Fall by the Side: The natural wonder of Horizontal Falls

03/06/2018 0 Comments read Travel

Horizontal Falls. Photo Credit: © Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Horizontal Falls (Western Australia), 03.06.2018 (The Indian Express): A starlit sky and a lone street lamp are my sole companions as I wait for the Horizontal Falls Seaplane Adventures (HFSA) tour bus outside my hotel in Broome. At 5am, the bus arrives, packed with travellers — some excited, others wary of boarding a small Cessna Amphibian seaplane.

At the airport, young Tonnia meticulously weighs us and our bags, and assigns seats, before fastening herself into the pilot seat. It is a picture-perfect day to fly low over Broome, the Dampier Peninsula, and hundreds of islands of the Buccaneer Archipelago in Australia’s pristine north-western Kimberley region.

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The pearls of Cygnet Bay

20/04/2018 0 Comments read Environment & Development, Indigenous, Travel

Australian South Sea Pearl. Photo Credit: © Neena Bhandari

By Neena Bhandari

Cygnet Bay (Western Australia), 20.04.2018 (liveMint): A four-seater Cessna lands on a pindan (red soil) airstrip near a narrow dirt road that leads to Cygnet Bay. It is tucked in at the tip of the Dampier Peninsula on Australia’s remote north-western Kimberley coast, where the Great Sandy Desert merges effortlessly with white beaches and the azure waters of the Indian Ocean.

It was here, in 1946, that wheat farmer Dean Brown entered the pearling industry, collecting the world’s largest pearl oysters, Pinctada maxima, for their mother-of-pearl shells. A decade later, his sons, Lyndon and then Bruce, joined him. They began experimenting with farming pearls and established the first all-Australian owned and operated cultured pearling company, Cygnet Bay Pearls.

The company is still leading the way in harvesting some of the largest and finest pearls under a third-generation Brown, James, and welcoming visitors to experience the making of the Australian South Sea Pearl.

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Joining the dots

15/10/2016 1 Comment read Indigenous, Travel

By Neena Bhandari

The colours and lines of Aboriginal art in Australia’s outback take the author back to the deserts of her birthplace in Rajasthan.

Uluru (Australia), 15 October 2016 (The Hindu): In the grainy red sand, Anangu Aboriginal artist Sarah Dalby, 42, glides her fingers to draw a collection of symbols to demonstrate how the Aborigines have been passing knowledge about their land, culture and traditions from one generation to the next. It is a warm spring afternoon in Yulara, the resort town in Australia’s Red Centre desert, and I am in the town square for a 90-minute Maruku Arts dot painting workshop.

Dalby draws concentric circles, linking them with lines to depict a journey from one place to another. She then etches crescent-like shapes, representing men and women squatting on the ground, and envelopes them with more symbols that embody desert flora and fauna. Continue reading →