Arrival in Palumpa.

We stopped at the lovely Robin Falls for lunch on the way, after refueling at Adelaide River and heading towards Daly River.

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Here is the causeway across the Daly River. Debris in trees make it evident the river has fallen 15-20ft since the wet ended; i.e. since late March.

After that, it seemed, we drove another near 200km into reality.
It is nice, some days later, some hard days, to have a sense of being in reality, far from urban unreality, where, for example, real men have tea boxes, not x-boxes.

... oops, sorry, that's skipping ahead.

We had to cross the Moyle River much later. Indeed we had to cross bits of the Moyle a number of times. (that thing on the other side, in the first picture is a tyre, not a pig or cow)

Entering Palumpa Station, we came upon a great field of magnetic anthills - aligned north south to maximise sun absorption.
The tree in the foreground below is exactly that, a tree. Yes, it is a significant anthill.

There is smoke burning. Traditional aboriginal practice has been to maintain the tropical savannah country by burning undergrowth and grass to produce the right roots and fruits and also to expose game for hunting. Bindi indicated that she had learned from aboriginal people recently that crows and kites use fire as a tool. They not only flock to the burning places to catch fleeing game, but will pick up burning sticks and start new fire fronts.

Palumpa Station is owned and successfully operated by the local aboriginal community. The Community is known as Nganmarriyanga. Here is our permit to be here:

Well, on Monday Bindi went off to work and poor Ev was left with two boys, Dennis and Banjo, with dwindling batteries. Here is a nice picture of Banjo watching Ev wish he would have breakfast. There is no surviving picture of Dennis in this period.

Dennis went to the clinic Monday (Bindi wonderfully arranged it on the way home from school, school three houses from home, clinic two) and cleverly organised a supply of Augmentin for a bad throat returned, perhaps the beast of Easter, and a box of Panadol for the fever. It didn't work; Wednesday morning the state of Dennis's throat and mouth led him to the clinic to confirm rampant thrush not, or not just, infection. Oral nystatin produced a dramatic turn around. The rest period (the house is comfortable and air conditioned) and a technical nudge to the digestives had Banjo all smiles again.

Ev spent a little time at school with Banjo on each day.

Thursday 22 was a bonza day of restored happiness, not least for weary and worried Ev. We went to pick up the Woolworths delivery of things ordered via the school on the Monday morning.

Well, I've got the Woolies stuff in the Toyota (above); Ev helping Bernadette, the Clinic clerk. No doubt the fruit cases contain a resupply of nystatin antifungal for Dennis.

Dennis was by now again reviving, though still just a dark shadow of himself.

The airport was just a bit like the Beijing Airport in the mid-1980s, when the whole embassy team was there to welcome QANTAS on Sunday nights, for work reasons. A gaggle of middle level executives from Transport and Works had arrived on a separate, second plane - a traffic jam! - a charter, to look at things at the school. The school officer had gone to the airport in Cool Croc the school bus (picture below taken that evening, see next story). The VIPs moved from their arircraft with that well swelled air of executives fresh off a small but important charter plane, their cheeks a little flished in the heat, their pupils just a tad shrunk by the adrenalin required for coping with the wild and with committee status assertion on arrival. With hesitant hope their steps lifted a little at the sight of Bindi and Matumba's dark coloured, dark windowed Secret Service staff car ranged up beside the regualr flight. With false regret I leaned out and said, "sorry gentlemen, yours is the airport express today." Hollowly they shared the joke.

Thursday smiles