Day 2: Litchfield National Park!

What a day! I woke ridiculously early, had breakfast at the "Duck's Nuts" (don't ask), covered myself in sunscreen and crocodile repellent(!) and then rented a car. It's not a very manly car. Everyone else was driving a ute (with a dog on the back), or a 50m-long road train, or a 4WD. I had a red hyundai. It was quite exciting getting in and realising that it was a manual. I haven't driven one of them since my driving test (a long time ago). Anyway, I only stalled once (and that was because I stopped suddenly so that I didn't end up squashing a huge frilled-lizard that was sitting in the road - and then tried to start up again in 5th gear). I don't recommend re-learning to drive a manual car in Darwin. There are traffic lights approximately every 10m (all of them are on red when you get up to them).

I drove to the Litchfield National Park and it was wonderful. I had the window down, Mozart on the radio and the speed limit was 130km/hr on the Stuart Highway (the same road that Joris, Christine and I were on in Alice Springs earlier this year). It was about 130km to Litchfield and took about 1.5 hours.



The park was amazing. You drive in past huge termite mounds that sit eerily in the forest. I pulled up at a viewing platform and had the most incredible view of thousands of termite mounds (all facing North-South) in a field. I had the whole place to myself. In fact, I think that I had the entire National Park to myself!! All I could hear were the cicadas, frogs and strange splashing sounds in the streams.














I continued my drive through the park for about another 30km before stopping near the "Tolmer Falls". I went on a hike. It was hot. There were cycads (Cycas calicola, if you're interested) everywhere!

I then went past a wonderful, rocky area with views down into a deep gully. There were caves everywhere which you're not allowed to enter because "Tolmer gorge is an important habitat for Orange Horseshoe Bats and Ghost Bats". Apparently there are also big pythons that eat the bats.


The Tolmer Falls were spectacular. Again I had the whole place to myself (by the way, in case you're not believing me - the photo above of me was taken by my camera using its time delay mode). I don't think that I managed to take a photo that showed how spectacular it really was. The river (which I had been walking next to) suddenly cascaded down into a gully. The walls seemed vertical and yet large trees were managing to grow from the rock. There was a huge cave next to the base of the falls and rainforest plants in the gorge.

The views in the other direction were just as incredible. At this point the land is very high (a "tabletop") and therefore the views over the countryside beyond were superb (basically forest until the horizon).




























I was rather hot and wet by this time (from the humidity) and so got back in the car to drive to "The Tabletop Swamp". This was my favourite place by far. Again, I was the only person around. There were heaps of butterflies, lizards, birds (egrets, birds of prey, parrots) and a huge swamp. I was convinced that every log was a crocodile and so kept well back from the edge.







I then continued my drive and ended up at the "Buley Rockhole" and set out on a 5km walk to the Florence Falls. I cannot keep describing everything as spectacular and superb, but it really was. I cooled off by dangling my legs in a creek until I heard a loud splash (admittedly if a crocodile had been there then I probably wouldn't have heard it anyway). The walk was beautiful, but very wet. I seemed to be walking down a river and did at least half of the walk without any shoes on.

I'm running out of things to say. It's all a blur now of green! I spotted a few wallabies, a huge wallaroo, some lizards, heaps of birds (I found a snake, but on closer inspection it was a twig - oh well).

I then drove back to the hotel in a ridiculous amount of rain. I stopped for a coffee in Noonamah and bought myself a stubby holder that says on it "Where the hell's NOONAMAH?". I took a wrong turning coming into Darwin (a bit difficult as there is only one main road). It was an interesting detour - past the docks and the Captain Cook National Park. I'm now about to have a swim before dinner.

Day 1 in Darwin

It's hot ... it's tropical ... I've dipped my toe into the Timor Sea! It's very exciting. I really didn't know what to expect at all on this trip. I woke much too early, packed and walked to Epping station. On the train I got into a long chat with an elderly lady all about Darwin (she used to be an air hostess) and she was the first person who didn't tell me that I was crazy going in the wet season. We were chatting away so much that I almost missed my stop, but I still managed to get to the airport about three hours early! I had even checked in 24 hours earlier over the web and so I had nothing to do except buy a magazine and have a relaxing breakfast and watch a Christmas tree walk around the airport playing carols on a saxophone!

The 4.5 hour flight was as wonderful as ever. I spent the entire time staring out the window at the red landscape below. About an hour out from Darwin it got much cloudier and the landscape beneath became greener. We landed on time, I grabbed my bag, got into a taxi, went to my hotel and then immediately grabbed my camera and went out for a walk. I got lost! But it was wonderful. The temperature was 32C, but it was (still is!) humid. I don't recognise any of the birds! They're stunning (see photos). I walked down to the bay, around the harbour area, into the town, got chatting (for a short time) with an Aboriginal chap about Christmas (he's going back home "to the Kakadu" and needed a permit for something). Like Alice Springs (and unlike Sydney) there are a large number of Indigenous people around the centre. In fact, I hardly saw anyone else. Darwin is incredibly quiet (at least during the middle of the day at this time of the year). I had an entire, stunning beach to myself where I picked up all sorts of shells and worried whether cone shells existed in Darwin or not (see this page).

I then walked through some mangrove swamps (including leaping over a creek which I carefully checked for crocodiles) to the incredible botanic gardens (and rested under a Calabash tree!) before heading back to the City (having walked about 15km in the heat by this point) to have a beer. I must have been dehydrated as the beer went straight to my head, but I did manage to stagger across the road, order another beer and a huge Barramundi from "Outback Jacks" opposite.

I then watched the sun set over the harbour with huge fruit bats flying overhead. Wonderful!

P.S. There has been no rain! I'm very confused.

Clouds

Before I enthuse about my first impressions of Darwin, I feel the need to write a blog entry about clouds! Everyone told me that I was completely crazy going to Darwin in the rainy season, but I really hoped that I might see some big clouds. I have. We flew through them!! It was wonderful. Here are some photos from the flight ....

Christmas ...

Okay, I know that it's a bit early to have had Christmas, but I've been in a Christmassy mood for the last few days. This is mainly the fault of Ms. M. Mao who turned up again in Sydney bearing gifts and food colouring. She turned my milk pink. She also turned some of my mashed potatoes red and the rest green. We had some amazing meals, including one at an Eastwood restaurant that was called something like "super-hot chili hot-pot with lots of chili and more chilies". (By the way, I cannot determine from GOOGLE - the fount of all knowledge - whether chili should have one "l" or two.) Anyway, Ms. M Mao ordered something from the Chinese section of the menu and so I have no idea what it was, but it was very tasty and full of chillies.

We also had a Thai meal with Epping with various work colleagues and another pub meal in Epping for the pulsar group. That was fun!

Ms. M. Mao and I cooked up a Christmas dinner during which I opened my wonderful present from Alexander, Emma and Peter ... a music box where you punch holes in some card to make music. This was heavily used the day after during a BBQ where one of my musical friends managed to punch out a ridiculously complicated piece. THANKS! Ms. M. Mao put a Christmas cracker into the candle which instantly vaporised the cracker, most of the candle and splattered molten wax around my house.


At work we had a large Christmas party where Mike and I sat around being grumpy and watched Jonathan win an eating competition. I was so tired! In the evening most of the summer students, Jonathan, Joris, Nicole, Kate, Albert and Mike came around to my house for a BBQ. It was fun. After drinking much too much we went back to work to play lots of ping-pong until late in the evening. I then crashed in bed.

Yesterday was also eventful. I spent quite a bit of the morning tidying up the house from the previous night and then went to work where Joris and I think that we've made a breakthrough with our work on limiting the existence of gravitational waves. Unfortunately, if we are correct it will be much harder for us to detect the waves ... lots of checking needed. In the evening Maureen, Sarah and Kate came around for dinner and music. We played the Brahms clarinet trio (with Kate on the viola), plus a whole heap of other music (including the Vivaldi concerto for two cellos). Today I'm torn between working on my software or going hiking somewhere. I might try and do both.

Darwin's weather forecast

Saturday: Monsoonal showers and storms. Moderate northerly winds.

Sunday: Monsoonal showers and storms. Moderate northerly winds, fresh at times.

Monday: Monsoonal showers and storms.

Tuesday: Monsoonal showers and storms.

Wednesday: Showers and storms.



Sounds pretty straight-forward to me!!! I'm looking forward to my trip!!!! I'll pack a rain jacket.

A post!

Where do I start? The last blog entry had me in England. Since then I've had a wonderful holiday in Wales (and I must remember to walk the Taff river walk next time that I'm Wales). This holiday included eating a squirrel (very tasty). I took the train from Cardiff to London (it's nice to be on a train that actually goes quite fast) and planned not only a walk or two in Wales, but I discovered an article about some great-looking walks in Devon! Okay, I need another trip to the UK.

I got to the airport rather early and started chatting to various other people joining the queue for the Qantas flight. I then discovered that Terminal 4 at Heathrow is not very exciting and so bought myself some noise-cancelling headphones (wonderful things) and listened to music until the flight departed. What a flight!! I woke when we were flying on the boarder between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The mountains were phenomenal ... not a cloud in the sky. We then crossed over the Himalayas, the ganges over India and then down into Bangkok. We missed the riots by about 8 hours (the next Qantas flight got stuck). I managed to sleep quite a bit on the next section of the flight (although the person in the seat next to me was asking a lot of questions about Australia - she'd just broken up with her boyfriend and decided to spend a year in Aus! - she thought that Brisbane was a short train ride South of Sydney).

I arrived at 6-ish in the morning. Took a taxi home, changed clothes and then went straight to work. Between then and now I've been doing things non-stop! Ms. M. Mao, a PhD student at the ATNF and UTas, was visiting and requested lodging in my guest room. Luckily I had bought back a large, red, fluffy Welsh dragon for her which seemed to go down rather well. In fact, it made its appearance at dinner (of course, at the Ranch) and was cuddled by numerous astronomers (attached photo is of David + dragon).

I'm now forgetting most of what happened last week (or was it the week before). We (a whole heap of us) went on a wonderful hike in the Mt Kuring-Gai Chase national park where we found some amazing aboriginal art (I'm not sure of the rules about putting photos of the artwork on the web so I'd better not), Ms. M. Mao and I went on another enjoyable walk in the local national park. Oh, I also flew to Melbourne and back. I like Melbourne ... it's full of trams. I gave my talk twice - once at the University of Melbourne (where everyone fell asleep) and once at Swinburne (where people seemed at least moderately interested). On Friday I played squash and won one game and lost about five. I've missed mentioning a great sextet rehearsal where we played the Prokofiev sextet for clarinet, piano and string quartet ("Overture on Jewish Themes"). It's wonderful.

What else? I forgot the most recent students+telescope run. We had a BBQ at Rob's house that was rather exciting and involved us extinguishing it with a fire extinguisher. I've written a couple of telescope proposals for the next semester. My summer vacation student started - he's really good. We found some weird circularly polarised pulses coming from a star (not a pulsar). I gave an interview to the ABC in Perth (via the telephone) about Earth-based time standards and whether pulsars were better than atomic clocks. I got locked in Jessica's garden whilst trying to take her dog for a walk and had to scale her fence. Finally, I was lucky enough to be invited to give a talk with Jocelyn Bell on pulsars at the Sydney Observatory. She gave a great basic overview on pulsars and I continued by discussing the research that we're currently carrying out.

Back to work .... (I'm going to have Christmas in the tropics!!)

A very quick update

Lots of people have been trying to get me to update this blog, but so many exciting things have been happening that I don't seem to find the time. I'll try and update it tonight - however, I've found myself on another blog: http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/blog/