It’s a Long Way to the Top

Our avid readers will know that we haven’t posted in a while. L is enjoying a well-deserved break from uni studies, and I have been kept busy with work during one of the busiest months on the Tindal calendar. A major exercise wrapped up on Thursday and most of the base was rewarded with Friday off.

As usual my footy team Tindal Magpies played on Friday night, this week against Lajamanu Swans- a team from a small community 550km from Katherine. I’m not sure if it was most of our team having the day off or the long drive for the Swans but we played our best game from the year by some distance and ran out winners by 75 points. Wish I had some photos from this game to share, but unfortunately do not. Here’s an old photo anyway:

Saturday we had plans for our first trip to Kakadu with two other couples, who both conveniently have 4WDs. We had been planning to go to Jim Jim Falls, but sadly it’s been closed since Thursday due to an unfortunate non-crocodile-related drowning. So we picked out a campsite called Gunlom, in the southern part of Kakadu National Park. A great perk of NT residency is not having to pay for a national park permit, which is $25 per fortnight for the invading Southerners. So we set off on Saturday morning in our friends’ ute, with the tray packed full of stuff for our 1 night of camping. We had the essentials covered: shelter, beer, and marshmallows. L and I have been gradually (at an increasing rate) acquiring more camping goods. Purchases this year include a tent, camp chairs and sleeping bags. Soon we will buy a portable gas stove and head lamps, and we will have graduated from being noobs to the level slightly above that – still no match for those with all-inclusive camper trailers like two of our company, but perhaps better equipped than the average backpacker.

Gunlom is a beautiful spot, characterised by one steep climb to enjoy superb panoramic views of southern Kakadu and then a chain of awesome rock pools at the top of a waterfall.  We spent an hour or so cooling down after the fairly difficult climb (which some people amazingly brave in thongs). I will let pictures tell at least one thousand words at this point:

Yes I wore sunscreen, mum.

Solving the age-old wet-feet dirty-feet predicament.

The other blokes and I gathered some slightly singed – from all the controlled burning – firewood and soon we had a nice campfire, in which to cook our Skippy burgers (L’s words, not mine), roast marshmallows and around which to pretend that we can sing. In truth, it may have been closer to murmuring along to John Farnham and Cold Chisel. Flame Trees, Cheap Wine, Saturday Night, what more can you ask for?

Because an overnight low of 20 warrants a camp fire…

Our tent has the handy feature of being able to open the fly on all sides, so we opened the side that backed on to the bushland and put our heads at that end…which meant we could sleep under the stars. The Milky Way is something to behold from a place such as this, and after seeing a few shooting stars we were soon asleep, only to be slightly disturbed some hours later by a bush pig having a snuffle around our campsite. Fortunately everything was unscathed. The next morning we did another short bushwalk in the not well-signed area of Yurmikmik, and we were feeling quite adventurous indeed until L took an arrow in the knee (well, she fell on it actually, poor thing).

Somehow we all managed to deal with not using our phones for 24 hours (yeah like before the mid- 2000s, crazy, right?) and me not watching a must-win Crows game live. It was refreshing to see though, upon our return to reception, that there had been no major acts of terrorism or political farces, and that the Crows had in fact played well enough to win for the first time in 5 weeks. Indeed I could (and did) watch a full replay minus ads on the AFL website upon returning home!

After a Spanish lesson on the computer, L showed me how to cook paella for dinner. Om nom nom! Oh, you may not know but we are going to Morocco and Spain at the end of the year!

Hasta luego, and a happy new financial year!

No chocolate, no footy, no problems.

I drove with L up to Litchfield National Park after an EKO (early knock off) on Thursday and despite the heavy rain our spirits were not dampened. Neither of us had been to Litchfield before and we were looking forward to a bit of communion with nature on the goodest of the Fridays.

I had to come to terms with the lack of phone and internet reception where we stayed, which had several implications…mainly revolving around the footy, and specifically Dream Team. Surprisingly, L did not seem to share my concerns. We had brought the laptop, an ample supply of Community and a couple of flicks so we weren’t altogether short of technology.

So we watched The Beach, which seemed almost fitting due to the theme of finding somewhere naturally perfect, perhaps off the beaten track. I had read Alex Garland’s novel several months earlier and I have learned that I enjoy movies more if I haven’t just finished reading the book and L enjoys movies more when I’m not constantly saying how it compares (usually unfavourably) to the book. Fortunately for us, the main villains in the movie were sharks – and the human condition – rather than crocodiles, or we may not have been able to enjoy Litchfield to the full extent the next day. The morning started with a tiny frog jumping in to the car and got better from there…when we saw this adorable critter.

Florence Falls

One thing I liked about Litchfield is that everything is close together, which is rare for the Northern Territory. Being the Wet Season, several parts of the Park are off-limits, which means you can quite easily enjoy it in one day, as we planned to. We set off and were left a bit unimpressed by the Magnetic Termite Mounds. They are all aligned North-South which is cool, but they just weren’t as large in size or number as we were hoping for. We quickly moved on, and fortunately the next sight is only a few minutes away. Florence Falls were surging quite beautifully and we had just a brief dip in the plunge pool as it was quite early and cool. We hadn’t worked up any kind of sweat yet.

Checking for crocs

We undertook some pretty solid hiking, got freaked out by tiny thin leeches, failed to spot any mammalian wildlife, and reached the highlight of the Park, namely Wangi Falls, round lunchtime. I enjoyed saying ‘Wangi’ a lot more than I should have as a 22 year old. The falls, aesthetically, did not disappoint. We knew the swimming pool was closed in Wet Season for the possibility of crocodiles, and as we finished the day with a swim at Buley Rockhole we resolved to return to Litchfield in the Dry, for further exploration, and probably camping.

I love the Wangi

First thing Saturday, we headed to Darwin to get our shopping on at Casuarina. It was busy, and I resented all the people who could go to Casuarina any weekend but chose this particular Saturday just to get in our way. Actually it was pretty fun, being amongst civilisation again.

Later, we caught up with friends old and new, and got a small taste of Darwin’s nightlife. It tasted, more or less, of sweat, alcohol, and not wanting to spend the night alone, so like most places I guess, but in all seriousness there are a decent number of bars for a town that’s smaller than you probably realise. Unless you realised it ranks 16^th in the country behind such metropolises as Geelong, Cairns and Gosford, in which case good for you. To be fair though, Darwin has a fairly youthful population, with an average age of 33 (thanks ABS!) A high/low light of the night was L getting hit on by a k.d. lang-lookalike (“do you like to party?”). L did not like to party.

We walked around the rapidly-(by Territory standards)-developing waterfront area on Sunday, visiting the WWII oil tunnels in the process, and just generally got the lay of the land, with many future trips to Darwin a certainty, given our home location. If you’re ever in Darwin and like Indian or Thai food we recommend Hanuman. Also, let us know if you’re in Darwin because we will visit you if we can. Or you can visit us; we have a spare bedroom (2 actually but only 1 with a bed).

Sweaty and historical

L spent Sunday indulging in her favourite pastime¹: stressing about weather. We’d been told that the road home was sporadically closed due to flooding on Saturday night, and L seemed to think staring at the BOM radar would make it stop raining. I tried to distract her with my wit and charm, but I was a tad concerned about being AWOL on Tuesday. Fortunately, the rain did subside in the Katherine region early enough for us to have minimal issues driving back on Monday morning. But we certainly learned there is a risk of being cut off, given that K-town has only 1 approach by road from the North. This has interesting implications for the fresh food people at Katherine’s one major supermarket.

In summary, we did not spend Easter being religious (by choice), nor eating chocolate (by accidentally leaving ours at home), nor watching footy (well, until Monday afternoon but that doesn’t really count as Easter, does it?). This would have to be first time that either of us can say that!

Moar waterfalls!

1. http://grammarpartyblog.com/2012/01/20/pass-time-versus-pastime/. If you wanted a reference for weather-stressing being L’s favourite pastime, sadly this has not yet been peer reviewed. Watch this space.

The Commuter, or There and Back Again

Stuck in another traffic jam on Motorway 4 a few days before we left Sydney, I was struck by the huge amount of time I have spent driving to and from work this year. After spending said traffic jam pondering my commuting habits and a bit of Excel-assisted arithmetic, I estimate I’ve spent around 15,500 minutes behind the wheel. Naturally, I then started to think about all the other more enjoyable things that I could do in this time:

In focus, out of Focus.

–         Watch the bromance that is the Lord of the Rings trilogy almost 28 times

–          Listen to Radiohead’s The Bends 319 times (though all the cool kids have already done this)

–          See 86 Twenty20 games, or a whole Indian Premier League season with time to spare

–          Fly return Sydney to Los Angeles 18 times

–          Cook L a delicious dinner on 344 nights (340 more than this year…)

–          Attend about a month’s worth of Big Day Outs

–          Re-enact the Apollo 11 mission with a few days to spare (to get myself a great 60s haircut)

–          Watch the entire series of Bad Breaking 6 times, then start a meth lab

–          Hear L actually finish crapping on about adorable, tiny animals … not even once

So with the start of the New Year, I am looking forward to walking to work in 2013.  My New Year’s resolution is to use all this extra time and energy effectively. So I have decided to build a rocket with the money I’m saving on petrol and tolls, and go to the freaking moon.