, and I was satisfied, having seen the Uluru in its many different faces up close. I was ready to head back to Alice Springs for a nice night’s sleep.
Tour with White Emu Run.
Descriptions on site at the Uluru.
We had a fascinating lesson of the Uluru being the beloved nature that bestows life and meaning upon the Anangu peoples. But a basic understanding of the geology of the rock is another way to appreciate the Uluru. The Geology of Uluru Within its embrace …
The tour guide started speaking volumes about this scenery before us. Perhaps due to the prolonged hunger that I endured before lunch, I didn’t quite get the significance of this moment, “what are you speaking about, where are we?” “The Uluru, girl,” my Texan friend …
The Luen Wo Market was once the lifeline for the people of Fanling. As a key marketplace, it served as the venue where the community interacted in their daily affairs. It was once a critical market for trade in produce and livestock in the New Territories, along with the four other major markets of Shek Wu Hui (Sheung Shui), Tai Po Hui and Tai Wo Hui (Tai Po) and Tung Wo Hui (Sha Tau Kok).
Luen Wo, in Chinese meaning “united in harmony,” came to be the name of Fanling’s marketplace. In 1951, a group of rural merchants in Fanling, including Pang Lok Sam Lee Chung Chong and Tang Fan Shan etc., joined hands in creating the Luen Wo Market as an alternative (really, as a rival) to Shek Wu Hui of Sheung Shui (which was, by and large, of the Liu clan). This effort originated from the merchants’ discontent against the unfair practices that plagued the businesses in Shek Wu Hui.
The Luen Wo Land Investment Company Limited raised funds for Luen Wo Market by a shareholding structure. At $10 each share, this fundraising arrangement was ahead of its time. Many New Territories villages considered it an investment and bought these shares. The company raised $250,000 in 1948. The pooling of funds resulted in a well-planned marketplace in Fanling.
Photo: The original headplate for the market is preserved and now featured in the community area.
In those times, what is considered a “hui” (marketplace) is more than a venue where people gather to trade goods. In Fanling, the vision for Luen Wo Hui is a kind of space that combines residential and commercial uses, with utility infrastructures and means of transportation. In essence, it was meant to be the hub of life for a community. In many of such “hui” in the New Territories, there were religious structures and cultural venues.
What is special about Luen Wo Hui is that the most significant religious structure that remains today is the St. Joseph’s Church, built in 1953 with land donated by a businessman. Most of the New Territories “hui” feature temples and ancestral halls in their layout. Moreover, Luen Wo Hui was also the first planned development post WWII in Hong Kong. It was considered a well-thought-out plan. At its heyday, the Luen Wo Market was home to 60 stalls selling all kinds of daily necessities for the dining table.
Photos: The Luen Wo Market exhibits other Hong Kong heritage models
There is a large vacant area in front of the Luen Wo Market, and that used to be the bazaar for the special “hui” meetings that were held on the “1-4-7 schedule.” This schedule was the market dates on the lunar calendar, when farmers and traders gathered in the open area. The Luen Wo Hui market dates were set to be the same as that of Shek Wu Hui, a deliberate measure to compete with the merchants of Sheung Shui. Both the “1-4-7” schedule and the Dawn Market were long in the running, until the 1980s.
My own family has lived through those beginning times of Fanling, when it was a bourgeoning business community. After my grandfather’s rice business was burned down in the Shek Wu Hui Fires of the 1950s, he moved his business to Luen Wo Hui. It was in Luen Wo Hui that his business became a success.
The Luen Wo Market was the work of architect Mok Yeuk Chan. He draws upon the early Modernist style for the Luen Wo Market. There is art deco feature above the main entrance. The brick and concrete structure is one story, in a symmetrical E shape.
It is said that the “clearstory and the courtyard facilitate natural cross ventilation and natural lighting for better hygiene.”
Since the Luen Wo Hui Market and Cooked Food Centre opened in the late 1990s a few streets away, the former Luen Wo Market retired from its historic role in 2002 as the key marketplace for the people of Fanling.
From then on, the market was lying in waste until there were solid plans for revitalization.
Photos: Before Luen Wo Market was revitalized, it was lying in waste. Compare to the photo post revitalization, below.
During revitalization, there was significant effort to touch up its appearance and merchants moved in to run gift shops and restaurants featuring Hong Kong themes on site.
It reopened its doors in a renewed commitment to Fanling as its key heritage site in 2024.
Photo: The original roof of the Luen Wo Market is preserved.
Major community events are still held at the former bazaar now, in line with the memory of the open-air market.
The Luen Wo Market is a Grade 3 Historic Building.
The official website of Luen Wo Market.
The Antiquities Advisory Board, Heritage Impact Assessment in Respect of the Revitalisation of Luen Wo Market.
he Antiquities Advisory Board, Historic Building Appraisal No. 793, Luen Wo Market.
The Antiquities Advisory Board, Historic Building Appraisal No. 758, St Joseph’s Church.
In the preliminaries entry on the Outback, I have given a brief overview on a tour to Uluru. I will say a few more things here. A trip to the Outback comes with many options. Experienced travelers can consider self-guided, self-driven tours that involve camping and hiking in West Mac and East Mac, or otherwise accommodation close …
The Ross River Resort is an oasis of living civilization within the deserted wild that is East Macdonnell. We went there as our rest stop after visiting most of the natural sites of East Macdonnell. I very much looked forward to a wonderful lunch there. The walking had exhausted my breakfast calories. It turned out that we met a man from Coober Pedy there as …
We were in the afternoon and the tour in East Mac was soon to end. On our way back home we stopped by the Corroboree Rock.
The corroboree is a nocturnal dance ritual for the Aboriginals. The Aboriginals gathered with face and body paints to perform what may be “sacred ceremony, a festive celebration or of a warlike character.” (Wikipedia on Corroboree) Mythology and spirituality are central to the corroboree dances.
As a cultural event, the corroboree “‘provided the venue for gossip, trade and cultural interchange’ necessary amongst Aboriginals.” (Wikipedia, Id). This event is viewed to be distinct from the traditional communal events where the elders sit at the forefront as the origin of didactics. Instead, it is described as ‘diffusion of ideas took place most propitiously in quiet moments punctuating the large, dramatic ceremonies, while little knots of men and women were resting under the trees or around campfires at night and the songs were chanted, “the myths retold, the dances rehearsed, the little technological tricks explained.’ (Wikipedia, Id).
The description on site uses the word “church” when speaking of the sacredness of the site. This indicates to the tourists that the Corroboree rock has immense cultural and spiritual significance to the Eastern Arrernte Aboriginals.
The word was named as such by the British settlers that had experience with the Dharug language, as spoken by the Yuin-Kuric group of people. It is an endangered language.
Please do not climb or touch the rock as it is still a sacred site for the Aboriginals. Photographs are welcome there, however.
The Corroboree Rock is an outcrop of dolomite that was formed 800 million years ago, long before a major geological event pushed up the folds of the land to form the Macdonnell Range. The outcrop that we see today is the remnant of an erosion of what was known as the Bitter Springs formation, an ancient rock strata.
At the most fundamental level, the dolomite is composed of the mineral called dolomite, very similar to limestones. Dolomites are formed in the postdepositional alteration of lime mud and limestone by magnesium-rich groundwater.
Considering the fact that this part of the Australian continent used to be the ocean between tectonic plates, it is not hard to understand why there is this significant dolomite outcrop in what is essentially inland Australia now. Dolomite originates in the sedimentary environments that are “warm, shallow, marine environments where calcium carbonate mud accumulates in the form of shell debris, fecal material, coral fragments and carbonate precipitates.” The abundance of magnesium in sea water was what converts a limestone into dolomite here, and the process is called “dolomitization.”
The Corroboree stone has a mottled dark color that is perhaps somewhat atypical in the rusty crimson tones of the Outback. Naturally occurring dolomites adopt the color range of a limestone, meaning that they tend to be in white, gray or white-to-light-brown. The patches of orange color on the Corroboree rock is a result of weathering that occurred 60 million years ago.
It was quite an interesting experience when I walked around and took photographs of the Corroboree Rock. On the lateral plane, I observed it to shape like a blade at the back of a Spinosaurus. When I went around the side, on a longitudinal view, it is like a narrow, erecting spike with a pointed top.
Many kinds of lizards inhabit East Macdonnell. The Perentie is the largest kind of lizard in Australia. It can grow to a maximum of 2 meters in length. It is known by the distinctive patterns of dark-edged yellow spots on its body.
Photo: This is not a Perentie, but certainly a common resident in East Macdonnell as a lizard.
At the Corroboree Rock, the Perentie is featured prominently. The descriptions on site do not explain the Perentie Dreaming at the Corroboree Rock. Although I could not find a Perentie Dreaming specific to the Eastern Arrernte Aboriginals, the Ngintaka songline is a creation story that is held to be representative of Aboriginal culture.
The word Ngintaka is known as the Perentie Man in the Aboriginal songline, called Inma Ngiṉṯaka. The stanzas of the songline render a Dreamtime in musical notes. This story is told to generations of the Anangu Aboriginals in Central Australia, a story of stealth, pursuit, vengeance and creation.
The Ngintaka comes from Western Australia to the center in search for a grindstone. He finds and steals the grindstone of the Anangu Aboriginals, attempting to bring it home. The Anangu Aboriginals start a pursuit. Ngintaka hides the grindstone in his tail. In this process Ngintaka digs up bush onions and creates large boulders. He also makes a few of the waterholes in the Outback and vomits grass seeds and vegetation. Many landforms in the Musgrave and Mann Ranges are attributed to Ngintaka’s creativity while he flees.
Eventually, the Anangu Aboriginals kills Ngintaka. Ngintaka looks back at the country and there he morphs into one of the mountain ranges, Ngarutjaranya, the highest mountain in South Australia. Perhaps the moral lesson to the Aboriginal children is that there is no crime that goes unpunished?
Coincidentally, the Corroboree Rock area is also known to the Eastern Arrernte Aboriginals to yield many of the plants and animals that are their favorites on the bush tucker menu. Maybe Ngintaka himself has had a hand or a foot in this part of Central Australia as well.
This version of the Perentie Dreamtime is now the “standard” version told to Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals. The tribes’ elders encouraged this songline to be front and center at their efforts to promote Aboriginal art and culture at Ananguku Arts in Adelaide, South Australia, established in 2015 or so. The arts exhibition does include the paintings of the Perentie by Aboriginal artists.
Descriptions on site at the Corroboree Rock.
Geology.com on Dolomites.
SBS News, APY elders share sacred songline with the world, February 27, 2014.
Walkatjiara, Wati Ngintaka (Perentie Lizard Man) — Reggie Uluru.
The Wikipedia on Corroboree.
The Wikipedia on the Dharug language.
The Wikipedia on Ngiṉṯaka.
At the Trephina Gorge, I pressed my ear against a Red River Gum Tree and heard the sound of flowing water. What happens inside the hollow tree bark is that the bad wood is eaten up by the termites, then the water begins to fill …