One of the good things about being
in WA is that the sun comes up at a reasonable hour and the boys usually manage
to sleep in until 7 or 7:30 . The only difference was this morning the sound of
the mozzies, zzzzing, on the outside of the screens was so loud that it was
hard to sleep through! A few times through the night De and I had been up
bombing the van with mortein in the hope of killing of a few of the noisy
little buggers!
We headed of back to Oobir for
another ranger tour but this one was focused on bush tucker. Our ranger was not
much bigger than Jack but in his mid to late 20’s (at my best guess) he was as
quite as yesterdays ranger and we had a great time learning from him about what
to eat, what trees to make canoes from and a whole range of things. When we
passed the main cavern we had looked at yesterday he, almost as an
afterthought, pointed out some rock art half way up the rock face. “Tasmanian
Tiger” he whispered, and there, clear as day was rock art that had been done
why the now extinct Thylacine existed in the northern tip of Australia.
Amazing! I have since found out that there is a number of art sites with
Thylacines as well as other “Mega Fauna” from before civilisation as we know it
existed around where we were....
Another site he pointed out had
art showing encounters with guns and boats, while not as astounding was just as
incredible! On the way back to camp we took a detour across the East Alligator
river which is the boundary between Kakadu and Arnhem Land. We didn’t have the
required permit so we suck our way about 5kms along the road through some
magnificent landscape. On one side was shining green wetland the other side rocky
escarpments with rock art clearly visible as we drove. We felt like we were in
a James Bond movie and were ready to be pulled up at any moment. We did a quick
U-turn and headed back across the crossing.
We headed back to camp for lunch and a rest. In the afternoon I headed back to the crossing with the hope of catching dinner. I fished to up river side of the causeway for an hour with nothing to show for it. A bit more confident of fishing in some serious croc country I headed to the bottom side and started to cast my favourite lure. I could see a big eddie I thought would hold something and I managed to land it exactly where I needed it. Half a second later and my lure was tearing across the rapids at the base of the causeway at lightning speed towards a huge snag (fallen tree). The water was shallow so the top 1/3rd of her was protruding from the water and in the 2 seconds it took her to cover the 20m I was spellbound. I think my mind got as far as the “I” in the “I can’t believe I have got such a huge fish” before she was gone, the knot between my leader and line giving away.....ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
I cast and cast and cast in the vague hope that I would catch another one but with nothing more than a good tale I returned to camp with my tail between my legs!
 |
| A triple of of cattle crossing the causeway |
I cooked up pizza while the boys had an afternoon at the movies, all crowded around our TV screen, which is the size of a normal laptop screen, watching Life of Pi. Jacko lasted around 5 minutes with Sambo being spellbound by it....it never ceases to amaze me how different our children can be!
The squadrons of mozzies re assembled as dusk drew near and their attacks continued throughout the night. We crawled into bed after another massive day doin the block!
No comments:
Post a Comment