bush mechanics car- brittany carver

Indigenous Project
The most important part of understanding the indigenous object I have chosen is that it has not so much changed the way in which we deal with cars and mechanics/ technology but it has revolutionised the way in which we thing about logical answers.
It has shown an alternate way of solving problems large and small and at the same time brought a big industry back to the bare basics of what’s needed to survive- raw passion for cars and the knowledge needed to pursue passion when money is not an option.
For the larger part of this project the most impressive aspect is the response it got when broadcast on television. The rather shonkily filmed "docco" got much larger ratings than first expected as people continued to watch something not only outside what they would usually watch but something that was teaching people to think creatively yet logically outside the text book normal as well.
It was a concept many indigenous people of the Warlpiri community (where the 5 men from the series came from) lived by. For them it was the normal way of life and it is very interesting to watch the juxtaposition from the normal money making way (the spare parts industry is goldmine for many manufacturers and car dealerships) to the hands on basics, bringing problems in circumstances we would ourselves deem impossible into possible solutions.
You look back 30 years where indigenous people were the fringe dwellers of many country communities, generally uneducated in a formal sense and yet now we are looking at them parading across our TV screens in all their glory telling their story while our generation stares on to learn from their knowledge. As we stretch our minds to learn how things work at school ect, we are shown through no formal education process just common practical sense, the possibilities of working things out by touch and trial, learning from your surroundings and basic science and mechanical knowledge.
In each episode of the bush mechanics the brothers are presented with a new set of challenges. As we watch this "offbeat" series we follow them as they travel across the rugged areas of central Australia. Each episode would open with an aboriginal elder (Jack Jakamarra) with his recollections of white people and certain ways. This was a way in which it allowed us to look back upon our ways as the alternative not the other way round. As well as Jack (outside of the main 5 men) there was a man called Jupurrla who as they passed along their journey would make his contribution to the series and the problem solutions. Although the community they came from were all "famous" for their knowledge in bush mechanics, Jupurrula himself was a "magic" man who whenever they came into serious trouble he always seemed to just appear and lend a helping hand.
The general gist of the episodes is showing us the necessity of them getting around. When you are in these remote areas of Australia and money and availability of parts are scarce you make the best of what you have. The way they want to live their life needs to involve transport. So from their surroundings, growing up around bush mechanics they acquire their love for cars but it is more the travelling in cars that become the passion soon after they can drive. You see them encounter such things as wanting to play their band’s first gig in a place half a days drive away, picking up half their soccer team that was forgotten by the bus showing us that necessities still need to be met to live a reasonable normal life but accessing that necessity can always be approached in a vastly different way.
I suppose the thing about this documentary and its cars is that it has a way of making each one of us take a look at ourselves and the way we live our life. Maybe we can solve our own problems that we happen to encounter. For us it has become as simple as taking out another credit card, but for some without the option need to look else where, to use our intelligence not the indulgence of just buying new materials and relying on someone else’s skills.
The car is not particularly easy on the eyes but it is the stories it tells that sets it apart from the rest. It has none of the flashy things people generally admire in the car but it has the necessities, the parts of the car that make it the car for the purposes of TRANSPORT the most basic function. This car that created so many possibilities for them is painted with a symbolic message. In this country that is so stricken by drought it was impossible for them to do an episode without dealing with this issue. In true bush mechanics style the men are summoned by Jungala to head off to Broome for the rainmaking pearl shells. Before the community had become so reliant on its cars the elders would have traded bush tobacco for the pearls but as we watch the shift in importance of life’s movements we now see him trade cars for the pearls instead. It was for this journey they decided to paint there car with the symbol for rainmaking, which is the symbol shown on the bonnet of the car that I have chosen.
The episodes were a combination of a multitude of things from mystic adventure though to the reality of the real world through their unique indigenous humour it paves the way in showing us both the contemporary as well as the traditional aboriginal culture. Their ability to use the land to solve their problems was amazing and there is a very strong message of recycling materials against a "white man’s" world full of great wastage.
Some of the things within this car that have been integrated with their mechanics are an emergency clutch plate made from an old boomerang, a new brake pad hand carved from mulga-wood with a tomahawk, mismatched old rusty parts found from old car wrecks along dusty old walking tracks even including windscreen wiper blades made from strips of old blanket wound tightly together.
The most interesting aspects of this series is that it’s major purpose was to give snippets into other extremely different Australian ways of lives and also vastly different approaches to "familiar" technology. They offer us (the normal working class white man) a view into something that is directly familiar as the symbol of this country, the society that we mostly circulate with in are largely oblivious to. "They suggest that technologies do not carry within themselves one fixed meaning and direct us to consider new ways to imagine the country as "one Australia"" (1)
The important part of this object lies not so much in the object itself. Like many objects the importance lies in the story it tells. The symbol for what it has come to stand for. It revolutionised our thoughts from the wrong way and right way, to the way that works. Maybe intelligence is more than university degrees and letters after your name.
Brittany Carver

(1) www.frif.com/new2002