Litchfield National Park

A few week-ends ago, we decided to explore Litchfield National Park, rated by many TopEnders as a mini Kakadu. Well, this may be a bit of an exageration, but it still revealed some fascinating sights, among others huge fileds of magnetic termites mounds (so called because of their North-South alignement) and the gigantic and aptly named cathedral termite mounds.

We walked along deligthfully shaded (and croc free!) creeks, pools and cascades and got very close to some rock wallabies.

At the time we got very excited at seeing a dingo. But we have since realised that dingoes venture right into suburban Darwin and recently have been reported attacking medium size dogs on the leash out for a walk in the local park .

The bush is never very far in Darwin, even in the ultra modern city centre. on Sunday afternoon, our gentle stroll around central, yuppy Cullum Bay was given an added twist when a long yellow and brown snake crossed the footpath right in front of us and disapeared up a tree. We are glad the wildlife is alive and well, but are not sure we want to get quite so close to some of it.

Indulgence in the tropics

Dear Readers, your faithful blogonauts have little to report, except much toting of that bail. We did indulge ourselves with high tea at Burnett house, a National Trust property at Myilly Point. In the 1930's the Government build a series of houses for senior colonial administrators, and one of them is now open to the public. The house was hit by a bomb in 1942, and damaged by Cyclone Tracey, but has been restored, and the national Trust raises funds by putting on a high tea every Sunday. The houses are utterly charming, wood lined, with an open plan design, and in a pre air conditioning age, every room can be fully opened to sea breezes behind shutters and fly screens.

The only other event of note occurred this evening at Nightcliff Pier, the venue for our daily picnic. We made friends with a blind man, who each evening goes to the pier for his tea and a couple of stubbies. Once settled, he takes the special harness off his seeing eye dog Liam, and this means that the dog is officially off duty, and can have a relax. Tonights relax consisted of taking me for a walk, whether i liked it or not.

We are going to Tasmania. Why you might ask ? Answers to be submitted with a self-addressed envelope......

Much ado about nothing

Now I like music. I've always liked music, and my tastes in music, unlike my tastes in religion are very catholic. I've been known to rock on, air guitar, and conduct an imaginary symphony all in the one minute. Unfortunately music has become the bane of my existence. My colleagues at KTAS also like music. so much so in fact, that they insist in playing music all day (and night) at work. Alas, the only music available is what is called "walk on" music, a collection of modern music pap, the greatest hits of 2008 selected by QANTAS with a view to causing the minimum offence to passengers as they board and disembark. A non changing selection of 12 tracks, which is often played at force 8 on the Richter scale. I've made my distaste clear, and the most common reaction is an incredulous 'how can you not like it?'

The other morning was rather fraught with late 'planes, and early crews, and at one point I suggested that we could all do with a rest from the music. Ezekial laughed at the suggestion, and Barry turned the music up. A QANTAS engineer arrived and turned the music off saying that he couldn't work in that racket, and proceeded to tinker with something technical, and I silently thanked him, but all too soon he left, and Barry walked from the rear of the 'plane to the cabin control panel at the front, to reset the music even louder than before. I said to him that since we had had three months of his entertainment selection, perhaps it was my turn to choose, and I preferred silence. "Don't be ridiculous" he responded. I decided to take my case to the leading hand. She is a hugely, grossly, grotesquely fat asian lady who waddles into planes, and who is permanently out of breath. She speaks in a whisper between gasps. She reminds me of a caterpillar - the iridescent yellow safety jacket she wears helps to complete the illusion - have you ever noticed that as a caterpillars legs move backwards and forwards in groups, they create the illusion of waves ? Well with the leading hand the waves are in the blubber and can be observed moving up and down her body as she walks. When she occasionally (very occasionally) moves a little quicker, it is interesting to observe the phenomena of newly generated waves being created before earlier waves have had the chance to dissipate. The new waves travelling north meet the old waves travelling south, usually around the midriff, and this collision produces ever more interesting patterns and forms. I would not want you to imagine that she is wholly unattractive however, her moustache for example lends her a sort of raffish air, reminiscent from certain angles of the young David Niven in 'Prisioner of Zenda'

Anyway, I explained to the leading hand that after 3 months, it was surely reasonable for me to have a choice of listening. She looked at me and smiled. At least I think she smiled, she certainly opened her mouth and bared her teeth in my direction - teeth tastefully colour co-ordinated with her jacket by the way - and moved over to the control panel, and turned the music up ! I suppose that is why QANTAS supplies ear plugs for its customers.

Films seen recently

Me and Orson Welles ****

Wild Target ****

Made in Dagenham ****

The Girl who played with fire **

The Kids are all right **

Creation **

Farewell **

The great "build-up"

We thought we were clever just jumping in the car on the first of August and heading straight North, see where the road takes us. well, if you head straight North from Victoria, there is pretty well only one road, the Stuart Highway, and that takes you all the way to Darwin.
Arrive in Darwin anytime between September and December and territorians will say : OOh! This is no time to be in Darwin, not during the build-up.
Build-up to what? Well, to the wet which in Darwin, is pretty well the full monsoon. The region around Darwin/Kakadu gets actually bigger monsoon rain than most of india, with some locations getting their whole yearly rainfall in one single episode (which can take up to 100 days). Kakadu experiences more electrical storms than any other places on earth. And did I mention the cyclones? But all this happens during the " proper wet", more or less between Christmas and Easter. There is a 3/4 run-up to this, the afore mentioned "build-up". The locals say it gets hotter, it does not, the max. temp. stays pretty well around 33, as per usual, but it feels hotter because of the incredible humidity.
Almost every afternoon, we southeners are fooled into expecting a deluge, with incredibly spectacular clouds and rolling thunder. Sometimes the heavens do open, the temperature drops a few degrees for a few minutes or even hours, the humidity eases a little, and thousands of frogs (gorgeous bright green things) start croaking. More often, we just get a few drops, just enough to create a little more humidity and turn the whole place into a sauna.
But really, all of this we could come to term with, with help from air-con, ceiling fans, appropriate clothing (we look into the suitcases under the bed and wonder : shall we ever need warm clothing again? Can anywhere be cold enough to justify a jumper?). Well, what are we whinging about then? The bane of our life : mozzies! Everywhere, all the time, up our nostrils, in our ears, up our shorts, following us up and down as we swim laps, trying to land on the one bit of skin that sticks out of the water. We are likely to share a pool with our landlady as the sea is out of bounds because of the small matter of crocs, box jellyfish, bluering octopuss, and the odd shark, although most sharks are frightened away by the crocs. We have found a locally made spray that does seem to deter the mozz, but it actually melts the rubber in our thongs, should we really be applying this to our skin? And this is why, on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon like today, we sit with doors and windows tightly closed, David playing his guitar, both lf us devouring more books than ever, preparing to run to the car and catch a film into an hopefully mozz free cinema.
We love the deckchair cinema, an open air cinema where you do sit in deckchairs, right next to the beach (that sunset photo with the boat, that the view you get from your seat, just before the film starts). But the necessity to either plaster yourself in toxic mozz repellent or covering up every bit of skin and cook in the tropical heat, or both, rather takes the shine out of the experience.
But we are still having fun, we wanted to experience something different, and our wish as sure been granted.

work (2)

Cecile'son John joked about us travelling through darkest Redneckia. Well, Cecile's house cleaning job certainly landed her right there.
She was tempted to admit defeat in the face of some rather nasty attitude from some of her colleagues. But her natural stubborn streak, added to the unfailing support of a delightful young French co-worker named Gwendoline (yes, it is a French name,from Brittany to be precise!) helped her stand her ground.
The big question now is: what and where next? We are picking up our swag again in December but whether we are WA, Queensland or even Tassie bound, we have not decided.

Work

When we got to Darwin, I told the local employment agency that we were interested in short term work in any field, but that we drew the line at prostitution or workong for Macdonalds. Prostitution I rejected because I am too old, and Macdonalds I rejected on moral grounds. As a consequence I've ended up at Darwin airport cleaning 'planes 6 days (and / or nights) a week. I am embarrassed to admit that I actually enjoy the work, and I particularily enjoy the setting because Darwin airport, in addition to being an international passenger airport, is also a RAAF base. In the past week, I have seen a series of Hawk fighters, a Wedgetail AEW, and a visiting B-52. The people that I work with are almost uniformly pleasant, even if a number are suffering from terminal slackness. They work to NT time - that is, Not Today, Not Tomorrow, Not Tuesday and not Thursday. The hours are a little antisocial, and I naievely thought that being generally rostered for the 3am to 7am might allow me to take advantage of the night time coolness, alas, during the build up, and the early wet, minimum temperatures rarely descend below 29 degrees.
Yesterday, as we waited at the security entrance, the guard there was confonted by an extremely agitated young man who demanded to speak to Jetstar immediatley. The guard pointed to an emergancy telephone on the wall nearby, beneath which were listed a series of direct numbers. As a group we were witness to the following one sided conversation.
"I want to speak to Jetstar"
"I have to get on the 'plane to Melbourne"
"I have a ticket, and I must get on that 'plane"
"I don't care if it is at the end of the runway"
"I am not running late, I have been at this bloody airport since 7o'clock last night, and I fell asleep"
"I am telling you to order the 'plane back to the terminal"
"Look I'll lose my job if I am not in Melbourne today"
"Please, please, pleeease"
"Fuck"
The fellow then hung up, and shuffled away from the 'phone, and we glanced at one another barely suppressing grins, which I am glad we did, because he suddedly threw his back pack on the floor, and proceeded to give it a damn good thrashing, punching and kicking and hitting it. Unfeelingly, we retreated through the security barrier, no longer bothering to control our laughter.
My job is also educational - some of our shifts are run by a delightful and competent lady, whose company I enjoy, and who has been only too willing to share her wisdom with us - whether we like it or not. The other morning, we were sitting around waiting for 'Ho Chi Minh' which was running late. On the previous 'plane we had not finished when the cabin crew arrived. The cabin crew (not including the pilots) are universally referred to as 'The enemy' On this particular occassion one of the Paris Hilton lookalikes walked down the aisle to be confronted by a small bag of rubbish, which it would have been perfectly easy to step over, or heaven forbid, to reach down and move marginally to one side. Instead, she came to an abrupt halt, sighed audibly, crossed her arms, and refused to move until one of the drones (me) deigned to move the bag a matter of a few centimetres. Following another sigh, she marched to the back of the 'plane. I mentioned this incident to the leading hand, commenting that the only other behaviour which annoys me more is the plastic bonhomie of the enemy, as when the simple act of passing one of them a headset, elicits gushings of "Thank you so, so much, I really appreciate it, I do " accompanied by the sort of smile which would make Tony Abbott seem sincere.
" Well I am not too critical of the enemy " my boss said " If you had to do what they have to do, you'd be miseable too" I asked her what she meant.
"Well you have noticed that they are all young and pretty ? thats because they are selected by men for the express purpose of sleeping with the pilots when on overnight stops, they have to do it because it enables the airlines to more economically recruit pilots during periods of high competition. They actually earn less than the cleaners, and if you glance at a few of the pilots, you will soon realise why they are all so unhappy"
I suggested that this might be a slight exaggeration, but she hotly denied it.
"Now that we are getting more and more women pilots" I said "I suppose that the male cabin crew will be forced to perform the same function"
"Don't be ridiculous" she responded indignantly "All the male enemy are gay"
Well it must be said that I had noticed the occassional effeminate squeak eminating from some of the more elaboratley coiffured stewards, but I suggested that 'all' might be drawing a slightly long bow.
Even more aggresively she disagreed "It is compulsory for all male enemy on Australian airlines to be gay, you are not permitted to be employed unless you can prove that you are gay"
You see what I mean by educational.