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 !