wildlife blogette

We headed down to the Mary River region, at the boundary of Kakadu national park. Our first stop was the Bark Hut pub for lunch, where a helpful waitress enthused "you can eat in front of the Grand Final broadcast if you like" she looked a little taken aback when I explained that we had left Melbourne for Darwin to avoid the footy. We visited the 'Window on the Wetlands', an information centre with exhibits and videos which explained the transformation of the area during the monsoon, which is just around the corner. Our first trek was 4.5 kilometers around the aptly named 'Bird Billabong' This permanent waterhole is the home of thousands of birds of hundreds of species. The walk during a 33 degree day was tiring (every day is 33 degrees) and we were interested to observe that it was only after about 2.5 kilometers, at the point at which we were furthest from the car, did the authorities deem it advisable to place a notice warning us of the presence of crocodile. From that point, every waterside bush seemed to grow a set of scaly nostrils. We also noticed the occasional enormous buffalo pat, and Cecile was busy working out which would get us first, the crocs or the buffalo. The second half of, the walk, in the direction of the car, was conducted at an increased pace, despite the heat. The area abounded in kangaroos, the first large concentrations we have seen since coming to the territory. Our next stop was the Fogg dam, originally created by an enthusiastic entrepreneur in the 1950's to provide the infrastructure for a rice industry. Alas, he succeeded in only nourishing the local wildlife. When the venture was abandoned, the dam (which is enormous) became a permanent water source in an area which would usually be dry for 6 months of the year. A consequence of this accident was to promote the population of rats in the area, which is bad, but worse was the concomitant growth in the population of water pythons, which feed exclusively on the rats. This has created the world's greatest concentration of reptiles, with the pythons averaging a staggering 800 per square kilometre. Our walk at the dam was abandoned because of recent sightings of estuarine crocodiles, but as we left, David saw a snake at the side of the road. In a spirit of scientific enquiry, he drove over to the snake, whose friendly greeting consisted of assuming the strike position. Mindful of a need to provide blog followers with quality photographs, he then lowered the car window. Luckily at the whirr of the electric motor, the snake took fright, and shot off in to the bushes, at an incredible rate of knots. Cecile was unimpressed. "He could have struck though the open window" she said, which was true, but what a photo that would have made !

Out and About

We are settling into a Darwin routine - if it is Thursday or Sunday, then it must be Mindel Beach sunset market for our tea. My favourite stall slogan is on the RoadkillCafe " You kill it, we grill it " We have to make the most of this market which closes in the wet.
Our respective work rosters have not quite gelled sufficiently for us to plan proper touring from Darwin, although we spent yesterday at the Territory Wildlife Park, where we saw a raptor show, and handled a baby saltwater crocodile (which had his jaw taped closed by the ranger) After the park, we went for a dip in the Berry Springs waterfall. The spring area is full of signs warning visitors not to feed the wildlife, but we ignored these and fed the mosquitoes anyway.
Apparently Australia is in the grip of an obesity epidemic, well let me tell you, its epicentre is Darwin. even the thin people are fat up here. But perhaps fat is good for you, just like smoking, according to the nicotine shop in the city mall.

At home in Darwin

The theory behind our adventure is that we don't just want to swan into a place, take a few happy snaps and swan off. We want to stay a good long while, do some work, and pretend to be locals.
This proved difficult in Alice Springs, but, from the moment we arrived in Darwin, it was obvious that our idea was eminently workable.
Darwin is booming. Darwin is a small city, but Saturday jobs ads are like Melbourne's. The downside is that most accommodation is correspondingly expensive. However, we had the good fortune to find a delightful "tropical living" unit with outdoor kitchen and lounge, a swimming pool and a Staffie called Buster. The unit was apologetically described by its owner as very close to the airport, but disappointingly, turned out to be 2.6km from the runway, and the surrounding jungle prevents easy plane spotting.
This location proved handy when David started work for a contractor servicing aeroplanes at the airport.
Cecile works as a house cleaning contractor, with her base 7km from home, but with door to door bus service, so having only one car is not an issue.
The down side of David's work are rather antisocial shift hours (for example,one day 3am to 7am followed by, on the same day, 8pm to midnight).
The downside of Cecile's work is that she often has to do final cleaning in vacated houses without power, therefore without aircon, a challenge in Darwin's climate, with temps of 34 every day and EXTREME humidity.

Oh what a gorgeous gorge !

This was David's exclamation as we turned the corner after a steady climb (we set off at 7.30am, mindful of the 36 degree forecast) and Katherine gorge reveealed itself to us in all it's glory. Then, in the afternoon, a most refreshing dip in the Katherine River followed by another walk to an idyllic waterfall. 12.5 km walk altogether, David insists on those statistics, who wants pretty pictures and purple prose when you can have numbers?
The day before, we spent an eye opening evening in Tennant Creek. Such a contrast with Alice! Yes probably another bucket load of money thrown at the aboriginal problem, but here, it appears the aboriginals themselves run the show (most notably, most police personnel appear to be indigenous female) and the atmosphere is palpably more pleasant than in Alice. The most striking difference was seing, both in Tennant Creek and Katherine, mixed couples walking hand in hand, and groups of young people white and Koori, hanging out together.
Next stop Darwin.