A Pot of Gold by Dion Teasdale

It is late November in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands and the weather has gone a little rama-rama (crazy).

Over the past week temperatures have plummeted, violent thunderstorms have brought soaking rains, angry forks of lightening crackle across the night skies and rogue winds rattle tin rooves throughout the district.

On the news last night they said Uluru had its coldest November day on record. Here in Warakurna, nearly 300kms west of Uluru, local creeks are full, roads have turned to mush, are cut off in all directions, and the mail plane can’t land because the airstrip is awash.

In the art centre, the ladies are making jokes about snow. Is Warakurna headed for a white Christmas?

Usually, I’m told, it’s stinking hot out here, at this time of year. I’ve heard stories of thongs melting on people’s feet as they walk the community’s bitumen roads. A woman at the store told me it’s common for temperatures to reach 50 degrees leading in to December.

But not this year. I’m wearing two pairs of socks, eating homemade soup, and most of the town’s dogs are trying to get into the art centre so they can snuggle up next to their artistic owners who are huddled over canvas and paint pots, nursing mugs of hot tea.

Yesterday, to make room for more artists, I had to entice the dogs out of the art centre with a tin of fruit cake. We kept the front door closed, but one of the mutts used his teeth to chew his way back inside. He was prepared to do just about anything to get out of wind and rain.

It all began last Friday.

Early on in the day the sun was out, there was no wind, and the stage was set for a scorcher.

The art centre team took a trip to Wanarn, where Warakurna Artists’ runs a weekly outreach painting project. Less than 100km drive west of Warakurna, Wanarn is home to some of the region’s most senior and celebrated artists, who reside at the community’s aged care facility.

I helped the art centre’s manager, Edwina Circuitt, and artists Eunice Porter, Judith Chambers and Dorcus Bennett load the troupie with boxes of paint, brushes and primed canvas, and after a stop at the Roadhouse to get egg sandwiches and water for the trip, we headed off.

By the time we got to Wanarn, around lunchtime, the temperature was well over 30 degrees, the humidity was stifling, and the artists were waiting under shaded verandahs, eager to paint. Ben Holland and Neville McArthur were calling out for canvas and paint before any of us could get out of the troupie. The ladies – among them famous painters such as Carol Golding, Myra Cook and Tjapartji Bates, were excited too.

The afternoon of painting was energetic, the artists focused, the resulting works vibrant, colourful and rich. Ben Holland mapped his mother’s country in primary colours. Tjapartji Bates painted a triptych using pinks, red and a splash of aqua. Neville McArthur’s dog snapped at the heels of one of the nursing staff, trod in a pot of black paint and left paw prints up and down the footpath.

Somewhere between Warakurna (which is on Central Standard Time) and Wanarn, there is a time zone shift – Wanarn is in-synch with Perth, so we go backwards in time an hour and a half. The afternoon was long; the temperature notched up a few more degrees. I wasn’t drinking enough water, ended up with a headache.

Afternoon tea was served (peaches and custard for the artists) and as 4 o’clock rolled around it was time for us to pack up, load the troupie with finished works, and time for the artists to get some rest.

Ron, one of the aged care staff, gave us fresh spinach, beetroot, rocket, kale and parsley from his impressive vegie garden (in which he’s growing boab trees from seeds) and we popped into the new Wanarn store, the newest supermarket in the Ngaanyatjarra Lands.

On the drive back to Warakurna, as we time-jumped from 5 o’clock to 6.30pm, one of the tyres on the troupie blew out. It was while we were mounting the vehicle on a pallet jack, getting hot and bothered in the early evening, that we began to notice the barometric changes around us.

The sun had disappeared. Dark, menacing clouds were rolling toward us. There were intense rumblings overhead, a curtain of solid rain moving across the horizon. There was the buzz of electricity in the air.

Back on the road, we see Warakurna in the distance, the Rawlinson Ranges lit up in a shaft of dramatic late afternoon sunshine. And then bolts of lightning crack like whips across the sky, from left to right, and up and down.

In the troupie we all screamed and squealed, in part delighted - like children watching fireworks, and in part we were terrified.

And then all of a sudden a rainbow, in thick bands of brilliant colours like the brush strokes on the paintings in the back of the troupie, appeared in an arch, reaching high into the heavens.

‘Warnampi’, Mrs Porter said, seeing the rainbow as a mythical water snake stretching across the Lands.

We rolled into Warakurna to find the end of the rainbow touching down just metres from the art centre. I remember thinking, ‘Yep, this place is a pot of gold’.

To read more of Dion's stories go to ABC Open - http://open.abc.net.au/posts/tags/Dion%20Teasdale