Plains Folk: Hockey and Swimming Holes

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

He’s never been on skates, but he’s signed up for termite hockey--which, I should explain for the benefit of readers on the southern plains, is organized (?) hockey for three-year-olds. The situation of my grandson has started me wondering about a country that starts its kids in hockey and Sunday school the same year. It has to be confusing. I mean, the boy understands that Jesus saves, but he’s beginning to wonder just how many saves Jesus had.

In a few days the slough will freeze tight, and we’ll be out there on nature’s rink, willow-sheltered from the wind, learning the finer points of the game, like staying upright, starting out with the help of a kitchen chair. This will be fun. Still, poised on the precipice of another northern plains winter, I’m thinking about a swimming hole in the Red Center of Australia.

Deep in the deserts of the Northern Territory, west of Alice Springs, lie the MacConnell Ranges, the James Ranges, and some spectacular national parks--West MacDonnell and Finke Gorge. The ranges are east-west ridges of red quartzite--low hills, but hard as, well, quartzite. Rivers and creeks thus have a difficult time finding way through them. Where they find a crevice passage, they rush through at high water, and where they exit the passage, they scour deep holes.

Come the dry season, these holes hold water when all else is parched, making them magnets for fauna and for sunburnt travelers. The particular swimming hole I’m thinking of is at the mouth of Ormiston Gorge. The guide books say the water here is cold, but the guide book writers have never been to North Dakota. The water is perfect.

From the shade of the gums on the west side, I swam 30 yards across to the sandy bank on the east, and then hiked north into the gorge, here clambering over great boulders, there sinking into the gentle sands, finally settling on a narrow bar just to absorb the colors of the place. The red rock cliffs and white ghost gums fairly floated into the steel sky, and were mirrored on warm water still as ice. Every minute or so a flock of little green parrots flew by to shriek the stillness away.

The broader Glen Helen Gorge, just a short hike upstream from the Glen Helen homestead with its tea room that dispenses cold beer, is perhaps even more spectacular. Here the Aussie kids were climbing the cliffs for high dives, their shouts lost in the open space of the place.

This cliff-diving raises another point, which is that there seem to be no rules in places like this. The distances and expanses are too vast to be policed. You’re supposed to exercise your own good judgment, which, in the case of Australian travelers, is marginal.

The only effective regulators of recreational activity in the territory are the salt-water crocodiles of the north. People have respect for them. Fortunately, there are many waterholes supposed to be croc-free, such as Florence Falls, in Litchfield National Park, where you can swim right under the twin torrents falling from the cliffs.

Here we observe an interesting ritual of the natives. Protocols call for the Aussie boys and girls to swim to the falls and commence climbing the rocks. Their mothers meanwhile observe and shriek threats of dire consequence should the kids go any higher or dare to leap from the cliffs, while everyone else, of course, shouts encouragement. The ritual is repeated until ended by exhaustion or hunger.

Fortunately for North American sporting prestige, these kids can’t skate.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865

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