Lest They Be Lost: A Lifetime of Little Ponderings by Wendy Baarda Nangala

From the heart of Yuendumu, a remote Aboriginal community nestled in the sweeping desert landscapes of the Australian Outback, comes a collection of ponderings that capture over fifty years of observations and reflections.

Wendy Baarda Nangala, a teacher and long-term resident, offers us a window into her world through these verses, which weave the personal and the universal, the rhythms and hues of life in an extraordinary part of the world. With each line, Wendy invites readers to travel with her through decades of change, resilience, and connection to her community and its traditions.

This collection is more than just ponderings; it is an intimate map of a soul's journey through the vast expanses of land and mind.

Wendy Baarda (née Cameron) grew up in Casterton in the Western District of Victoria.

In the early 1960s, she attended the University of Melbourne. There, she sang folk songs in cafes and demonstrated against the Vietnam War. At university, she made lifelong friends and met her future husband.

Her marriage to a geologist took her to nickel-boom Western Australia and oil-rich Alberta. She qualified as a schoolteacher at Calgary University.

After a several month-long odyssey from Canada to Panama and by ship across the Pacific, Wendy taught in Melbourne and Darwin.

In 1973, she settled with her husband, two sons, and daughter in Yuendumu, a Warlpiri community 300 km northwest of Alice Springs. Ever since she has been deeply involved in Yuendumu School’s bilingual program, and she still is.

This collection of a lifetime of little ponderings draws on an unusual worldview that owes much to Wendy’s Warlpiri friends and colleagues. It contains insightful, frivolous, kind, poignant, and respectful words.

To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien: Not all who ponder are lost.