Evelyn leaving today

Evelyn is in the shower and I have grabbed a few minutes on the internet. We have cleaned out the car and repacked all her things seperately. At 1am tomorrow morning her flight leaves for Brisbane and then she is off home back to Austria. So today is for sad farewells and the beginings of new journey's.

My plans at the moment are to head for the West Coast. I am dying for a surf at the moment but that will still be a little way away. My first adventure I hope to have is traversing the Gibb River Road, a gravel track between Kunnanara and Derby that runs right through the middle of the Kimberly. I have receieved conflicting advice as to whether it is advisable to try this road in a 2WD vehicle but it seems that as long as it does not rain or rain heavily carefull and judicous driving will see me through.

For the last week Evelyn and I were in Kakadu again. We stayed near Cooinda and Yellow Waters and then went on down to Gunlom falls. Gunlom is a hug and spooky waterfall plunge pool. The crocodile warning signs are still there but even the rangers say it is safe for swimming. Still the water is not as clear as the pools in Litchfield and I always had the feeling of being stalked whilst I was swimming. Even with this feeling it was an amazing place. There is no fishing allowed in the pool so the fish are unafraid of humans and with a pair of swim goggles on it is possible to swim alongside large barramundi, catfish and saratoga which is a very cool experience.

The nicest thing we did at Gunlom was to sit for a couple of hours in the middle of a bush fire at night time. The fire was not intense but we found an old hollow tree that had caught fire and was glowing bright red against the black night sky. All around us for miles were little beacons of light of still buring pyres. We stayed until the tree collapsed in a shower of bright sparkes. Some of the branches of the tree were termite hollowed and I believed were suitable for digjeridoo making. However the next day I came back and collected a piece which I cut up, sanded back and had a blow on. Unfortunately the termites had not eaten enough of the wood away and the log wasn't hollow enough to get a nice sound out.

On our last night in Gunlom a triplet of crows tipped over a box of pasta whilst we had our backs turned. We couldn't be bother cleaning it up and went to sleep planning to put it away when we woke. At some point in the early morning I was woken by this rhythmic crunch, crunch, crunch sound. Evelyn swears she was having a dream about me eating in the tent. I took the torch and shined it out of the tent to be met by a very bright pair of dingo eyes staring right back at me. Oh well I thought, saves me from tidying up in the morning.

Car Silliness

Forgot to tell this story in the last post but it does make me look quite stupid.

Evelyn and I were sitting in the campground in Litchfield park, finished dinner and were knocking back some cheap red cask wine we had bought. Unfortunately we only had one camp chair and Evelyn was not respecting my ownership of that chair and finding a piece of ground to sit upon. I hit upon the idea of opening the car boot and adjusting some of my luggage to make a comfy seat for me. It seemed so comfy in fact that after a while I stretched out in the boot of the car and lay my head down. Quite cosy in fact.

Evelyn then joked that she would close the boot on me and lock me in the car. This was amusing but she didn't do it. Then for some dumb reason that I cannot fathom I reached up and closed the car boot on myself. I just remember thinking that it will be alright cause Evelyn will unlock it after she stops laughing and get me out.

Just as the lock clicked shut I had a terrible thought. I twisted my arm around and patted my left pocket. Yep just as fate would have it the key to unlock the boot was in my pocket which was on my trousers which were on me which were in the boot. Oooops, did I feel a bit silly. Still the wine made me feel it was all a big joke and I couldn't stop laughing. The sound of muffled giggles coming from the boot induced laughing from outside the car. Two people laughing to each other on opposite sides of a sealed steel box. Not very helpfull. After a while I tried Macguyvering the locked in the dark with my bare fingers. I'm sure the big Mac could have got out of there by finding a role of sticky tape and a small spoon but the intricies of the lock were too much for my inebriated brain in the dark confines of a very hot car boot.

Then I realized that there was a small opening between the boot and the inside of the car. A small hope! Luckily the boot was not all that full and I managed after a little while to manouver myself into a position where I could punch open the little door. I poked my head out but there was not enough room for me to squeeze myself into the passenger compartment. I then noticed that one of the back windows was just open a little. I yelled to Evelyn who was still in hysterics to try and grab the key and for God's sake "Don't Drop It!!!" After nearly dislocating my arm I could just reach the window and with the tips of my fingers pass the key out to Evelyn then I was saved. God knows what other campers in the vicinity thought was going on but it must have looked very very funny.

B

Darwin, Raves, Humidity, Crocodiles, Waterfalls.

Back in Darwin again and it is a long time since I have written anything so I'll try to fill out some of the things that have happened without sounding too boring.

We really shot through the outback not seeing anything of great interest untill we hit the Devils Marbles just south of Tennent creek. However driving and camping in the outback was fantastic. As I mentioned in my previous post we visited the Stockmans Hall Of Fame which actually quite dull. It glorifies the white colonialists and really only gives lip service to the aboriginal contribution to the cattle industry.

We then went on through Mt Isa which we stayed in only for about an hour. The mine overlooking the town is quite imposing but I'm glad that I turned down the offer of a job there that Bechtel offered to me many years ago. Not my sort of place at all.

The most interesting place we visited before Katherine was the "Devils Marbles" , a huge plain of house sized granite boulders that had been weathered slowly for millenia into an amazing array of strange shapes. This place is well worth the visit and is much quieter than Uluru in terms of the number of tourists. Evelyn and I spent a whole day hiking around the plains in 35 degree heat without seeing another person. Evelyn convinced me to do a series of arty nude photos of me on top of one of the boulders. I must say I'm not that impressed with the results and I can promise that they will NEVER be posted onto this blog.

In Tennent Creek just north of the Marbles we visited the Aboriginal Cultural Centre which had a series of really good exhibitions on Aboriginal History and culture including a video which featured a section on how to cook a kangaroo and interviews with older women who when young had grown up on remote cattle stations. Whilst there I purchased a book on Australian Aboriginal history detailing the colonial period. This book is highly recommended to anybody who wants to get an understanding of the bitterness that Aboriginal people feel about the colonial period and the need for reconciliation. The book "Why Weren't We Told" details what really happened during colonialisation and why it should be more regarded as in invasion rather than a settlement. You come to understand that similar to America we had our own slave culture here. Aboriginal people across the top end worked on cattle stations and outpost often for very little in return, just the ability to stay on the land that they had previously owned.

Next we arrived at a place called Mataranka. It is a beautiful and almost body temperature thermal pool in a national park next to a camp ground called Mataranka Homestead. Depending on your point of view it also has another fascinating attraction in that it is the nesting ground to thousands of little red flying foxes. These cute fruit bats hang from the trees all day squeaking and calling and every now and again readjusting thier position in the tree according to some unkown social understanding. They drop copious amounts of bat shit onto the ground, into the pools and sometimes if you are unlucky onto your head. Some people found it a bit much and were complaining about the bats. Some according to a newspaper article had even gone and abused the camp ground owners, using an array of unfortunate explitives to register thier disgust at the bats. The bats though are just doing what bats do in the place they have lived for thousands of years. We should feel honoured that we can sit in a thermal spring and observe the cute little creatures going about thier business.



We then went on up to Katherine where on the first night we went and found some more thermal springs and paddled around till sunset.

In Katherine we stayed at the Coco's hostel and camped in the backyard there. It is an interesting place with Aboriginal artists coming in to play didj and a large amount of art for sale. It turned a bit sour for me when I got into a conversation with an old hippy guy about politics. He started telling me how the whole system was wrong and that democracy had failed and that the government didn't govern for the people any more and that it wasn't really worth voting. I guess I couls see what was coming as I had heard it before from people on the extreme left. His ultimate reason for why the world was going down hill was that the Jews controlled everything. I tried to make a joke out of it when he first said it but then he said. All the people around George Bush are "Jews" and the way he said it and spat out the word "Jews" with such hatred made me so mad that I told him I didn't want to talk to him anymore and I walked away. It astounds me that people who claim to be so "anti racist" can hold such bigoted opinions. Evelyn said I should have stayed and talked reasonably with him and tried to convince persuade him the errors of his ways but it is really impossible to talk to people who hold such irrational opinions. Anyway I was in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

From Katherine we drove 20 minutes to the Katherine Gorge where we hired a canoe and spent a day paddling around. This again is a most spectactular place. You paddle for a while then have to get out of the canoe and push the canoe upstream through a series of rock rapids to get to the next section. I had to do this by myself as Evelyn's foot injury was still healing. It was relativly cool on the water and the ability to splash a bit if it got too hot was nice. We were pretty lazy and only paddled a small way into the second gorge after which we stopped and had a big picnic in a shady spot looking up to a spectacular cliff overhang. Actually we are getting pretty good at picnics. Olives, homous, bread, cucmber, tuna, olive oil, balsamic vinegar. We don't slum it when it comes to food. No Way!


From Katherine we headed into Litchfield National Park. If you want waterfalls and easy access to them then this is your paradise. Wangi Falls, Tolmer Falls, Florence Falls, Buley Rock Hole. Most you can swim in as there are no crocs here which is not the case in Kakadu. The first night camping here I freaked out a little bit. I had discovered whilst camping near Mataranka how to spot spiders in the grass at night. Place your torch as close to your eyes as possible and shine it into the grass. The spiders have reflective patches on their bodies that act like reflective road signs in that the light reflects directly back to the source. Anyway first time I saw this effect I thought I had found a diamond in the grass. I kept the light shining on this sparkling object and then bent down to pick it up. Just as I touched it I realized that my diamond ring had eight legs, was hairy and was not going to look good sitting on anybody's finger. The spider was as spooked as me and bolted into the grass. In Litchfield however I disovered that there were hundreds of little diamond rings sitting in the grass and leaves just at the edge of the campsite. We went to bed really early zipped up the tent and slept fearing a full on arachnid assault before dawn. Fortunately the spiders are really only interested in eating insects and by the second and third night we had learned to ignore them or at least try to.

We headed from Litchfield into Darwin and finally the heat and humidity hit us hard. Darwin is a nice city. One of the highlights is to have dinner on the wharf. Try to get a seat near the edge where a spotlight is shining into the water. People throw chips and other bits of food into the water whilst greedy giant moonfish and possibly the odd shark circle in the milky depth below, every now and again to rising to the surface to grab a morsel then decending below again out of view.

As Evelyn does not have much time left in Australia we ditched the plan of driving to Broome and headed into Kakadu National Park. Before we got there we discovered a cute little place called Annaburoo safari camp just on the outskirts of the park. There an old guy waited on the porch of his old house waiting for guests to arrive. We were the only guests. He gave us this almost mosquito proof tropical room on stilts covered with green mesh. It was full of old spiders webs but the geckos running round on the ceiling ensured nothing of consequence bothered us. He had a few old canoes down by a large Billabong and we took one and paddled around till sunset observing the waterbirds making an unintelligble cacophony in the wetlands at the waters edge. There were many different species of water birds and cockatoos including the very spectacular black cocaktoo with two large red spots on it's tail.

Whilst in Kakadu the highlight was a one day tour we took into Arnhem Land with an Aboriginal owned tour group. We were taken to place you could not visit by yourself as you need a special permit. Essentially Arnhem Land is privately owned by the people who live there and you have to have the respect as if you were entering someone's house or yard in the city. We saw ancient and not so ancient rock art, burial sites and beautiful billabongs and rock formations. We also visited the Injalak Arts and Craft co-opertative where we could see artists producing work and could purchase if we wished.

We also spent a morning observing the crocodiles in the East Aligator river. We had agreed we didn't want to go on a tour to see crocs if they were easy to see and as numerous as people suggested. We were not dissapointed. We counted about 3 or 4 crocs in the 50 meter section of the river we could observe. Two of them even put on a little fight for us. We took some photo's but haven't developed them yet but hopefully they will look cool. It's amazing to be only 10 or so meters from these amazing ancient animals with nothing between you and them except your common sense. This particular attribute was definately missing in a number of people who were fishing for barramundi only centimetres from the edge of the water. Dumb Dumb Dumb!

Evelyn wanted to go back into Darwin this Saturday to go to a big dance party. I was naturally dubious as I believe that trance music is a load of computer generated rubbish with no soul and really you need a whole lot of drugs to really appreciate it. Still eventually I was convinced to go. My assesment of trance really has not changed but Evelyn had a good time and we will just have to agree to disagree on this particular point.

At the moment we are trying to decide what to do with Evelyn's last week here. Probably going to head back into Kakadu and chill out.

B