Kathryn Gorge

Sunday was also a day of adventuring, we drove to KAthryn Gorge, it is a river that runs through a plateau of sandstone and the river has eroded the rock and created quite a picturesque pèlace, I was expecting lots fo birds otherwise i wouldn't have travelled all this way to see it but if you dont know you dont know, Anyway we had a lunch of chicken and chips in the local red rooster restaurant, i had to add this to the post as there wouldn't be much post, the drive was uneventfula s the landscape is pretty flat up until we got to the plateau area, I was surprised at how few dead wallabies there were at the side of the road but there were a few dead cows, that means thay you can find a cow in the road at night when travelling at the legal speed of 130km/Hr or 75 mph, this could make a large dent in your head i think if you hit one at this speed, the car would probably explode.
We managed to get to the tour boat dock at maybe 12 noon again, and booked the next trip out, while we waited we saw a large colony of fruit bats maybe 200-300 animals, they make lots of noise and we thought they were fighting but it seems all the animals had babies and the babies were huge almost as big as the mum, so it was the mum chastising the babies for creating a fuss, or trying to hard to get a drink of milk.

The bats looked like black cling film wrapped rodents




we got on the boat and just sat back and relaxed, until they told us the river was low due to it being the dry season and the rocks were exposed so we had to get out and walk over the rocks at one point, it wasn't far but it spoiled my relaxation, the cliffs were OK and the boat was good, the guide talked crap for a long time, i wish i could have chosen a non-speaking tour, i hate it when they just babble rubbish, i wasn't going to give him a tip after this. The problem with taking tours to see scenery is that i have been all around the world and seen scenery far more impressive and i dont get impressed very easy anymore, i am a spoiled boy and tend to feel as though i have missed the point of taking these tours anymore, but as a day out it was OK apart from the huge drive,the price of the boat tickets and the price of Gasoline.

The three intrepid treckers




The Gorge




More gorge

Weekend Adventuring Berry Springs & Territory Park

This last weekend we all went out as a family, to a thermal spring and to the Territory park, The thermal springs were a surprise as they really were thermal, I didnt expect that as this isnt known as a volcanic region, it must be a deep deep old radioactive reservoir of contaminated water from old nuclear tests out in the desert, or maybe not. Anyway the water was nice and warm and the little girl was screaming with delight and terror as I submerged both of us under the mini waterfall, I think she likes me doing dangerous things with her, I sometimes call her Dangerous Emma and she laughs so much but i think a face full of water was almost too much for her. Almost too much for me, the other funny thing was the force of water rushing over the ledge was enough to pull down my shorts and leave me showing my ass, it must have been visible as it is white and luminous, it probably shone out through the water like an underwater beacon. Anyway it was fun and the little girl loves showing off her swimming skills.

The mini waterfall that tore off my shorts




We then swam-crawled along a small channel that connected the falls to the main pool the water was full of rocks at shin height for me and i banged my legs and feet as i went along, it was a mistake i should have walked around the park to get into the pool, it is obvious that the pool is man-made with a large dam wall at the other end, but as it is meant for people and not crocodiles i am not too unhappy with that. We played for a couple of hours and the little girl thought it was excellent fun to jump of the wall and splash me in the water, how they grow up so quickly, she is also reading the names of the birds in the Australian Bird Identification Book i got for her.

the main pool in the forest


.

Actually we went to the Torritory park next door first as i didnt want to be walking round in wet swim trunks in the park, we got there late about 12 noon and it is meant to be a bus tour around all the activities, but the bus only went round every 30 minutes so we would have spent all day waiting for the bus so we had to walk and it was a long way between all the different exhibits. First was the play area with tame wallabies. The are really small and these have become accustomed to the tourists and beg from the tables but we managed to get one to eat grass from the little girls hand.

It was too cute, I wanted to take it home




we then caught the first bus up to the nocturnal house, this housed a collection of the night time animals, actually this basically means everything in Australia other than birds, everything just sleeps during the day in the shade and then comes out at night. We saw some cute little animals from flying squirrels and marsupial mice things and water rats, marsupial predators, like large hunting mice, some rock wallabies, many snakes and a few bats, from the nocturnal house we went to the bird aviaries, there were some spectacular birds on display, and we went through a huge open aviary and it was full of a couple of species, the imperial pidgeon and some tree roosting ducks, Radjah Ducks, very beautiful birds, plus a few others, it made me want an aviary, even though i am completely against caging birds it was a fantastic sight to see all these wonderful birds




After the aviaries we were running late for the birds of prey show, and we had to walk and my wife was complaining about me always making her walk everywhere and never having enough time to relax and look around, but we just made it to the bird display to see a wonderful crested hawk flying around, very large eyes and a square head almost to put the eyes into, then they had an Osprey, circling round and I was wondering if it had been bored with its normal routine and decided to just have a fly about but once she threw some fish into the pond it swooped and dived feet first into the water, it was amazing, the only drawback was it then carried the fish to a perch just above the little girl and i had visions of it doing a nasty fishy smelling turd right onto her head so we moved pretty quickly. They also brought round a few others just for display and not flight, like the barking owl, it really does bark like a far away dog, very funny, also a black breasted buzzard, a young fish eagle and finally a Wedge Tailed Eagle, it was huge and very impressive, I am always impressed by these large raptors,

Crested Hawk




Wedge tailed eagle




A Tawny Frogmouth




we managed to see all of the park but only just as we left just after closing time, so we had a fantastic day and even got radioactive poisoning in the thermal springs.

Litchfield National Park

On Sunday we travelled out of Darwin to the Litchfield National Park, we drove about 150 Km south and it is a pretty flat country, short shrubby trees and this continent is ravaged by bush fires, the national park authority has a policy of burning the bush early every year to prevent huge bush fires from burning everything, but i think it is a policy that is unsustainable, it looks terrible and I can imagine many creatures being incinerated in the fires, you can see the hawks circling near the flames waiting for the small lizards and other things that can run, to jump out and then they pounce on them, anyway, as we got closer we starting getting up into some rolling hills and we made our way to the first visit, to Florence falls, it is a nice valley with a small river this time of year, the water was clear and not too cold, we managed to walk down some steps to the falls and found about 10 indonesian guys going crazy in the pool, very funny actually,

it was a nice place but a bit too small for just relaxing, too many walkers and tourists.




we then carried on to the magnetic termite gardens, I am not sure if these were created specifically for the tourists but they did look unusual, the mounds are aligned to magnetic north, very bizarre




We also saw the biggest termite nest that Buddha ever thought up




This was just a short stop on the way to the famous Wangi Falls, we actually picked up a couple of hitch hikers and then we got lumbered with another couple of their friends who jumped out of a van just as this couple were getting into our car, very funny actually, 4 were from Germany and 1 from Japan, they were all students and spendign a year just bumming about, working a bit and trying to see everything, it looks hard work, carrying everything in your backpack, I have never done it and dont like to think about it, I am too old to think about it actually. Anyway they jumped out just before the falls which suprised me and they said they were going to a festival at the camp site near the falls, probably to go dancing about naked at midnight like all these hippee types, I never got invited. The car park was big and the area around the falls was very big with a park area and picnic area, the walk down to the falls was nice and along a river and up to the large plunge pool. The little girl was ready in her swimsuit and desperate to get into the water as she is a swimaholic, and when we got to the pool, it was blocked off saying they could not guarantee it wasn't free of Crocodiles, the little girl was heart broken, she cried, so we had to promise her an ice-cream and swimming at another pool, There were many Black Kites flying around, coming down to look around where folks were having picnics and trying to find things to eat, i have never seen so many hawks on the floor before, they were like chickens almost. It was nice but not being able to swim it was a bit limiting, the flood water during the wet season gets to 2 metres or more, And i would love to see that amount of water coming over the waterfalls.




We ate an ice-cream and then drove back the way we came, we had the choice of driving only 50 Km back to Darwin but that would have been on dirt roads and I dont do dirt roads normally, but we had to get back to the other falls, we drove back and thought we would try the Bukey Rockholes, these are the small falls just before the river enters the Florence falls, it is where more tourists go to drink beer and jump into very dangerous rocky pools, not my idea of fun, but the little girl accepted this as the alternative swimming, it was very fresh but very clean, we spent a couple of hours just catching some rays and enjoying the fresh air, we left and arrived home many hours afte we left and we all went to bed about 9pm bushed.




we did see a lovely gray bird that had the craziest pink crest i have ever seen, it is the greater bower bird, this builds a mating arena and surrounds it with toys and shiny things, i was looking at it through my bins and it lifted its crest and i just couldn't believe the colour, a real punk rocker of a bird.

Saturday, Howards Springs,

This last weekend we did some adventuring, Saturday we went to a place called Howard Springs and it is the most interesting springs i have ever been to, to make it a better visit they have damned the springs to make a small lake, you could see the water bubbling to the surface, it was really large plume and quite amazing: The bird life was very good, there were white ibis' and some medium egrets, a pied cormorant and lots of bee-eaters, the most amazing colours, swooping all over the place picking off the mosquitos that were everywhere.

The amazing bee-eaters, mostly eating mosquitos




They have some fish here that can live in esturine areas and freshwater, they are called Barramundi and they can grow just huge, like over a metre long and folks were feeding them with little fish, my little girl was screaming with delight to see the big fish coming all the way in to take the little fish from peoples hands with a huge plop of water that shot out of their mouths.

Huge Barramundi Fish in the lake, honest it is me




We also saw a snake in the water, it was about 1.5 metres long and it was so interesting to see it hunting naturally, we took a long walk around the park and they had some huge mosquios, which is actually not bad as you could see them flying around you and they were so slow compared to the ones in Costa Rica, it was easy to kill them all, but we had to keep moving to stop them overshelming us. we had a snack and then went to the local town of Palmerston, we then stopped to watch Kung-Fu Panda, it was a pretty funny film and then we went to the Indian night at Mindal beach, it was meant to be a cultural event but it was a food and cheap clothes market, the cultural part was 5 ugly indain men dancing away on the stage, I dont call that cultural. Tomorrow Litchfield National Park.

My Birding Trip into the Bush

I have joined the Darwin NT birding club and I managed to get on the first outing of the year with them, I was chatting to someone else in the apartment block and once I mentioned that i go birding she told me she was the treasurer of the club and that I should come and meet everyone at the meeting in the university, the next day she banged on my door and asked me if i wanted to come to the meeting, i went along and met a room full of old people, i was the youngest by far which made me happy, the meeting was given a talk by a PhD student who is studying the birds of indonesian islands, which i thought sounded great for a job, afterwards i was introduced to the bird outing leader, part of the conversationw as that i was going with them in their car and that i should meet them at 6.45am at their house to be picked up, this is all well and good when trying to find somewhere in Darwin during the day but in the dark it is another matter, i got lost but called them and they guided me to their house




The trip was about 120Km out into the bush heading inland, Darwin region is pretty flat and boring but by the time we got to the park it was large rolling hills and a few more trees, we had passed over some large rivers that are also full of crocodiles and along the saide of the marshy areas there were many birds, egrets and herons of all species, When we arrived at the Bird Billabong( Aboriginal name for lake I think) there were about 12 birders at the place and all attired in large floppy hat, to stop the sun burning the skin off your head, mostly long trousers, to stop the biting insects eating you and sucking you dry of all blood, faces and ears covered in sun cream, and a large bag with food and water, i had the hat, sun cream and bag with some food and lots of water, it wasn't actually that hot but the sun was really intense, I like going to really keen birdes as they can identify all the birds without breaking out the identification book, then know all the calls and it was nice to be able to be told what a bird was without struggling, this makes it very easy and very enjoyable, we spent maybe 2 hours walking the 4 Km to the lake, seeing all sorts of birds of prey and many other smaller birds, the air was filled with shrieking parrots, this country has more parrots than any other in the world i think, and many large ones, and they can kill at 40 paces with their amazing shrieks, why anyone would want to have a parrot as a pet i dont know.




When we got to the lake it was surrounded by birds on the shore line and nothing swimming, this is because the lake had crocodiles, i was shocked to see them everywhere, maybe 8 in total but that was only the ones we could see, the birds wouldn't enter the water, only paddling around the edges, there were many types of egrets and herons and even the giant stork, the Jabiru, also many families of the local Whistling ducks, there was even a hide on a bridge in th water, it was so prefessional, the parks authority do very good jobs for the visitors. then we wandered about the edge of the lake and took a short cut across the bush to get back to the car park, it was a fantastic day out and these folks apart form being old were great to be with, and they new all the birds names, being driven was also a nice touch, i have checked the calender and I cannot see another outing soon and perhaps i was lucky to get the only dry season trip this year, we will see maybe next dry season.

The Funniest Thing I have Seen on TV for Years

Last night I was watching a TV show from the UK, called Tope Gear, it is 3 guys reviewing cars normally, but it has become more of a chat show and comedy act between these 3 guys. Last night they had a challenge and it was to build a amphibious car that could drive from the studio and then sail across the British channel, one got a car and sort of glued a boat top half onto it, another put a mast and rudder on an old convertible and the 3rd just sealed all the openings on a pickup truck and then put a large outboard motor on the back, watching these guys roll their respective converted vehicles into the sea and try and float was so funny and the problems they encoutered, the most successful was the pickup with an outboard motor on it was just so funny watching it pitching in the water with 3 guys in the back and a huge motor attached to the back, and yes it really did manage to travel all 22 miles across the British Channel in only 3 hours also, I laughed with tears in my eyes for maybe 30 minutes, i almost forgot about the Jetlag which is still with me but getting better.

Crazy Amphibious car challenge, so funny, check out Vids of it "TOP GEAR"



Just and insane expedition



Check out the vidoe on Youtube, there is part 1,2 and 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyIw1kGJxak

I Have a New Apartment

Well last week was so frustrating, I was waiting for a money transfer from the UK to my new Australian Bank account, without the money I couldn't move into my apartment, it arrived on last Thursday and i went early and had to walk across town with $8000 in my pocket, i was concerned but if anyone had tied to rob me i think i would have bitten their fingers off as I was getting desperate to move out of the crappy Comfort Inn hotel, now that is an oxymoron, how could that place be called comfort Inn, they were as incompetant as anyone could imagine, one kitchen staff member, who was running in and out in a morning trying to take orders and cook at the same time, he could take between 15-25 minutes to prepare breakfast for someone while trying to take orders for people, I knew the nightmare it could be so i was there at the opening of the door at 7.00am. anyway after my money transfer i was moving in friday, the big day, I arrived at 5pm and was greeted by the agent, she handed me the keys and then got me to sign all the agreements and invited me to a barbecue at her apartment, it was her daughters 18th and something else but was basically just an excuse to drink and eat, and then she let me loose in the apartment. I had 3 weeks of laundry to wash, it was the first thing i did, i threw all of my shirts and underwear in the wash, far too much stinky laundry, then i spent a couple of hours just arranging my few things i had with me, i then went to the barbecue, her apartment was identical to mineonly a mirror image, it was very nicely furnished with expensive looking tropical furniture, i was taken to the patio and allowed a beer, several other folks turned up and belive this, everyone had moved to Darwin within the last 12 months, it was amazing, it seems this is a real boomtown. We all ate and drank, me on beer and everyone else on champagne, I dont know why, i really dont like it, far too dry for me. there were two groups on the two patios, one for the daughter and her friends and one for the old farts. one of the couples we were with seemed to think they were not as old as they looked and kept popping into the other group, she was 40'ish and fat and with a very open shirt on, with a large cleavage exposed, this was suprising for me, her husband(boyfriend maybe) seemed very effeminate and was very animated with his hands and then they were talking about heir gay friends and the gay nightclub, so i just assumed that they were bi-sexual. Anyway the more she got drunk the more silly she became and I was then told that she was telling everyone about her boob job, ( hence the display of cleavage) and then she dropped out one fo the boobs for all the young folks to have a look at, as you can imagine all the young men, were turning their faces away thinking crazy drunk old woman. I never get suprised anymore about what some folks do at parties when drunk. as the night wore on people left and then when the strange couple left, we all talked about them , which is what parties are for, discover peoples weaknesses and then tear them to shreds when they leave.

Since the party i have managed to get a cell phone, organise the land line to my apartment, the internet and cable TV, so by next friday i will be a normal human being again. I wenbt shopping for food saturday and bought a little bit of food and some cleanign stuff and the total amount spent came to $175, i was shocked, i have nearly no food at home and i spent all this much, what the hell is it going to cost me each week when I get jenny and the little girl here.

I managed to meet a really nice older lady in the apartment, she had heard me toalking to the agent and recognised my British accent, She is British and lived out in the far eat for many years, she had lived in Vanuatu, a small french speaking island, and then we by accident got speaking about my bird watching hobby and it turns out she is the treasurer of the Darwin Naturalists Club, not people runnign naked on the beach but animal lovers. I have even been invited to join the club and go on the next trip next weekend to a very good natural lake, called Billabong in Australia, it is about 150Km away and suppoed to be a very good spot, i will try and find someone to ride with rather than drive myself, got to get used to these dirt roads first.

Life in Darwin

Well this place is different in a good way, the birds are far more noisy, there are huge black cockatoos and large sulphur crested cockatoos and these birds are really noisy, screeching from 4.30am onwards, they sit about in trees all day eating and screeching, another very bizarre thing are the fruit bats, they are huge with wings over 3 feet, (1 Meter) and emerge in the dusk and there are lots of them, i wish i could find the roost, i bet there are a huge number in the roosts just trying to keep cool and snoring and many other things, but someone did tell me they make a huge amount of poop they are like a small dog in size, so the neighbours are not happy when they set up roost in your garden. The trucks on the roads are huge monsters with up to 4 trailers behind,



The city is very well planned and well paid out, non of that crazy Indian or North African developments with houses right onto the roads and factories built inside someones house and a workshop door to a school, all well done and the marina area is extremely nice, The roads signs are also quite funny as this is the remote far north of Australia and when you drive in town you see only 3 towns you can drive to, and Alice Springs is 1495 Km away, so not much after the town of Kathryn then.



I had a quick walk around the area of my new apartment, I haven't been able to sign for it yet as my money isn't in town yet, I hope it doesn't take 6 working days as my wife will have arrived by then and i am not sure wife we can get a hotel in town, it is so full of people, but the place is in the dry season and we can sleep on the beach if needed, but dont tell her that.