Tag Archives: Darwin

An Overview of Oz

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This Oz is not the one Dorothy and Toto visited. No, this Oz is- you guessed it!- Australia. We visited about eight distinct places (Sydney, Darwin, Ambalindum Station, Alice Springs, Ayers Rock, Gnaraloo, Amble Inn, and Perth), and it is fair to say we liked them all. My personal favorite would have to be Darwin of the beaches and warmth, followed closely by Ambalindum Station with Mel, Dave, and Fatso, and Amble Inn, home to Sandy, Millie, Peter, and Mr. Fluff.

Sydney: When we first arrived at the airport in Sydney, we were in for quite a climate shock. It was a frigid 55 degrees (or so) that night as Andre Wu picked us up in his van. After a week in Jaisalmer, India, we were about to freeze. Andre and Sabrina Wu, along with their son Anthony, were our hosts for the week. Sarah, from Germany, was a fellow guest. We lived far away from the city center but the transportation system made it relatively easy to get around. The city didn’t officially end even on our way up to the Blue Mountains.

Darwin: Our limbs warmed up as we landed in Darwin. We had a pretty good apartment that had a pool, and we often watched the sunset from the beach. The entertainment was good, especially watching Brave at Deckchair Cinemas.

Ambalindum Station: I am the Reeder star in Ambalindum Station’s TV commercial. I am in the background as Mel lifts the damper out of the camp stove. We befriended Dave, the gem-collector and cow horn polisher, Fatso, Skinny 1, and Skinny 2, the magpies, and Rex, the director and film crew of the station’s TV ad. We tagged along behind a cattle muster, too, which took forever but provided some interesting experiences.

Alice Springs: Ethan and I braved the chilly depths of the pool at Kathy’s B&B. Once. That was more than enough. Ethan also took a didgeridoo lesson there and was disappointed at the price of an instrument.

Ayers Rock: Now called officially called Uluru, Ayers Rock is a popular tourist destination, even though Ethan doesn’t get why. It was cold there, too, but the bush fire along the highway warmed the car up to 31 degrees Celsius.

Carnarvon: We were only here two nights, but while we were, we murdered pancakes, walked along the beach, and sorted pictures.

Gnaraloo: Snake tracks were everywhere, and, in what Ethan and I dubbed Valley of the Shadow, there were plenty of sheep skeletons. Valley of the Shadow was between the big dunes and the ocean. At Gnaraloo Bay and 3 Mile Camp, Ethan and I made awesome sand creations that got destroyed by the rising tide.

Amble Inn: Ethan and I fell in love with Sandy, Peter, and Mr. Fluff. Millie was harder to like. I never really did. Peter and Mr. Fluff, the adorabubble bunnies, were vicious. At least, Peter was, scratching my arms when I was holding him securely and therefore ruining my tan. I still love him, though. We visited the Pinnacles, Mt. Leseur, and nearby Jurien Bay, where we met two siblings who were named Erin and Ethan.

Perth: In Perth we did nothing that stands out to me except playground-hunt and eat pizza at Hero’s, where there were free slushies and Pac-Man games.

Ciao!

A Thousand Kilometers of Nothingness

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Today we got to see 992 kilometers of “sealed” road go by on our way to Tennant Creek from Darwin. That’s a long way to go south in one day, but we do it from home to California just about every summer. Anyway. I rode up front for the first three hours, then Ethan, and then Mom rode on the left side for the last 256K.

992 kilometers of dead kangaroo after dead kangaroo. Ethan and Mom each saw a live one, but Dad and I got to see a dead horse. That’s a fair trade…right?

Once we finally arrived, Ethan and I jumped at the chance to swim in the pool. It was FREEZING! Okay, it was probably just about the same as a lake in the Cascades, but to our India-hardened bodies, it was Antarctic. After a mere fifteen minutes we hopped out and went to Room Five of El Dorado Motel. There we dried off and warmed up and got ready for supper, which we had at a Portuguese restaurant run by a Portuguese woman. We ate tiny portions of our pasta to the tune of Nicki Minaj, hardly making dents in the huge amount served.
After we refueled the Kluger, we passed the Red Rooster restaurant sign. You should look it up.
Ciao!

Water Way, Water Day

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Today was our water day. And guess what? We even went to a park! Not a waterpark, officially, like with slides and rides, but it was Berry Springs Nature Park. It is supposedly crocodile-free, and we didn’t see any so I can’t officially argue with that. A lot of people on TripAdvisor and signs at the springs said that there are lots of wallabies and water monitors, but we didn’t see any. So why am I supposed to believe that there are wallabies and water monitors and pythons and no crocs?

At first it was uncomfortable. The rocks were slippery and spiky, the fish were nibbley, the people (namely Ethan) were annoying, the croc attack was imminent, the water was dirty, and the bugs were buzzing and biting.

We left the first and shallowest pool through the shallow canal to the Main Pool, where nothing really interesting happened except Ethan and I got brave enough to do handstands and I thought I saw a crocodile’s head. We went through another canal to get to the Lower Pool, and this time Mom said, “Wow, the current’s really going!” Dad tried to float with the current but kept hitting rocks and I said, “Currently, I’m feeling no current.” And when Ethan said that the current was really fast (or something to that effect), Dad said “Is that a currant or a gooseberry?”

What pathetic comedians we make.

Anywho, we got into the Lower Pool alright and went to the little dock. Ethan was singing the tune to Jaws. I was doing handstands. Mom and Dad were off to the side talking, probably about us. I did handstands and front flips to my heart’s content (not!) and then we swam downstream a little ways. We couldn’t find the weir, so we turned around. Ethan tried touching the bottom where it was twenty feet deep (feet-first). Actually it could have been deeper than that. We couldn’t see the bottom.

Oh, by the way, he failed. He also had a moment where he was scared of logs.

We fought our way upstream through the really-going current ‘til we got to the little platform at the Main Pool. Ethan snuck up on me and touched me with a leaf. I freaked out because I was still worried about crocs. He said, “Geez, it was just a leaf Eryn!” And I said, “That’s just like you hitting me with a log!!!” Of course that made him mad and he started lurking (though he was already mad about something else). (That’s when you lag behind because you’re mad. Not to embarrass Ethan; I do it too.)

Dad was the first one to the Upper Pool, and he and I stuck our heads under the waterfall. It was really heavy and I almost (not) drowned. Then Ethan and Mom came and Ethan and I stuck our heads under the waterfall, and eventually our whole selves til we were in this little cave. Then we left it backwards and floated out with the current-that-is-not-a-grape.

We finally left, picked up ice cream at Crazy Acres (two mangoes, one banana, and one passion fruit), and fed fish bread at Aquascene. It was mostly the same boring old slimy (yes, we touched them. We know) fish, but there was one spearfish- Speary, officially, but Ethan called it Speargun- and four rays: Raygan (the first and biggest one) and a group of three we called Robbie, Ronnie, and Rex. Robbie is short for Roberta. These and Raygan and Speary were too shy to get any bread, but I tried and tried for Speary. And therefore I failed and failed.

We’re also planning on going swimming again tonight. Yay!

Ciao!

Darwin Down Day

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It was so nice to be able to sleep in today!

After a (too-long) breakfast of rice, beans, and toasted (and non-toasted) crumpets, Dad sorted pictures, Mom did laundry, and Ethan and I forced ourselves through grueling hours of schoolwork: a review and mid-book test in Science, reading a lesson (or five) and a book in History, and doing a day’s section in Math. I also finished reading Prince Caspian and started on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. So far, Reepicheep, Kings Caspian and Edmund, Queen Lucy, and “Useless” Eustace have been captured as slaves. Aslan has not yet appeared. (In case you don’t know who I’m talking about, I would advise you to read The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.)

After eating our peppermint Magnum bars, Dad decided it was time to Do Something. So we got in the car with our swimsuits on to go to the beach and Do Something. Casuarina Beach is an actual beach, unlike the rocks outside our apartment. Ethan and Dad went way farther out into the surf than Mom and I did because I was worried about jellyfish and Mom didn’t want to be burnt to a crisp.

Soon enough we left and drove to Wentworth’s. Mom and Ethan got out there to buy groceries while Dad and I continued to the Greek restaurant and ordered supper. I memorized the twelve flavors of ice cream alphabetically: Boysenberry Swirl, Butterscotch, Chocolate, Chocolate Chip, Coffee Chip, Mango Swirl, Mint Chip, Rainbow, Rum and Raisin, Strawberry, Triple M&M, and Vanilla. Sadly we didn’t get any, but we did get a salad (consisting mainly of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions and not much lettuce) and four pita-wrapped things in three different flavors: one Chippy, two Falafel, and one Saguaraki (we think that’s how it was spelled). We enjoyed these at a picnic table across the street from our apartment, and Michelle, our landlord, came to talk to us.

Ethan biked up and down the path by the side of the beach until he tired of it, then we all came in, and hopefully we’ll have chocolate ice cream and go swimming before bed. Ciao!

Meet the Crocs!

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Today we went to Crocosaurus Cove. It is (obviously) in Darwin but it took us a seemingly long time to get there because we couldn’t find it at first. Once we did find it, we parked two blocks away and walked through the heat to the entrance.

After paying, we walked through the little cave at the entrance, ran past the aquarium displays, sped up the stairs, and arrived at the Jaws of Death just in time to see the (fake) crocodile head bite a piece of ice. The saltwater croc has over a ton of pressure behind its jaws.

The lady then showed us most of the crocs in the display: first there was Burt, and one of the other croc-keepers, Paul, fed him chicken. Burt starred in the original Crocodile Dundee and provided the basis for the computer-generated croc in Rogue. Next to Burt was Chopper, who was named after the Aussie criminal Chopper Reid because “they both have missing limbs and fierce attitudes.”

After Chopper came Denzel who is apparently the meanest crocodile at the Cove. In confinement next to Denzel was Wendell, who was named after the rugby star Wendell Sailor. Sailor said that the name was fitting because the croc was big, bad, full of attitude, and loves the spotlight. Wendell is the largest croc at the Cove right now at 5.5 meters, just barely longer than Chopper, who is also at 5.5 meters.

Houdini and Bess- nicknamed William and Kate in honor the royal couple- came next. Houdini got his name for getting fish out of a trap and escaping enclosures at the Darwin Crocodile Farm. He has been tamed since being put with Bess in 1991, and Bess laid a clutch of eggs in November 2011.

Harry was named after the inspector in Dirty Harry. He is apparently psychic as he has correctly selected the results of the Federal Election, AFL, and World Cup Grand Finals by picking the chicken under one competitor or another.

After we all were introduced and friendly, the four of us left for the mall, which sadly closed at 3:30 pm because it was a Sunday, the pool at our apartments, and the Deckchair Cinema, where you sit out under the stars and watch a movie. We saw Brave. Ciao!

Corroboree Crocs

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Corroboree Billabong was our destination today, and we arrived after many kilometers in our Kluger.

We got on the flat-bottomed boat with two dozen of our new closest friends and rode out on to the billabong, which is an oxbow lake that connects to the river system in the wet season. Corroboree is forty kilometers long and is home to over 1600 white-bellied seagulls. After seeing just one saltie (saltwater crocodile), we had a lunch of salad, cheese, a boiled egg, and two slices of bread. We then saw more salties and a couple of freshies (freshwater crocodiles) and plenty of seagulls, bats, and other flying things.

There is one croc, Rosie, who lurks in the area around the docks. She is very territorial because she is a female saltie, and one of those could have a territory with a radius of up to one hundred kilometers. Their bodies can be a significant fraction (one out of 25,000) of those hundred kilometers as they grow to be about four meters in length. Males are even larger, growing their whole life and even to a whopping 8.6 meters!

They also have a good memory, sharp eyes, and a keen sense of smell. They can smell you (if you give off a strong enough scent) from ten kilometers away and can see colors just like you or me. They can feel vibrations up to a kilometer away using the sensory cells that are all over their body.

Salties can live in both fresh and saltwater, unlike freshies who can, you guessed it!, live only in freshwater. Some other random facts from today include:
1. The bats were there to eat mangoes.
2. If you cut off a saltie’s leg, you can count the rings on it and know how old it is, just like a tree.
3. The jabiru (a type of bird) bend their legs in the opposite direction as us.
4. The male jicana (another bird) takes care of the babies.
5. The white-bellied seagull was originally the white-breasted seagull, but its name changed because of the need for political correctness.
Ciao!

Yet ANOTHER Park

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Today it was Leanyer Recreational Park, which was run by the YMCA so it was free. It has a playground, a skate park, shade, a café, and, best of all, a waterpark!!!

It included three tube slides plus a water playground and a big pool. The playground had two short tube slides (pink and green), water guns, two superfast red slides, and a huge bucket that dumped water every three minutes and twenty seconds (Mom counted). Ethan and I had races following one format:

  1. Go through a tube.
  2. Run back to the stairs and go through the other tube.
  3. Go to the net.
  4. Climb up and go down one of the superfast red slides.
  5. Pull the three ropes (that activate water flow) that are near the main stairs.
  6. Go up the stairs.
  7. Ride the other superfast slide.
  8. Run to the water gun in the corner.
  9. Touch it first.
  10. WIN!!!

The three big tubes were okay. The blue and yellow tubes were for people only (no inner tubes), which meant that you felt the bumps as you changed section of slide. Those hurt. The red slide was good. You had to go down in an inner tube, so Ethan was in the back and I was in the front. It is pitch dark in the tube once you get away from the entrance and exit. That meant that I could tickle Ethan’s feet without him knowing I was going to do that. And that could have been the sole reason to go to the park! Ciao!

A (Mostly) Darwin Day

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The day started off with breakfast at the Wus’ consisting of cereal, eggs, toast with Nutella, and oranges. We took the apples with us.

After finishing packing and saying good-bye to Andre, Sabrina, and Anthony, our host took drove four people, four backpacks, four suitcases, and two hats to the Sydney airport where we checked in. We got on our plane at Gate 5. There were a lot of people from the US Army on our flight, and when we touched down our captain wished them “the best of luck here in Darwin.”

The flight lasted four hours and forty minutes, and we were entertained by the movie Mabo about an Aboriginal man fighting for his land and The Big Bang Theory episode. Once we landed and got our luggage, we got our car from Hertz and watched (and heard. Definitely heard) the F-16s take off from the air force base next to the airport. Dad told us to be quiet on our short drive to our apartment because he hadn’t driven in about two months and hadn’t driven on the left side of the road in about two years.

We arrived safe and sound at Villa de la Mer, which is right on the Indian Ocean. After settling in we drove to the nearby Woolworth’s and picked up a week’s worth of groceries, including, but not limited to, lettuce, potatoes, tomato sauce, cupcakes, and butter. We hurried home to see the sunset, and we could watch the pink sun sink below the horizon. After that we hung out on the rocky beach for a little while then came home to have a homemade supper of pasta, tomato sauce, beans, broccoli, salad, and chocolate ice cream.

That makes for full people and a full day.

Ciao!