Thinking about my Top End Trip

This time last week, instead of wearing tracky dacks and a sloppy joe, sitting here at the computer in my study, I was enjoying a mid-day nap in my 'bush bungalow' set in the lush tropical gardens at LakeView Park, Jabiru, before I drove out later that afternoon to climb Nourlangie Rock to watch the sun set. What a difference a week makes, hey?
I'm glad to be home, with Steve, of course, settling back into the reassuring predictability of the routines of life here at Larnook, but the week I had in the Top End, was a bit of magic. That I needed.
So, I've stuck together a few of the photos I took that help me tell my Top End story. Hope you enjoy.

Colour. Vibrant, super-saturated colours of the Top End landscape, this particular part of it being some cascades in a stream on the western edge of Litchfield National Park. Skies of deep, endless blue; reds, yellows and oranges of the earth and rock; the greens of the trees and shrubs and grasses; the greens and blues of the rivers and creeks and waterholes. A landscape of primary colours that loudly declares the tropics. While I was drinking in the colours of a billabong at the foothills of a rocky escarpment I was transported back to my childhood watching In the Wild with Harry Butler on my grandparents' colour television. I had forgotten that part of the absolute magic of that program were the colours so bright and vivid on the television set. Astonishing greens and blues and oranges of landscapes out of which Harry pulled brown tree snakes, crocodiles and frilled lizards.

Colour. Rich and intense again. But more than colour. Sunset over the infinity edge of  the Timor Sea, taken from East Point Reserve, site of army camps during WWII. As an introvert with introspective tendencies, I am drawn to sunsets, happy to sit in quiet contemplation and watch the sinking sun as it soaks the horizon with gold and red and orange. Sunsets are great to think with.
Shutting down one day but with the promise of another to come. I came to the Top End in part because I wanted to feel small in a vast landscape and watching so many spectacular sunsets or climbing to the top of an escarpment and looking out over miles of woodland, allowed me feel tiny in space and time.
My 'companion' on parts of my trip was Eric Worrell, Australia's first 's nake man' and the subject of the book, Snake Bitten, that my colleague Nancy Cushing, and I, wrote a few years ago. Worrell spent a bit of time up in the Northern Territory in the 1940s/early 50s and I had trodden in his footsteps on my last trip here, visiting the paces that he had written about in his book Song of the Snake: war-torn Darwin, Alligator River, Katherine and Mataranka.  This time my steps weren't so deliberate, but Worrell was never all that far away. He had watched the sunsets from East Point many times when he had been stationed there in the war:
"When the glowing sun sinks beneath the shimmering sea and the tropic moon hangs high in the heavens, Darwin teams with night life. The squeaking bark of tiny geckos as they gorge upon the myriads of tiny insects vibrates through the rafters; pandanus and carpet snakes glide through the twisted vines and creepers."

Crocodiles had a far greater presence than I can remember on my previous trip to the Territory, which was about six years ago. I can remember seeing a few but not as many as this trip. I had decided that I needed to go on one of the 'jumping croc' boat tours' as I will be writing about reptiles in tourism shortly, and I wanted to see for myself what these trips were all about. I chose a tour (of the three that are currently operating on the Adelaide River about 50 minutes to the east of Darwin) which advertised itself as 'jumping croc and wildlife tour' thinking that it might be a more ecologically sensitive version. I'm not sure that it was, but it was definitely a crowd-pleaser. No sooner than the 20 or so of us made our way into the aluminium boat (with what I, and my fellow cruisers thought had rather minimal security to protect against the antics of large, hungry,
habituated crocs) than this very big animal, named Terminator, slowly and very deliberately torpedoed its way from the middle of the Adelaide River to the boat. It really was a thrilling moment and one that I would want to experience only from the relative safety of a boat. The croc was around five metres long and seeing it so close was a real rush.
I'm still undecided about the ethics of the cruise - crocs do naturally jump out of water to grab birds and bats from low hanging branches, but they must surely become habituated and lose any fear (if they held any) of boats. More worringly is that they begin to associate boats with food. I would definitely not cruise up this stretch of river in a little dinghy!
The fellow who was the boat operator and guide - very friendly in a Territorian way - knew very little about croc biology or ecology - this tour made no pretences at being educational. He knew how to thrill his audience though, and judging from the reviews on TripAdvisor, the punters are all very happy.

As I said, crocs had a presence throughout the trip, whether watching them in captivity biting ineffectually at the 'Cage of Death' lowered into the pools at Crocosaurus Cove in one of the main streets in Darwin city or seeing them cruising the rivers and billabongs in Kakadu, or eyeing off the locals standing by the edge of the East Alligator River at Cahill's Crossing over to Arnhem Land. There is something different about knowing that you are walking along riverbanks or around the edge of waterholes and billabongs with an animal that regards you as a light lunch. Sure, the bush around here has its potential dangers - highly venomous snakes, poisonous plants - but they use their toxins for protection. The crocs are apex predators and who knows, I may well have been 'stalked' by an unseen crocodile as I walked - carefully I might add - along rivers and billabongs.  Seeing these signs reminded me that I had to be careful and mindful of the potential threat that these animals posed for me.

I was quietly fascinated by the rock art left by Aboriginal people over thousands of years on rock faces, caves and under rock overhangs. I took many photos and I wondered at the stories and symbolism that each represented and of the individuals who actually painted them. This image of the thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, left a big impression on me. The extinction of this animal is one of Australia's greatest ecological tragedies. How can such a marvellous animal, so unique, so distinctive, so dog-like, be killed to extinction in a matter of a few decades. People kept them as pets, for god's sake. These animals and the Tasmanian devil ranged over much of the mainland prior to the arrival of dingos about 4000 years ago. The prevailing wisdom is that the dingo out competed with the devil and the tiger leading to their extinctions on the mainland, their only refuge being Tasmania, where the dingo didn't get to.  But I wonder, given the parlous state the devil is now in with the facial tumour disease, that the dingo hypothesis might just be too simple, and that perhaps something else, like a disease, might have played a part in their demise.
I was moved by seeing the likeness of this amazing animal, surviving here only as an image rendered in ochre, surveying the floodplain under Ubirr, looking for food with its enduring, relentless, but ineffectual, gaze.

There were of course some moments of disappointment - I didn't like the first place I stayed at in Kakadu, which seemed to be filled with men in their 20s who were staying there for the fishing and who filled up the space of the restaurant with their loud noise (read 'yobbos'), and a couple of mornings were a bit windier than I like, but these are so minor in comparison with the intense pleasures of the trip. I am continually amazed at how much more clarity of thought I have when I am temporarily liberated from the everyday life of work and home and I enjoyed some moments of great inspiration - some of which I have already translated into completed or near completed projects since arriving home at Larnook.

I sat in this rock hole below the Florence Falls in Litchfield National Park, cooling off, looking out into the cobalt blue of the sky, feeling the warmth of the sun and the cool of the water on my skin. And I felt that delicious feeling of freedom, no matter how fleeting it may be, which makes travel to places like this so special. I took my swimmers off and floated naked. I know that I am privileged that I have a life that allows me to experience such joy as this.