Matt Down Under

Today was one of the funniest days since I came to Numbulwar. Over the last few weeks I’ve seen a lot of things that I had never seen before but today was one of those days when I almost forget that I’m in Australia because things are so different out here in this small Aboriginal town. One always need to be prepared for the unexpected.

It all started like a normal Saturday in the store where I work. Not incredibly busy, just normal business.

Around 11.30am one of our Aboriginal staff members came to me, visibly agitated, and said ‘the store is closed, the store is closed’. I was confused and responded that we can’t close the store yet, as there was still half an hour left until we were meant to close for lunch break.

He then continued ‘no, the shop is cursed, we need to close and leave, quick!’. More staff members came and also told me the shop had been cursed and we had to close. I had no clue what was going on but everyone around me, staff and customers, seemed frightened, some were panicking and everyone was rushing to get out of the shop. Within two minutes I was the only person in the shop, wondering what the hell was going on. My colleague in the office had been on the phone and didn’t even notice the whole scene.

I went outside and tried to get some explanations from people before they all left. Apparently some old lady came into the shop and said she had cursed the shop. Western people like me may react amused to things like that, but for Aborigines, it’s dead serious. I was told the old lady must have had problems with her kid or with her husband at home, so she did the only logical thing: she cursed the General Store in town. I mean, think about it, when you have family issues, why wouldn’t you fix it by cursing the General Store? It’s the only logical thing to do in a situation like that. Sorry for the cynicism but it still cracks me up hours later.

There was nothing I could do — we had to close the shop. We were told it had to be closed until someone ‘smoked’ it to lift the curse. Of course we then tried to contact the local shop council to get some elder out here as quickly as possible to get the shop smoked, but in the end I waited all afternoon and nobody showed up. Time really doesn’t matter much out here.

We’ll see what will happen tomorrow, but if no elder shows up to smoke the shop, we might have to stay closed for days. It may seem ridiculous for city people, but in Aboriginal communities, these cultural matters have higher priority than even law and need to be respected. There are a lot of things that I can’t really comprehend yet, such as the fact that almost all the people here adopted Christian belief, but they still believe in things like curses, so locals here really live a mix of cultures and some believe it is some kind of cherry-picking the best part of each to get around having to work. 

Funny side story: while I was waiting outside the shop after it had been closed, a pilot who lives here showed up and wanted to do his weekend grocery shopping. When I said the shop was cursed his response was ‘what? not again!’. Apparently three months ago someone had already cursed the shop, but back then they had cursed both shops in town, so both were closed. It took them a day or so to realise that by cursing the shops they were no longer able to get food, so they quickly un-cursed them again.

This time it seems they were more clever and only cursed one shop. Just one of the seemingly silly things you need to be prepared for when coming to an Aboriginal community. But at least it doesn’t get boring here.