The Lost City

Right, so...

There's this film trope (which was predated by an equivalent non-film trope) about the Lost City. It is a racist trope that dates back to when archaeologists (and people who pretended to be such) were first seriously exploring Africa (and, to a lesser extent, South America). They found evidence of ancient, or even old, cities and it blew their tiny racist minds.

How could black people build cities? they thought and so told themselves a myth... They started telling stories of ancient white people who must have built the cities and many movies were made about this and all was happy. The modern version of this myth is that it was aliens, but has the same racist assumption that black (or sometimes, brown) people could actually build cities.

The reality is, of course, that there were highly advanced civilisations throughout most of the world when Europe was busy living in its own refuse. TV Tropes has examples under the Real Life section of their trope page Advanced Ancient Acropolis (warning: TV Tropes is a timesink whose fascinating gravity is so strong that it will steal your afternoon very very easily).

But this isn't about that. The Lost City in this case is some really cool rock formations that have formed over thousands of years, that, well, look like a lost city. Walls and statues and towers are here, but they were made by geology not human hands.

Here's some:

More are available, here.

Four-Wheel-Driving Adventures!

Last weekend we went to a secret (well just not signposted) campground just south of Hayes Creek. There we had an opportunity to justify our ownership of a 4WD.

Here we are - in low 4!







For those who don't know, low 4 is the gear setting you can choose to turn your 4WD into a tractor, the vehicle can now trundle over everything in it's path.

The campsite was gorgeous, bordering a series of cliffs cut by a creek. the rocks are gorgeous forming a chaotic staircase of blocks.





There was time for swimming.



And reading.



This is our campsite, a simple place, a retreat from the world.





Gotta watch that fire.



Emma got tired sometimes.



But found time to take some arty nature photos.









I also got tired.



But still found time to read.



It really was pretty.

Barge landing near Ramingining. Dropped a colleague off this afternoon-

 he was hitching a boat ride over to Miliŋgimbi for the night. 

On the road back to Ramingining, awesome clouds and some

beautiful birds which moved too fast for me to photograph.

The postcard from vietnam

So, this is to make up for the fact I'm so slack at writing postcards. And it will probably be as brief as a postcard too, as any minute now I shall need to find a toilet - not  necessarily an easy feat in Hanoi.


We just went to Halong Bay, apparently one of those places on the planet you're meant  to see before you die etc ec, and spent two days and a night on a boat. It was rather pleasant - particularly after coming from Hanoi which is humbug central- to have two days of travel,  meals, accommodation, activities organised for us.And Halong Bay is pretty  eery and spectacular- massive limestone peaks and monoliths just sticking out  of the very still (somewhat  polluted) water.

We visited an enormous, incredibly impressive cave (Pete wants to get a map of it and set a D&D game there), and climbed a painful number of steps on one of the islands (literally painful, my thighs are still cranky)- the veiw from the top was  breathtaking though.



On our boat were a few very lively Brazilians who somehow had us singing karaoke at night - something I'd promised myself   I'd never do. It took a fair few glasses of wine -  which we felt the next morning when we were up bright and early  to kayake around a floating fishing village hidden among the íslands...

We were a bit disturbed by the number of dead fish floating on the surface, and, well - let's face it - the pollution was so bad we didn't sê the sky for two days... But it was still a relaxing few days, nice hanging out on a boat.

Back in bustling Hanoi now, heading down to the central coast tomorrow. Today's mission: find a cinema playing the Avengers in English...

Phu Quoc

We are in Vietnam.

There will, sadly, be no photos in this post because I can't find the right cord and the net cafe computer lacks an appropriate SD card slot. I will attempt therefore to create pictures using words, as difficult as that sounds.

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) early in the morning after a long night in the Changu airport in Singapore. They had couches that were okay for sleeping in, but that was about it that late at night. Everything was expensive and bright. Then plane to HCMC, which was the opposite. And that was great.

The dominant mode of travel is the cyclo - the tiny motocycle/vespa thing that everyone seems to own and is used for all purposes. We ate in a cafe were a house was being demolished and every brick and strut was brought in by cyclo, carried precariously on the back of the bike.

The traffic is unbelievable. The rules are non-existent. People indicate absolutely everything that they are going to do by honking. Overtake? Honk. Make a turn? Honk. Drive the wrong way up a street? Honk repeatedly.

And it all kinda works, in ways that make no sense to me.

The food is amazing. Pho and ban mi and everything you could ask for.

We have spent the last couple of days on the tropical island of Pho Quoc to the west of HCMC. We went on a cyclo tour of the south of the island, where we saw a pearl farm, an old penal colony converted to a museum and - the highlight - a fish sauce factory.

Our cyclo guides - Do and Tai - were really nice and helpful and never asked for a tip or any gratuity. But when we left the fish sauce factory it was made pretty clear that we were taking a bottle home as a souvenir. Now if we can just figure out how to get it on the plane...

Only in the Territory...

This will be a short post to show some of the madness of the place I now call home.

First up, the cover story of today's paper:

Apparently Harry the Croc is psychic and has picked Gillard as the winner of Monday's leadership ballot in the ALP. This is the front goddamn page of the only paper produced in the NT. This is what counts as news of national importance here.

Local politics is even worse:

The mayor of Palmerston has been stood down and placed on the banned drinkers list because he threatened his neighbours with some golf clubs because their dogs were too loud. The banned drinkers list is a small exclusive list of a few hundred people who are not allowed to drink, this existence of which means everyone has to hand over their licence to be scanned every time they buy take-away.

The deputy who should replace him is now being investigated by police because there is a report that he was seen nude inside his house. What precise law there is against being nude in your own house I'm not sure of, but I rarely claim to be a lawyer.

Maybe there will be a new law and order campaign based on this new interpretation of what one can and can't do in their own home. The slogans for such a campaign write themselves. "Are you now or have you ever been nude?" "If you see something, say something." "Be someone! Report domestic nudity today!"

I mean I know that there is a lot of nudity in the NT. The build-up is noted for such behaviour. Some places wait for the first sparrow of Summer. Canberra waits for the first magpie attack of Spring. We wait for the first nude drink-driving arrest of the Build-Up. This year, it was a couple. Romantic, I guess.

But if you think this is just the result of the NT News (a News Ltd. rag designed to drive out the local union-run paper of substance that preceded it), THINK AGAIN! Look at this from the ABfrickenC:

Dr David Bowman, a professor of environmental change biology at UTAS has suggested that we introduce elephants to Central Australia to help fight bushfires. I mean, introducing invasive species to Australia has always gone so well, don't you think?

Good grief can you imagine if elephants reach cane toad plague proportions? Apparently, they can also have a bit of a problem with grog, destroying African villages to get to stills. I'd like to see the the banned drinkers register work there.

"I'm sorry, Babar, I can't serve you."

"BABAR SMASH!"

That the above image was the second image that came up in a "BABAR SMASH" Google search restores my faith in humanity somewhat. It's from http://zoofights.squarespace.com/zoofights-vi/2011/7/27/double-eelix-vs-kali-babar.html. In no way will I vouch for it or its SafeForWork status.

Maybe this is just a response to the "anything goes" planning department here in the NT. UTAS Prof looked at the massive development plans for Northern Australia and just said: "Fuck it! Introduce elephants! Mad Max-style anarchy can't come soon enough for these Territorian nutbags." Or maybe Tasmanians are just crazy.

Anyway, I'm off to get three forms of ID and a note from my doctor so I can have a drink.

Darwin seems to be having a tediously long build-up this season. When we arrived in the Top End on New Years' Eve 2010, the monsoon was well and truly here, with refreshing downpours most afternoons to take the edge off the humidity.

Not this year. It is still suffocatingly hot and humid and the forecast storms each afternoon don't eventuate.

It dawned on me that the heat might be partially responsible for my sleeplessness and irritability. Pete and I had been feeling particularly virtuous about the fact we'd never used our air conditioner, but last night we relented in the interests of a good night's sleep.

But evidently, the hitherto not-experienced sound/vibration of the air conditioner meant  that our resident possum, upon return from its nightly frolic, was too nervous to take its usual route back into the roof.

Out in the  garden this morning, I looked up to see one very perturbed and fretful possum, huddling in a corner on the roof, trying to scratch its way back home, desperate to escape the rising sun and coming heat.

Awww! Too cute!

Apparently it was still there when Pete got up a few hours later, but when I got home this evening it had  disappeared (I admit we did check the ground below for any sun-struck, dehydrated possums...)

So... do we use the air conditioner tonight?! I KNOW we should be doing whatever we can to keep possums out of our roof... but how cute is this little thing?!

Baby orange-footed scrub fowl

It's so cute!

Grant brings great skies

So the tropical low is now a category 2 cyclone, called Grant, and so far the only effect it has had on Darwin is some pretty awesome clouds.

I think the Aboriginal communities to the north and east of us aren't faring so well though :(

Awesome photos were taken by Peter.