Hands on Holidays in Australia
Dot Painting Workshop with Anangu People at Uluru Australia
A Guest Post by Elena
In March this year, I have been travelling through the centre of Australia and found a very particular and exciting thing to do for (young) travellers. Kangaroo watching? I have done that. Visited Sydney Opera House? I have been there.
So what’s new under the Australian sun? Become creative while on holiday in Australia! Here’s what I found.
Together with our small tour group of Uluru Experience, we spent one day at the Anangu Cultural Centre near Uluru, the sacred mountain of the local Aboriginal people. Right there, we could join a so-called dot painting workshop with one of the local Aboriginal guides. It was a fantastic hands-on holiday experience not to be missed! Those kind of creative cultural experiences is something every traveller to Australia should do.
In the beginning, a local guide at the Cultural Centre explained to us fundamental cultural beliefs and the way these were expressed in the traditional paintings and artworks of the Aboriginal People. Then we went straight to experiencing a first few dots, a couple of lines ourselves. Soon, we were all busy “painting waterholes, travelling lines“, interpretations of our own “Dreamtime stories“.
It was simply great. All the while, our guide assisted us during the interpretation of traditional Aboriginal culture in our paintings. By applying some of this ancient knowledge on canvas, I got to create a very special souvenir for myself.
While thousands of visitors come to marvel at Uluru each year, only a few of them unleash their creativity through such interesting hands-on holidays. The price for such workshops shouldn’t be a barrier, either: We paid roughly 45€ for the experience plus materials, interpretation and our very own dot painting souvenir.
It was terrific to achieve this cultural connection and see eye to eye with Aboriginal People and their Culture.
Don’t miss it!
About this Guest Post Author: Elena took off on around the world trip at the beginning of 2011 after completing her tourism studies in Austria, full of appetite for the cultures of this world and what lies beyond the “typical tourist experience”. Her particular interest is in creative tourism such as the dot painting workshop she experienced. Her blog about the creative cultural experiences can be found at Creative Elena
