Racing Toads, UFOs, Crocs, Sweat, and Billabongs

Wow it's almost been a month since I spilled my thoughts on this thing. Here it goes.

Sitting in Darwin International waiting on a flight back to Brissy seems foreign as it feels as if I have just landed in the tropical realm that is the top end of the Northern Territory. Much like its Canadian cousin, the NT is sparsely populated with an equal knack for inhospitable conditions. The wet seasons brings massive monsoon storms from the tropical waters of the equatorial Pacific and the dry season renders the land cracked and dry with the months of June through August average less than one day of rain a month. Needless to say I picked a hell of a place to work for the weather bureau.

My first day at work (back on April 6th) consisted of running around meeting every single person in the station and trying to explain what I was doing in Australia (SIT kids you feel this pain) and then why I was at the Bureau. Everyone there was extremely welcoming and helped me in any way possible. I will spare you the details of what all I learned there as most people could care less why monsoon troughs cause rain to fall over the top end and leave the southern parts of the territory dry. At any rate, I enjoyed my experience thoroughly and if any of you guys find this through Facebook or other means, thanks for all of your help while I was in Darwin.

The weekends in Darwin left nothing to be desired as I had various activities that fell into place to create a surreal experience and allowed me a window into what it is like to be a true “Territorian”. On my first weekend, I headed over to one of the numerous Darwin markets that gain national fame for their amazing fresh fruit and inordinate variety of fresh Asian cuisine. Darwin is a very diverse city that over the years has been called home to natives of Fiji, Samoa, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, Timor, and pretty much any other country that is on a peninsula or a Pacific island. These markets were my heaven as I have never seen so much curry, vegetable fried rice, and woks on stoves creating amazing smells and tastes.

A Darwin Sunset

 

My next weekend, I headed out to see the Darwin Symphony Orchestra in their first concert of the 2010 season. They were welcoming in a new conductor/director from Amman (I think?) and he was more than willing and able for the task at hand. The concert was great, especially the fact that the DSO is a community orchestra that only has one member who is a professional player. I sat beside two very funny ladies who kept me on my toes throughout the concert and were more than happy to lend opinions on current events and what I should see in Darwin during intermission. It was a great time all around. I also headed out to a free water park with some of the staff at the bureau in the suburbs of Darwin which was sponsored by the NT government. It has 3 slides that were about 3 stories high and a water playground for the kids to hang out on with a giant bucket that dumped heaps of water down on unsuspecting parents or the kids who flocked to it as soon as it began to tilt on its axis.

On my third weekend I got to meet Liams' (my roommate) Aunt and Uncle along with their daughter and a family friend. They took me out into the tidal mangrove forests that is coastal Darwin. The NT news usually runs a story at least once a week that involves some sort of croc attack or sighting that occurs in these waters. With the best being a front page picture that shows a “fisho” (fisherman, Aussies love to abbreviate even the shortest words) with a friend swimming back to their boat as a croc is no more that 10 feet away swimming in a eerily similar direction to that of the swimmer. One word of warning, the NT News makes the Hickory Daily Record appear to be the Wall Street Journal. A headline that was run after a well known NASA balloon that had received news coverage just a day earlier crashed into a car was “Unknown spacecraft crashes into car” with little silhouettes of white aliens in the background. I really wanted to meet the editor of the paper as it was truly a delight to read and the editorials and the “txts to the editor” put most of the stories in the paper to a laughable shame.

I digress, a lot. At any rate, I got to go mud crabbing in the mangrove forests that allowed me the opportunity to catch three of these elusive buggers and eat them later on in the night along with an amazing ham hock soup that Meg whipped up while we waited at the house. This was a great time through and through and thank you Meg for your gracious Aussie hospitality!!!

My last weekend, after finishing work and my paper was a 3 day trip down to Litchfield and Kakadu National Parks. I had been trying to plan this since I had known I was going to Darwin but everything fell into place on the second to last week of my trip. The trip left at 6am and headed straight into the heart of Litchfield NP. We got to swim in a fair amount of water holes that put anything I have every swam in to shame, except for a handful in Tasmania. The beauty of these secluded places was unreal and it was damn near hot enough for the water to be boiling but the fresh water spilling off the waterfalls that graced each spot allowed for a cool refreshment to the mid day sauna that is the NT outback. Not to leaving anything for want, the “Saloon” at our camp site the first night hosted cane toad racing. Okay, quick history, cane toads were brought in to eat bugs that were damaging Australia and they overtook the bugs, populated like rabbits, and are now a national past time for hunting innovations. The ways of eliminating these little demons (they are poisonous, but this shouldn't surprise you since pretty much everything here kills or maims you beyond all belief) includes but is surely not limited to shotguns, cricket bats, 7 irons (although long irons are preferred for distance events), bricks, and cars. These guys are put into a bucket, with numbers on them, and like true Aussies everyone bets on which one should get out of the circle first , twice, just to make it fair. After they serve the purpose of amusing drunk fishermen and tourists, they are put to rest by the bar staff.

Listening to: The Dragster Wave - Ghinzu


After a great day in Litchfield we headed down to
Kakadu for two days of swimming, 20,000 year old rock art, and croc watching. Kakadu is the biggest NP in Australia by size and is mostly a vast expanse of tropical savanna that seems like instant death for any unlucky motorist or someone just very lost. I really wanna see Bear Grylls give Kakadu a fair go. We took our troop carrier/apocalypse vehicle/off road bus through many trails that are just normal roads to Aussies but would cause most American 4WD owners to have an inadvertent bowel movement. The rock art in Kakadu is amazing and to think about the shear age of them makes you feel very small. More swimming in spectacular billabongs was to follow before we headed out on a croc cruise. Now before you get too excited, we were in a National Park, so they cannot bait the water to entice the crocs or make them jump out of the water with the old meat on a stick trick so no crazed pictures here. Just some eyes and spikes peeking out of the water to give us just enough to know they meant business.

Picture section: Kakadu and Litchfield

After a long drive back to Darwin, I finished up the last of my work and got my life packed up again to head to the airport today for my flight back to Brisbane. Crashing at Owen's for the last time tonight then catching a train back to Byron Bay to present my project. I can't believe I have 6 days left on the program, but after that headed to New Zealand to meet the parents for a soon to be great vacation through NZ and back into Oz for round two of Sydney and Melbourne with a stop at the reef for some serious aquatic adventures. Ready for some cooler weather in NZ and then geared up for a good time back in NC for summer!! It's been real Darwin.


Cheers!!
-zuey