topsy turvy: the top end, etc.
it's the early afternoon of tuesday, august 22, the day before i leave sydney for perth. i retrieved my passport from the indian high commission yesterday, with a lovely 6-month, multiple-entry tourist visa stuck immaculately on page 17. the stamp i received upon entering australia on august 2 is stamped neatly, but off-centre, on page 4. i have accepted that if i were an immigration officer at a point of entry, i, too, would choose passport pages at random, just to make the day interesting. or i might decide that, today, all visas would be stamped in the first available space; tomorrow, it might be all pages bearing prime numbers; friday might be a fourier series (if i really understood what one was and could make it fit a passport).
my visit to Darwin, at the "top end" of australia (august 13-18) was full-on and fascinating. it's the middle of the dry season, locally called "The Dry". the monsoon season, or "The Wet" begins to bubble in november and really takes off in december. the monsoon forest is an exercise in imagination: it's terribly monotonous, especially driving on the equally monotonous highways in a tour bus, but is full of the wildest forms of life and relationships. among many other remarkable creatures, about 100 species of termite make their home here, so i got to see the magnetic termite mounds in Litchfield National Park. they were first thought to be magnetic because they are large, knife-like structures that are oriented almost exactly north to south. it was later discovered that the are oriented to catch the morning and evening sun to perfectly control the climate of the mound in the neighbourhood of 31C.
i took a scenic flight tour over Kakadu National Park, which also took us over the vast and largely uninhabited wilderness of Arnhem Land in the northeastern corner of the country, which is off-limits, except by not-so-easy-to-get permits, to all but the 5,000 aboriginal people who live in this area of some 97 000 square kilometres. (there are only about 200 000 people in the whole of the Northern Territory, most of whom live in or around Darwin). we were taken to some truly spectacular aboriginal rock art sites, including Ubirr and the misnamed Nourlangie, which the aboriginal people are asking everyone to call by its proper name, Burrunggui. some of this artwork has now been dated to more than 20 000 years ago (could be older; my memory isn't working very well today). on our 3-day tour of Kakadu and Katherine Gorge (in Nitmiluk National Park), we were blessed by a driver/guide, Lew Dungey, who has been working in the outback since he left Adelaide at 14 and has developed striking relationships with many aboriginal people, giving him both a deep knowledge of, and respect for, their culture and belief systems. he was the highlight of the tour, really (though his support for uranium mining in Kakadu left me a bit cold).
of course, the other highlight of my touring around in 33-34C weather in the dry, tropical heat, where the saltwater crocodiles almost outnumber the population (truly: approximately 80 000 are known to be hanging about), was the handful of lovelystrange people i met on the tour. there were the odd-couple cousins, Carmel and Barb--think australian laurel & hardy--who adopted me as their own; Marianne & her 16-year-old, half-moroccan son, Joel, from germany, who spoke remarkable english (marianne introduced a new phrase to my vocabulary: "wortschatz", meaning "word treasure" or.... "vocabulary". Glory!); Lizzie & Colin, the couple from Hervey Bay who were closest to my age, along with marianne; josef & ute from germany, who own and run develoop.com, a management consulting firm that practices some kinda cool stuff, especially around "change management"; and Steve and Kim from Perth, the youngest couple on the tour. being a (younger) solo traveller on a bus filled largely with australian retirees and foreigners was a bizarre, but edifying experience. i had a blast.
there's more to tell, but i'm meeting james in 5 minutes for a walk up Oxford Street (my first time, this trip), then lunch with mary and then who knows. i've been rushing through this post, just to get something on the record, so forgive any lapses of grammar or spelling.
more from perth.....
my visit to Darwin, at the "top end" of australia (august 13-18) was full-on and fascinating. it's the middle of the dry season, locally called "The Dry". the monsoon season, or "The Wet" begins to bubble in november and really takes off in december. the monsoon forest is an exercise in imagination: it's terribly monotonous, especially driving on the equally monotonous highways in a tour bus, but is full of the wildest forms of life and relationships. among many other remarkable creatures, about 100 species of termite make their home here, so i got to see the magnetic termite mounds in Litchfield National Park. they were first thought to be magnetic because they are large, knife-like structures that are oriented almost exactly north to south. it was later discovered that the are oriented to catch the morning and evening sun to perfectly control the climate of the mound in the neighbourhood of 31C.
i took a scenic flight tour over Kakadu National Park, which also took us over the vast and largely uninhabited wilderness of Arnhem Land in the northeastern corner of the country, which is off-limits, except by not-so-easy-to-get permits, to all but the 5,000 aboriginal people who live in this area of some 97 000 square kilometres. (there are only about 200 000 people in the whole of the Northern Territory, most of whom live in or around Darwin). we were taken to some truly spectacular aboriginal rock art sites, including Ubirr and the misnamed Nourlangie, which the aboriginal people are asking everyone to call by its proper name, Burrunggui. some of this artwork has now been dated to more than 20 000 years ago (could be older; my memory isn't working very well today). on our 3-day tour of Kakadu and Katherine Gorge (in Nitmiluk National Park), we were blessed by a driver/guide, Lew Dungey, who has been working in the outback since he left Adelaide at 14 and has developed striking relationships with many aboriginal people, giving him both a deep knowledge of, and respect for, their culture and belief systems. he was the highlight of the tour, really (though his support for uranium mining in Kakadu left me a bit cold).
of course, the other highlight of my touring around in 33-34C weather in the dry, tropical heat, where the saltwater crocodiles almost outnumber the population (truly: approximately 80 000 are known to be hanging about), was the handful of lovelystrange people i met on the tour. there were the odd-couple cousins, Carmel and Barb--think australian laurel & hardy--who adopted me as their own; Marianne & her 16-year-old, half-moroccan son, Joel, from germany, who spoke remarkable english (marianne introduced a new phrase to my vocabulary: "wortschatz", meaning "word treasure" or.... "vocabulary". Glory!); Lizzie & Colin, the couple from Hervey Bay who were closest to my age, along with marianne; josef & ute from germany, who own and run develoop.com, a management consulting firm that practices some kinda cool stuff, especially around "change management"; and Steve and Kim from Perth, the youngest couple on the tour. being a (younger) solo traveller on a bus filled largely with australian retirees and foreigners was a bizarre, but edifying experience. i had a blast.
there's more to tell, but i'm meeting james in 5 minutes for a walk up Oxford Street (my first time, this trip), then lunch with mary and then who knows. i've been rushing through this post, just to get something on the record, so forgive any lapses of grammar or spelling.
more from perth.....
posted by allan at
8:54 p.m.
1 Comments:
I also had the pleasure of a tour lead by Lew Dungey a few years ago - wonderful to have someone of such knowledge - I also loved his poetry -
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Unknown, at 9:31 p.m.
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