Darwin

If you could swim at the beaches with only the normal probability of death, Darwin could well be paradise.

I've been there twice now, once for work and once for a weekend. The weekend I went up was for an exhibition match between the Queensland Reds and the ACT Brumbies, but I decided to make a touristy trip of it.

The game was Friday and I went out for a few beers with my boss afterwards, and stayed in a backpacker on Mitchell Street, right in the middle of the city.

Saturday morning I needed breakfast, and found this great Turkish place! I had the 'Turkish Breakfast,' which was kind of a breakfast antipasto platter, a pile of olives, feta, tomato, cucumber and an omelet - delicious!

I thought I would be adventurous and order a Turkish coffee... the little old lady who was behind the counter, who I can only describe as a nona (I don't know the Turkish word) kind of looked at me doubtfully, and tried to talk me into having a flat white. But I persisted, and it was... well... perhaps I should have taken her advice.
After breakfast I headed to a crocodile park. They get the salties (the ones that will kill you... just to watch you die) to jump out of the water for bit of chook, it's pretty amazing to watch.
But they're only the smallish ones (they'll still kill you though). The really big ones are kept in breeding pens and there are duckboards over them. So you get to see them pretty close.
But wait, there's more! You get to feed them (hopefully not your arm). They give you a bit of chook on a rope on a stick, and you dangle it over the edge until they jump for it. They might be a meter and a half below you, it's certainly not far, perhaps two metres at most. The trickiest thing is to not move the chook when they jump for it - which is pretty much the exact opposite of my natural instinct. It was an interesting experience.
And then you get to wrestle with a saltwater crocodile! Of sorts... There's been a bit of reptile wrestling of late, but I will save that for another post.
After all the excitement of the morning I needed some lunch, and headed to the wharf precinct. You can get some really amazing seafood there, and a nice glass of wine, and the view ain't half bad either. This was when I started to think that perhaps Darwin may be paradise...
This is the view from the wharf looking back at the city. The plaques are tributes to the wharfies who died when the Japanese bombed the harbour in World War II. There's a lot of war tributes in Darwin, and a special museum dedicated to the attacks on the city. I didn't get there on this trip, but it's on my to do list.

This is the view looking out into the harbour.

After that I went for a walk around the city, and then drove up the headland a bit and watched the sunset over the Timor Sea. It was pretty special, but after visiting the croc farm I kept a respectful distance from the water!On Sunday I went to some awesome markets and had crepes and coffee for breakfast. I also managed to buy Thriller by Michael Jackson and Boy by U2 on vinyl. It was a really cool vibe and confirmed my suspicions of Darwin being a pretty cool little town.

On Sunday arvo I headed to the Darwin Museum. They have this stuffed croc there, 'Sweetheart'. He was 5.1 metres long and killed a number of people... I suppose the name is ironic?

The museum also has this really interesting exhibition about Cyclone Tracey. There's this one little room you can step into that's pitch black and you hear a recording of the noise from 1974. It's pretty intense, and quite scary even though you know it's not real. One shudders to think what the real thing would be like.

They also had a touring exhibition about ACDC. My Dad, being a nerd, didn't really get into them much and therefore it's a bit of a blackspot in my musical knowledge, but that was interesting.

It's about a three hour drive to Darwin, so very doable for a weekend. I think what I like about it is quite similar to what I liked about Newcastle - it's got most things you might want but everywhere is 10 minutes drive. The humidity, however, is pretty confronting, and you can't really swim at the beach and expect to come out again.

But yeh, it's a great city and I'm looking forward to more touristy weekends!

I went back last week to do a four wheel drive course, which I think will come in handy. I now have no excuse for stuffing the ABC car though.

Work is going well, I'm finding some stories and making some contacts, and I continue to meet people socially. So far it seems like moving to Katherine was a good call!

ABC office

I'm trying something a bit different here, hopefully it works.

Here's my office!

So I haven't posted as regularly as I said I would... sorry! Another one will be coming soon.

Katherine Gorge

On Sunday I decided it was time to go and have a look at Nitmiluk, also known as Katherine Gorge.
It was pretty spectacular, but at the moment most of the walking trails are closed due to the wet season. This is the first gorge, I gather there is a series of them.

Apparently in the dry season the water is clear. I suppose it makes sense the water would be dirty if it has been raining heaps, which it has. I will have to head out in the dry season to take the same shots to compare.

It was only a short walk, about a kilometre each way to the lookout, but the humidity, combined with my general lack of fitness made it a very hot one. The track also went up the escarpment, which was rather steep! I started walking just after a storm had passed through, which no doubt made the humidity worse.It was an overcast day, which I think may have detracted from the experience a bit, but it was good fun, and nice to get out of the house.

Speaking of which, I'm staying in a shared house at the moment. One of the housemates has gone overseas but has graciously let me stay in her room. She gets back at end of January, so there's a definite deadline to move out, but it will let me take a bit of time to find a place, rather than jump at the first house I can find. There hasn't exactly been offers flowing in, but I remain optimistic that once people keep coming back from holidays more people will be looking for a housemate.

And why wouldn't they want me, I'm quite the housemate-catch.

The job is going well, I've made my debut on the NT country hour. I'm beginning to feel more comfortable with the technical sides of radio, but I find myself concentrating on levels and making sure the damn thing is recording, not so much the interview. But I suppose these things come with time.

The move to Katherine!

If you’re reading this, chances are you already know that I’ve taken a job with the ABC in Katherine, in the Northern Territory.

I finished up at The North West Star on New Year’s Eve, and started driving on January 2.

I went to Google maps to see how far it would be between Mount Isa and Katherine - about 1200 kilometres. But the directions were pretty funny.

Head out of Mount Isa on the Barkly Highway, continue for 635 kilometres. Turn right onto the Stuart Highway, continue for 648 kilometres. Arrive Katherine.

So it was pretty unlikely I was going to get lost.

I head off a bit later on Sunday than I had hoped. I was house sitting for the photographer at the Star, Jane, and by the time I put the last few things in the car, vacuumed the house and did the dishes it was 10am.

Here’s the Queensland/NT border, just west of Camooweal. The only time I’ve “been” to the NT was when I went to Camooweal for their campdraft and drove 100 metres across the border.

Up until this point the car was going fine, loaded to the max as it was. But when I stopped for a loo break a bit later, there was something a bit weird going on, less power in the car.

But I meandered along, had lunch at Barkly Homestead, and then came to the one intersection of the trip where I actually turned left and drove into Tennant Creek.

This is what the Barkly Plain looks like, more or less for all 600 odd kilometres. Sometimes there were bushes. An info sign I stopped at said it hasn’t changed for the last 500 million years. That’s what it felt like.

Now, some back-story. On New Year’s Day I broke the door handle of my driver’s side door. Annoying, yes, but I figured it was just one of those things that happens. But being a public holiday, and the next day being Sunday, I figured I would just have to deal with it.

But when I stopped at the motel in Tennant Creek I shut the door on my seatbelt and couldn’t get the door open. At all. Luckily I had renewed my NRMA membership before I left, and I was able to call the NT version – the AANT. Unfortunately the bloke in Tennant Creek was on holidays and couldn’t come around until 8am the next morning.

So I went and had a few beers at the Tennant Creek Hotel and went to bed. After my late start on the first day I wanted to get on the road much earlier. But it was about 9am when the AANT guy arrived and opened the door with a bit of a jiggle of the door handle – very embarrassing.

But I asked him about the engine and started up the car for him.

He said he wouldn’t drive it, and the engine was missing pretty badly. I could give it a go and might make it, might not. He would drive it, he said, but he did point out that he was a mechanic.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not a mechanic. In fact I once had to take my bike to the bike shop after trying to tighten the brakes. But it was January 3, the New Year’s Day public holiday and there was nothing open in Tennant Creek.

The worst-case scenario would be breaking down in the middle of nowhere, which is describes pretty well all of the Stuart Highway.

So after a chat with Dad, I decided to see how the car would go from Tennant Creek to Three Ways roadhouse, 26 kilometres up the road. If that went well, I would see how it went to the next roadhouse, and so on.

The car sounded alarmingly like a lawnmower, but once it got going it seemed okay. So I continued on, holding my breath.

It was all going well until I stopped for petrol in Elliot, and, embarrassingly, shut my door on my seatbelt again!

I had seen the guy open it, and he said all I needed to do was open the door a bit harder. But I tried and tried and couldn’t get it open, and I didn’t want to break it. The guy at the servo directed me to the AANT guy’s house, and he was good enough to come and open it first try for me. I’m really going to have to learn that technique.

So up the Stuart Highway I went. The landscape for the first few hundred kilometres was quite outbacky, with a few hills and crests.

This was a memorial to Sir Charles Todd, the bloke who designed and oversaw the construction of the Overland Telegraph. For those of you playing at home, that was the telegraph line that linked the rest of Australia to the UK for the first time. Amongst other thing, this meant we could get the cricket score in the UK overnight, rather than in a few weeks. The memorial marks roughly where the line joined. It was built from the south and the north and met in the middle. Note the telegraph pole in the background. I’m not sure if this is legit or not, but it’s interesting!

I actually wish I had gone to the repeater station at Tennant Creek, but I was fretting about my car when I passed it and didn’t want to stop when it seemed to be going well. I also reckon I will be back down there for work at some point, so watch this space. Katherine also has a repeater station, which I will visit in due course.

The Stuart Highway has a lot of tourist signs advertising World War II historic sites. Again, I wanted to stop and have a look but the roads were dirt and wet, and given the mechanical dramas I figured it would be better to visit another day. But I’m pretty keen to have a look. After all, in terms of Australia in WWII, this was where the action was.

As I drove along under clear blue skies I eventually saw some clouds on the horizon. As I edged closer it became apparent it wasn’t just a few clouds. This was a monsoonal low! Excuse the dead bugs on my windscreen.

I hit some pretty serious rain, which was actually quite nice because it cooled things down a bit.

The landscape also changed and the country became greener. I suppose the further north you get the more rain falls. There were more trees as well. This photo is pretty blurry, but you get the idea.

So I was pretty well stuffed by the time I got here. The ABC is putting me up in a caravan park cabin for a few nights, and I have a couple of numbers to ring about a place to live.

I start work tomorrow. It’s a rural reporter position, which means I will be filing for the Australia’s longest running radio show, the Country Hour – not Hamish and Andy believe it or not. I’ll also be presenting a 15 minute rural news segment at 6.15am (that’s early!) three days out of every six. There’s also opportunities to file for national programs like Bush Telegraph on Radio National and the World Today.

Katherine seems like an interesting sort of town. It’s about 9000 people and has similar sort of services to Parkes. In fact the Woolies seems a lot nicer than Mount Isa’s, which is almost triple the size of Katherine!

The heat and humidity is pretty spectacular, but I’m told it’s worse in Darwin. But I’m feeling pretty optimistic about the whole thing and looking forward to my first day at work tomorrow.

I was thinking about my first few days in Mount Isa, and it’s definitely a better feeling to be here! Though I suppose a lot more had changed when I moved to Mount Isa.

I’m going to try to post blogs a bit more regularly. I well and truly dropped the ball in recent months, but with a new town, new job and plenty of travel for work I’m sure there will be plenty to write about!

Watch this space.

Gregory again

I went to Gregory Downs last weekend again. My mate Tristan from Newcastle was passing through as part of the Postie Bike Challenge, which is a charity thing that rides little posties from Brisbane to Darwin.

As he had come all the way from Newcastle, I thought it would be rude not to go up and see him! So I left on Friday after work and got up there just after dark.

I realised half way up there that I had left the memory card for my camera at home! I realised because I stopped to take a photo of some bushfires that were burning and surprisingly my camera wasn't working.

It was great to catch up with Tristan though. There was a fair bit of alcohol consumed and then someone decided to bring a postie bike into the bar...

The riders headed off pretty early on Saturday, and I stayed around and had a swim in the river, which was beautiful. It was only a short trip but man it was good!

I did a story on the postie bikes for The Star, you can read it here.

Century mine

I got to go up to Century Mine a few weeks ago. Century produces the second most amount of zinc in the world, and used to be the second biggest open cut pit in the world. Nowadays it has to settle for the biggest in Australia. It's about 240 kilometres north west of Mount Isa, but it's a fly-in fly-out operation, which I did for the day!

It all came together because of the trip I took to Lawn Hill. The minister's plane I was on landed at Century Mine and I met the PR person who I exchanged cards with. She asked if I wanted to go up there and who can say no to that!

I flew out of Isa at 6am, which meant I had to be at the airport at 5.30am. I seem to be flying around in Beechcraft planes a lot, it was a King Air and took about 40 minutes.

I had a tour of the village where the workers live. It's a pretty good set-up, and feels a little like a school camp. There's a big dining room, a pub, a gym, a pool, tennis, volley ball and basketball courts, barbecues... whatever really.

From the village it was to the Mine Administration Centre a few kilometres down the road. I spent the rest of the morning holding a lot of interviews with trainees and trainers. I also talked to the General Manager and a few other people.

But in the afternoon I got to have a tour of the pit. Here's a composite panorama I made from the lookout at the top. From here, the trucks on the road look like toys!

We were driving down the pit in a Toyota Landcruiser, which ordinarily one would say is a pretty solid vehicle. It felt, very, very tiny going down. It became very apparent the trucks were far from toys.

The bottom was very interesting. You can kind of see it here, but a scoop is putting rock in a truck while another one waits. It's not ore at this point, it's overburden rock. They have been getting ore out, but eventually they will hit very rich ore with no overburden and make a motza.

We went up and over to another part of the pit where nothing was happening at that point. They stagger the pit because it's stronger to have walls like that and it's also safer because if there's a slippage hopefully some of it is stopped on one of the levels.

They also drill holes into the walls to let out water. They have dug into a natural water table and it's safer to let the water out in a controlled way than let it build up. You can see in this photo the stains on the wall from water coming out.

After coming out of the pit I had a tour of the rest of the side. This is a pile of crushed ore that has come up the conveyor belt from the crusher. From the pit the ore is dumped, then scooped into a smaller truck, tipped into the crusher and then it ends up in this pile.

From this pile, it goes through a little hole which is below this pile onto another conveyor belt. It does this to give a consistent feed of ore, and goes into the concentrator, which is probably 100 metres away.

In the concentrator the ore is turned to slurry and then pumped 304 kilometres in a pipeline to Karumba. It's put on a special flat-bottomed transport ship and then taken out into the Gulf of Carpentraia to be put on an export ship.

I think the pipeline is a really interesting way to move it. Although, last year the pipeline broke, which caused more than a little bit of trouble for the mine!

After the pit tour it was time to fly home. It was a pretty long day but I learnt a lot. I wrote up a fair bit of content for the paper so hopefully it was worth it for my editor. Oh yeh, and the food was great!

Birdsville

One of the things I had long wanted to do since moving to Mount Isa was go to the Birdsville Races.

It seemed to fall into place - I had a three day weekend and my friend Luke was going. But I would have had to drive down by myself, and it's almost 600 kilometres. There was also rain about and talk about getting flooded in. When I woke up on Friday I was tired and grumpy and decided to pike.

I felt like I had wasted an opportunity but it meant I would get to catch up with my friend Luke who would be in the Isa on Friday night. So over a few beers, he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. As you may remember, Luke is a pilot, and he was flying a charter plane down the next day. There was a spare seat.

Luke used to do the mail run from Port Augusta, which included Birdsville. Hence he knew the baker in Birdsville, and for the last couple of years has helped out at the bakery. Dusty the baker was going to let him sleep out the back of his bakery, and said he could bring someone too. And he could provide a swag.

Yes, it really was this convenient.

So at 8am on Saturday we flew out of Mount Isa in a Beechcraft Baron. It was cloudy for the first half, but suddenly we came out and saw the beautiful landscape.

The Baron is not pressurised, and at 9000 feet it was about two degrees the whole flight... for two hours.

There was a lot of water about and the land was very green. These three lakes were on the station that Luke used to work on - his first professional flying gig was mustering cattle.
This photo is us on final approach to Birdsville. I was quite surprised the runway is right in town. Apparently before September 11, Birdsville was famous for the fact that you could taxi your plane right up to the pub. Simpler days. I guess they don't have too many noise concerns - for most of the year the airport would be pretty quiet I would think.
From the airport we headed to the bakery, where Luke arranged some curried camel pies and coffee. Yes, that's right - curried camel. I was a bit hesitant at first, but they were really delicious. The camel was fibrous but not stringy, and had a gamey but not overwhelming flavour.

Luke got to work and I went to explore the town. He recommended visiting the museum, which is a collection of quirky items collected over decades. I took this photo for the Jamieson side of my family. This water cart was built in Shepparton, but it must be a typo because everyone I know just calls the town in Victoria 'Shep'. If you don't know where it is, it's just down the road from Toc.
This is a photo of the Traegar pedal wireless - the radio system that made the Royal Flying Doctor Service possible. You can see above it a morse code tapper-thingy, which is how the first radios worked.
I took this photo for Dad. He always pointed out Golden Fleece signs whenever we saw them as kids and made a big deal out of it.
Birdsville is almost right on the Diamantina River. There was a packed camp site on the river banks which was very muddy due to the rain.

I should point out at this point that the races were actually cancelled because the track was underwater. I'm not sure if the river is in flood in this shot, but I know the roads out of Birdsville were cut for three days - after everyone had driven in. Just another reason why I was very lucky to fly.
This is an old pub that was converted into the first hospital of the Australian Inland Mission - the precursor of the RFDS. Birdsville was never a bustling town, but at its height had three pubs. It now has one.

This pub was built out of local stone held together by dehydrated gypsum mixed with sand and water to create a bonding agent. Clever. This is where the first every pedal wireless transmission from Birdsville took place.

The second AIM hospital is basically a tin shed, and is now a museum. It's also where the Uniting Church holds services, in a tiny little room.

You can try to run from God, but you can't run from the Uniting Church. Even in this tiny little town in the middle of the Outback, I saw this classic scene - little communion shot glasses on a piano next to the Australian Hymn Book.
After my wander, I went back to the bakery and decided to help out. The races were off so I didn't have much to do, and it seemed fun. I cleared tables, emptied bins, and put beer in the fridge. All very important.

I don't know why, but it fascinated me to watch the baker Heiner making sausage rolls. Yes, that is a bit weird.
After consultation with Luke, I decided to take my guitar to Birdsville. I did try my hand at busking in the afternoon. I made the grand total of $7.25. But I would like to point out that it was definitely the quiet part of the day, and that's almost two beers!

After the bakery shut, it was time to have a few beers with Dusty and Luke and cook dinner. There were about six or so people working in the bakery, and we all helped out and had a few drinks while we cooked tea. It was a lot of fun.

After dinner Luke and I headed to the pub and to Fred Brophy's Boxing Tent. This harps back to a bygone era of sideshow alleys. The basic idea is you get people up to take on boxers in the ring, and then charge people $25 a pop to go in and watch.

It's incredibly popular. They start with a bit of a show out the front which actually includes drum beating. Brophy brings out his boxers one by one, and then gets members of the crowd up. He matches them up appropriately, with a lot of drum beating in between, and then everyone heads inside the tent.
It's pretty crazy to watch, but no one really gets hurt. They give them pretty big gloves and Brophy breaks it up if it's going too bad.

And I don't really remember too much about the rest of Saturday night...

On Sunday I can say I didn't get up as early as the baker. But I had breakfast and helped out a bit clearing tables.

Out the front of the bakery was this garden bed of Sturt's Deser Pea. Beautiful.
We had to fly out at 11.30, but it was a great trip, and I owe Luke many beers now for taking me.

It's a shame I didn't see the races, but it was such a great weekend. Working in the bakery was actually really fun and a great way to start conversations with people. Not a typical weekend, but a brilliant one.

Finally, this is the historic Birdsville Hotel. The runway is literally across the street on the left hand side.