Girls Just Want to Have Fun

As Cindy Lauper knows and has been telling us since 1984, girls just want to have fun. It’s not complicated. But as with golf swings, breathing and standing still, humans have made the most simple thing, hard. This is a particular trait of the human being. You don’t hear of a lion wondering if it pounced a bit higher if the girl lions would look at him more favourably. I’m pretty sure lions do not care all that much, as long as they get the kill and the girls know where he likes to eat dinner. The rest of the story is pretty straightforward. No-one even has to clean their teeth! But I’m not writing about lion dating this time around. My point is making time to have ‘fun’ today is harder than ever, especially without the help of Cindi’s dance moves, tutu, strobe lighting and a shock of orange hair. You've gotta admit, for rangas, those red headed lions just own it.

In the 21st century a girl cannot rest on her laurels. She must fight for her right to have time to do nothing. When she is done being the best she can be; having it all; developing her ‘personal brand’ and sharing it simultaneously across multiple social media platforms; drinking 8 glasses of water a day; eating 5 veg and 3 fruit; being ever vigilant for the evils of gluten in all its hidden forms; ingesting enough kale/spirulina/dolphin milk; sweating for 20 minutes a day; looking hot; being cool; managing her dating profile to attract potential future boyfriends who may or may not actually exist; avoiding the shame of being too alpha; ‘leaning-in’ enough to be heard; leaning out enough to reassure her manager her womb is not a corporate liability; doing housework; paying bills; carving out her niche; being feminine; being fashionable; being earth goddess; being an uber-city chicster; searching globally; shopping locally; saving money for her long life expectancy outliving all the men; being aware of all around her; dancing like no one is watching (Bianca, that one is for you – lol!) hurrying up to have the baby/family/husband/mortgage; slowing down to enjoy the moment; being independent; asking for help; catching up on iview; aligning her shakras; perfecting her pout and washing her hair….. then she can have some fun.

Has it ever struck you just how exhausting and unnecessary all the implicit and explicit demands of modern life are? Some of us just read the first few lines of that and book ourselves a ticket to a warm place with interesting stuff a couple of friends and a national park. And so it is, a month after returning from India, I’m headed to Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. Full of aboriginal people, greenery, stubbie shorts, cold beer, crocodiles and other off-the beaten track characters who just wanna have fun. Pack your tutu. It’s gonna be … well, ‘authentically’ something.

For new readers, I wrote a blog about doing yoga in the authentic tradition in India, which turned out to be both more and less ‘authentic’ than I expected. Professionally I work with indigenous people helping them set up and promote tourism businesses in Australia and this is another place expectations arise from tourists about the experience they will have, how authentic it will be, and from indigenous people about how or if they will make money, give tourists what they need, but not always what they want, and what that future might create. 

But surely Kakadu is just like any other tropical jungle with local indigenous people living near a uranium mine site in the sweltering build-up season, right? Walk in the park.

Another Kind of Normal

In a few weeks I'm going off for a walk in the park. Kakadu National Park, specifically. It's a World Heritage Area north of Australia -  a tract of land owned by indigenous people and co-managed with staff at Parks Australia, the federal department of environment based in Canberra.

Kakadu National Park exists as a place in my imagination as much as it does to hundreds of animals, birds and people who live there.  This part of the NT is hard to get to, lots of dirt roads closed at many times of the year. It's a massive area, with to seasonal wet and dry, floodplains, escarpments, waterfalls and scrubby bush. The people there are uranium miners, tradespeople in Hard Yacca uniforms, groovy intellectual anthropologists, people who love tray-top utes and tolerate corrugated roads,  tourists who have time and money, visiting doctors, nurses, lawyers, business consultants and other professionals servicing remote communities and the township of Jabiru, the region's 'capital'. It's the place with the hotel shaped like a crocodile from the air, wonderfully tacky in a truly Australian style.

My best friend works at Parks Australia, head honcho of Cultural Management something or another. She gets to ride in helicopters above Kakadu with her staff, shooting fire bullets into the scrub and starting seasonal burn-offs. She liaises with traditional owners from different groups about land management issues, access, permissions and modern vs old approaches. But honestly, the real reason I want to go is to learn outback 'Strayan, a particular dialect of the north which involves squawking, grunting and slurping with long pauses in between, and meet Tough Nuts, a mature male crocodile who owns his zone.

I have been to the southern parts of Kakadu, working with clients in a community there on tourism, but not into the deep heart of the area. There's a high chance I'll be caught off guard, be seen as an ignorant southerner, get grumpy at mosquitos, be eaten by Tough Nuts, amazed and moved, laugh myself sick, cry like a girl, sweat like a ninja in polyester, meet a hot Park ranger (hey, it's my expectation - which is like a fantasy but has slightly more odds of occurring) who will be gay/married/unavailable/having a midlife crisis/unable to wear colours other than khaki/running away/criminal/alcoholic/ or all of the above.  Well, at least there are options.

A little social-political scene setting for you... the Rio Olympics are now on. Giselle, a fashion model, was Rio's selected icon to represent all it takes to reach the pinnacle of global competitive sport. Huh? If eyebrow plucking was an event I'm sure she'd have a chance.  Local neighbourhoods have been demolished and people displaced and tear-gassed for fighting for their homes replaced by Olympic construction projects, and the world has pretty much OK-ed that and gone back to looking at Giselle's plucking technique. Look, she's absolutely hot, and is a gold medal shoo-in for strutting events, but the lady has weak wrists for plucking. Just saying. Donald Trump is genuinely the Republican candidate for US President and Americans are just sort of realising hey,and have decided to go read some books, judging by the New York Times Top 10 list this week, with titles such as 'White Trash', 'Liars', 'Hillbilly Elegy' and 'Crisis of Character'.  Oh well, better late than never I guess.

If you live in Australia, you'd know we are being overtaken by a minority of paranoid people who don't want to fill in the Census because it's a federal count up of all the illegals, ethnics and Muslims  And don't get it that if you are an illegal refugee your priority is probably not filling in the Census as you don't have wifi, computer or literacy.

There is a social media war against Bill Leak, a cartoonist for The Australian - a conservative Murdoch paper, who depicted Aboriginal dads as drunken deadbeats. His defence -'it's a conversation starter' has deflected the violence of security guards beating up kids in remand centres under the Northern Territory government's care, reinforced racist stereotypes among the Australian's mainstream baby-boomer readership, and tarred the whole mob with the inactions of a few, with the stroke of one artistic brush.

So, it seems like the perfect time to check out and go for a long walk in a National Park and try for another kind of normal.