Top End tales #3

G’day there.
It’s a hot & steamy time up here in the land of afternoon monsoon storms, lizards scuttling along the walls and breakfast on the balcony.

Cath reckons that the little geckos who regularly race across the walls here look like fridge magnets. I think she’s right. These agile fridge magnets seem to be guarding our flat, as they scatter all over the outside walls whenever we arrive home. In the main they have done a fine job, though a couple of nights ago I ventured out into the land of the David Attenborough documentary (outside our door step) to find a green tree frog trying to pick the lock on my bike. You can’t relax for a moment up here.

My last report might have mentioned Darwin heat. Well, with the benefit of hindsight it shouldn’t have. Heat is a concept that we re-learn every day, as each day is more oppressive than the last. (A warning for the squeamish – tune out here and re-join at the end of the paragraph). Writing this, for instance, I am inside the loungeroom and it is 7:24pm. Every door is open. Every louvre window is open. Both ceiling fans are spinning like mad. The slight zephyr of breeze that passes my bare skin (it’s OK, I’m wearing shorts) tries to take away the sweat but my cooling mechanism is not quite up to it. Sweat beads in clumps on my forearms here and gathers in capillaries before joining into a 5th order stream network. The ABC news
reports 84% relative humidity today at 9am, maximum temp 34°C.

CJ is at her weekly drawing course right now. She’ll tell you she can’t draw at all (but I’ll tell you something different). If you ever need an apple sketched in grey-lead pencil, I know someone. At work CJ’s been working on many different projects with the Department of Health & Community Services, with one field trip to Katherine the other day. The policy position she’s got looks like being very interesting.

I’ve got 2 weeks left with the Water Resources group at NT Gov. For the past 2 weeks or so I’ve been involved (as a field sampler) in the eradication of a weed from the Darwin River. Crikey, has this been an eye-opener. The quick version is that an exotic aquarium plant was dumped in the Darwin River and has colonized a 10km section downstream of the town dam. If it spreads it could be disastrous for NT rivers. So a temporary dam wall was built across the river to contain the affected section, and an alarming pesticide poison 2,4-D, was applied to the river. This will hopefully kill the weed (and everything else) in the river soon, and the dead section of river will be rejuvenated before being released to the harbour. The whole thing is much more complicated, but I’ve been out on the Darwin River taking water samples for the past fortnight.

Imagine being hotter than if you’d done something hot on the hottest day you can ever imagine. Sitting in a canoe or a little tinny with the sun beating down... The Darwin rural area is routinely ~42°C. I know how an egg feels as it is cracked above a frying pan. At one of the places where we launch our boat, there’s a soberly placed steel crocodile trap, complete with bait (rotting chicken carcass), as a salty has been seen in the area; posing a threat to nearby landowners. As I thrust my gloved left hand repeatedly into the murky river water to collect water samples, I need to believe the words of my local partner: “You wouldn’t catch me doing this at dawn or dusk, but crocs understand that the middle of the day is OUR time on the river.” Right.

We had a top weekend in Melbourne, last; great to catch up with news and events. The stand-out highlight being the wedding of Jeff and Kirsten. A wonderfully picturesque ceremony in the grandstand of the Brunswick Street Oval. In Melbourne we relished the touch of a soft cool breeze. And we each turned the hot tap of the shower for the first time since September. Being back after an absence of a couple of months brought a few things into focus: there are too many cars on the roads of Melbourne. Brunswick Street on Friday night was outrageous. The mobile phone is
King. All hail the King. And all the grass is green. It was all yellowy brown when we left. And the back streets of Richmond haven’t become any easier to navigate.

CJ is riding to work most days up here – a superhuman feat. Full of good intentions, my latest effort ended with a puncture 7km from home and an ignominious hour-long run/ shuffle/ sweaty walk. Up here Car is King. (Or rather 4x4 ute is King; car is Weedy Prince).

We’re staying in Darwin now until late January. Anyone who’s in the neighbourhood, let us know. We had dinner with Brad Williams and Valerie last week, which was amazing in Darwin, and we also has a feed with Jenny & Richard a few weeks before that. Thanks for the messages from down south and all over. They are very well received. Sorry we were unable to catch more people on the weekend just gone; I hope you’re all well.

Ciao belli,
Top End Tom & Kakadu Cath.

Top End tales #2

The humidity builds mercilessly here. By 8.00am the air is thick and warm. Heroically, I had aimed to regularly ride my bike the gruelling 20km to work (at least every 2nd day), but to my eternal relief, the defence mechanism of the human body has kicked in and chronic knee soreness has developed to the point where I now need to drive to work in an air-conditioned car. It’s a shame. (CJ, on the other hand, rides her bike to Town most days). It’s tough enough walking to the office from the car park; a sheen of sweat soon covers the forearms as the daily roast begins. Human ingenuity, however, allows us to sidestep this inconvenience through the miracle of air-conditioning. From Monday to Friday, the hottest hours of the day
are spent in air-conditioned climate-controlled office Anywhere-Land. Inside these offices you really could be anywhere on Earth. Vertical blinds in a non-threatening shade of grey match the desk tops and even the ceiling panels. The only give-aways up here are the endless maps of the NT and posters of local Landcare projects covering the walls. But when clock-off arrives at 4.21pm and you walk out those sliding doors, the heat hits you between the eyes like a Mack truck. It’s a beautiful feeling.

Now preparations are beginning for the imminent cyclone season. There was a cyclone preparation lift-out guide in last Monday’s paper and the local council has sent some handy mail on this foreign subject. It’s the northern equivalent of the seasonal bushfire warnings down south, I guess. We’re all under orders to repair the roof, clear old branches from trees, remove or chain down any large objects outside the house, organise a cyclone emergency kit (torches, tins of food, etc) and locate our nearest community meeting point. Sounds serious. There was a map of Darwin in the paper showing which areas are most at risk of flooding from the storm surges that accompany a cyclone; judging by that map, it’s a good thing we’re on the first floor of our building.

We had one good dump of rain which washed out the Thursday night markets at Mindil Beach a while ago. But that’s been it. A week ago we headed down to Kakadu to get the lay of the land in "end of Dry Season" conditions. It was 40 degrees in the shade. The humidity wasn’t too bad – more of a baking heat. The sweat glands are getting a workout. We checked out the Kakadu (or Gagadju – that’s the name of the local aboriginal group and should really be the name of the Park except that it morphed in the style of Chinese whispers) Escarpment and rolled down to the Yellow Water area & Cooinda. We hopped a tour boat & toured around the wetlands of the Jim Jim Creek and South Alligator River for a couple of hours, finishing with a typical NT sunset on the water. The boat trip was an eye-opener for the amount of wildlife we were surrounded by but couldn’t really see until shown. By the end of the tour, though, we were in tune with nature & spotting animals every which way. And the crocs were imposing beasts. Glad to have met a few in person now and we all seem to have a healthy respect for each other.

We camped out & the next day visited & photographed a few dry river beds. The West Alligator River was completely dry. The only risk of injury via animal attack was from a wild pig scruffing around the river bed rather than from any crocs. We’re hoping to get a series of photos of those river beds over the changing of the seasons.

Life is beautiful.

The Mindil Beach market wound up for the year last Thursday night, as all the markets go into Wet Season recess. Half of Darwin was milling around the stalls, eating Asian delights on the beach and checking out music, fairground-style rides and a fireworks spectacular. CJ & I hopped on our bikes & rolled from home to the markets along the beachfront. Not bad. And I’m now the proud owner of a Big Old NT Farmer–style leather Hat, which should see me fit in like a local in most redneck regions of Australia.

The market season ended with impeccable timing; for the past 3 nights we’ve had alarming lightning activity filling the skies. In the NT News they reckon the Top End had 1036 strikes on Friday night alone. The power dropped out on Friday night and the wind really started to whip around our Fannie Bay fortress. Reading that cyclone guide has become a more urgent matter.

Yesterday we headed down to Nightcliff Oval for some Round 4 NTFL footy action as the Mighty Nightcliff Tigers faced off with the Darwin Buffaloes. A 4pm start meant that the sting of the day was behind us, but we made sure to set up our camp chairs in the shade of an exotic flowering tree. Nightcliff got the jump on Darwin and were never in danger. Coach Magic McLean would have been rapt with the boys, who closed it out 28.12.180 to 12.5.77. Former Geelong, Adelaide and Tommy Sherrins opportunist, Ronnie Burns, now sporting a hairstyle reminiscent of Tarzan the legend Greystoke, played an explosive game changing on the ball out of the forward flank & snaring a couple of goals. The ball handling of these guys is incredible and the skills displayed at half time by a group of kids playing kick-to-kick won them 3 Brownlow votes from this umpire.

So life in the Top End rolls on. CJ is 3 weeks into a Learning to draw course, I'm checking out the local Thursday night soccer scene, and again there's a croc story on the front page of the NT News ("Teen escapes from croc's jaws - saltie drags youth under water").

We’re back in Melbourne soon for J&K’s wedding.
Happy punting wherever you are.
Til next time, adios.
darwin dave.