Mt Annan

This is Mount Annan. It's 190 meters above sea level, so it's yet another fine example of why Australia is such a gift to climbers. Those original Euros were either wry or homesick, to no little extent. Mind you, if "Annan" means "blowing a 45 kmh gale, then half of the name is pretty accurate. It was a windswept place today and looks like it generally is.

Mt Annan is NSW other Botanic Garden, somewhat less famous than the one in Port Jackson. Its focus is plants indigenous to

Australia, and it's a huge place, 416 hectares if I heard the person in the information centre correctly. That's 1028 acres.
People take their bikes and cycle around it; that could still easily be a full day excursion. The panorama shot may not quite scale into the blog, but it gives a quick idea of the surrounds on three sides, East, West, and North. (It's not actually taken from the highest point of the garden) It also gives quite a good idea of the muted greens and browns and greys of the landscape. It was about as windy as Mt Nelson, in point of fact, but it's not lush. I took a few close ups of the trees, but the light was too difficult for the camera in the phone, and they didn't come out very well.

From the sign at the intersection of the visitors' center and the carpark.
What, you may ask, as I did, is a sundial of human involvement?

The answer is this, to the right. It needs a person to act as the gnomon, and since a person is not an edge, and can't stand upright at a 34 degree angle (Sydney's latitude) they have to stand at an appropriate point on the analemma (name of the curve) to compensate appropriately. I'm not sure if it's been calibrated for daylight saving, although that might explain the somewhat bulbous nature of the further end of the curve. (In point of fact, the shape of the curve encodes the relative lengths of the days in winter and summer). It's pretty accurate - you could easily get within 2 minutes with practice. That seems surprising, but 15 minutes is 1/4, and 20 minutes is 1/3: there wouldn't be many people who wouldn't back themselves to distinguish between 1/4 and 1/3 of a line, so 5 minute intervals is almost trivially easy.

To the left you see a sundial apparently not of human achievement, although I'm going to quibble. All the mathematics of the sundial were worked out 3000+ years ago, pretty much by people writing with sticks in sand. And please note, that is intended as a major compliment. I have read explanations of sundial calibration
many times over the years, and it usually takes about 30 seconds after I finish to realise that I have totally forgotten how it works. In my experience as a teacher, that means I didn't really understand it. Working it out, by eye and mind alone, just seems astonishing. Probably many times, many people across many continents. I'm going to argue that EVERY sundial is of human achievement. Well, perhaps that's the intended subtext; it's just unfortunate that it sounds like one of Earnest Bramah's parodies of Chinese nomenclature.

I couldn't manage the obligatory selfie - not one I'm prepared to share anyway (I was briefly tempted by the caption " The selfie of harsh reality") - so I offer you this instead. Liz is the one with the new haircut.


This picture  looks OK at this scale, but it doesn't enlarge very well. Three different waterbirds - not quite the riches of the NT, but not bad. I must try to remember to bring the decent camera along on these excursions. I wasn't really expecting the place to be so walkable; the last time we were here it was a bit of a wasteland. In my mind there's something Turner-esque about those greys and browns. Much easier with a camera though.

This is a very idiosyncratic take on the botanical gardens, BTW. There are in fact a lot of plants and some very interesting subspecies of things that I haven't seen. The art/sculpture around the walkways and roads varies from the twee to the thought-provoking, but it adds texture to the experience. A couple of them are very well designed to exploit the landscape but I was driving when I saw them so no pictures. We only saw a tiny fraction of the gardens; I want to go back and walk/run the mountain bike trail, which is 11 km of serious track.

Figs

Finally, there's a whole section of the garden devoted to figs. It's taken years and years for me to overcome my default idea - caused by the fact that all the figs we eat in Australia seem to come from around the Mediterranean - that figs are essentially Northern Hemisphere trees, but of course there are quite a few indigenous species, especially as you move north into wetter environments. These roots reminded me of the trees on top of Kelly's Knob in Kununurra, although the context is radically different. I couldn't find a sign for these - they look very white, but I don't think they're white figs, because there is no sign of their original, strangled, home. There's quite a few of these (or similar) on my regular TVT run, as well.

The new Shepherd St...

This is the most visible of the art locations in the street; there are now seven. This guy works in marble, seems fairly traoitional. There's also a gallery, with a new exhibition weekly/fortnightly. A glass artist (also painter), two media-unknown-but-by-repute, and a

timber-based craft/art workshop collective. And for the seventh, I'm including the graffiti artists, because this is the second major and imposing work, and they're a big improvement on industrial briok walls. The making of the

first piece was filmed: this piece appeared while we were away - I think the authorship overlaps the original, but I haven't analysed it systematically.

That's not including coffee art. This is from "Two Blokes", technically on Chapel St., the

second bike maintenance /coffee shop in Marrickville, also the sixth coffee place on the Illawarra /Sydenham/Victoria/Addison block. (If I allowed myself a 50 metre extension, I could add four more). Lots of things to like here, timber/brick light/shade ambience, great crockery vis-a-vis colour and texture, $2 long blacks, and a small-simple-cheap menu. Plus, indestructible coffee art: that cappuchino is already half drunk!

We also have a new car-replacement company, who've painted their premises, the old panel beater's has gone for a major facelift and now looks very smick and #'s 8 and 10 are reinstating their wrought iron balconies.

Those verge gardens are growing up in a whole new neighbourhood.

Darwin

We were in fact in Darwin three times on this trip
 - none of them for long. Personally I'm not a big fan of Darwin at all, although to be completely fair, it's something of a prejudice, possibly based around that fact that I had my first, and only major car accident there, rolling a friend's car and spending a day lying in a casualty ward waiting for an X-ray. A day! Despite the prejudice, Darwin is a country town masquerading as a capital city - it has the feel of Canberra, but not the massive government largesse.

We arrived the first time at 2 AM on the cheap flight out of Sydney - we could probably have slept on the terminal floor, but we had booked a motel nearby (walking distance if not for the US air base fencing) so off we went. We had to wake up the proprietor because we'd lost our late night access code (over-reliance on internet technology) but they kept their grumpiness under control. We left at 8 for the Kununurra flight, so not a lot was done apart from dozing.
 fitfully between the traffic noises from the Stuart Highway.

The sunset is a shot taken on the 2nd pass through, waiting for the Mary River "bus". We stayed in Fannie Bay, for no particular reason, but it turned out to be a good decision. The sunset is the view from the Yacht Club outdoor dining area, and the food was as good as the view. Really, best club/pub food I've had for ages. The early evening is of course the best time in the tropics, so all round the mood was excellent. The motel was - adequate - so we slept well & the staff hospitality was immense, sow e were able to organise the logistics of departure & bag storage smoothly before heading off for an early morning run. (The other good time of day, is, of course, immediately post-dawn) We started off with a stickybeak at "early Qantas Hangar", not exciting, but informative. It's now used by the vintage car club, and that's quite interesting as well.

Post-run we headed off to the Museum/Art Gallery/Botanic Gardens, to fill in the day until 2 PM. This balcony scene from the Art Gallery wouldn't have changed much in 50 years. Good coffee, totally random service. Three tables in  our section waited more than 20 minutes for coffees, one of them in fact leaving in disgust. We, OTOH, got service

and refills in seconds.

I was briefly tempted to make witty remarks at the expense of the pensioner tour bus patrons - then I realised that there's no relevant difference between them and me. Startling thought, although one that I am starting to get increasingly frequently. My hair will be grey too soon, then what actual difference will there be at all?

The collection at the museum/gallery is small but interesting. Somehow I failed to take any pictures of the boats, which ranged from small dugouts to largish fishing trawlers and - educated by my own limited sailing experiences - seriously impressed me with the ingenuity/determination/skill of the sailing world. Not that the vast majority of sailors would feel that they had any choice, as they would be/have been engaged in traditional family businesses, or making career choices from a very limited range of options.

The north coast of Australia is much closer to Southeast Asia than the East coast, which means that the Asian-Aboriginal trade cultures here

go back further than any European involvement in Australia. If Putin were Indonesian, he'd be able to make as strong a case for invading Darwin as Crimea. Well, he would have been once, if Australia hadn't been busy confiscating Indonesian fishing vessels for the last 50 years to top up their museums with. It raises questions about "taken-for-granted" versus "militarily-willed".

I took these two photographs of indigenous art because I particularly like the evolving indigenous forms; it's possible to see both traditional Australian forms blending with developing European ideas of representation in both these pieces. From the air, a lot of the landscape between Darwin and Kununurra looks exactly like the first piece, and it's not hard to imagine (although certainly not necessary) aerial landscapes in the second picture as well.

Finally, a companion picture to the first; another sunset. I think this is coming into Darwin, which means that is actually the SAME sunset as Fannie Bay, just an hour earlier and a few 1000 feet higher. But I'm not sure if that's possible...and is that the wing of an Embraer 170?

back

Greater minds than mine can pronounce. It's interesting how much water there is - how many inlets & estuaries - close to the coast, and then, how quickly they vanish as you head inland. Ten thousand years ago, when the Ice Age was in fuller swing and the ocean levels comparatively lower, the coast of Australia would have been far larger, and must have been a very hospitable place.

Wyndham

the Afghan graveyard...noticeably, and perhaps not surprisingly, unmaintained and unrenovated compared to the Pioneers cemetery. Although the sign outside the gate here was in mint condition, which you might want to see as some kind of multicultural karmic payback. Was it easier/harder/similar for an Afghan camel-driver to emigrate than an Anglo-Irish labourer? Discuss, with particular regard to linguistic and cultural barriers.

Still, not forgotten.

More pioneers also came from China, and to the northern coastline for many years prior to the gold fields, in the fishing, pearling and trading businesses. This shop front is a curious artefact - unused for years (and the interior the apparent same) but with a paper lantern in excellent condition hanging outside. Who hung it? When? Why? Is it to puzzle tourists like me, or a gesture of respect to the past?

Wyndham is a place full of small questions. Like, why does it have such a good coffee shop? Where does the coffee shop get its extraordinarily good bread? How come the museum is both open (unlike, say, Kununurra) and interesting (unlike many rural museums, which tend to the worthy)? Why is the police station so big? (And so modern?)

Three views from the Five Rivers Lookout, one of the standout places we visited. To the north, massive tidal flats. To the south, rivers and semi-desert. To the west, stones - although it's a bit of a trick, really, because that's not a vista as such. That's the top of the hill the lookout is carved into the side of. In the middle of the picture to the right you can see the iron ore pile waiting to be loaded into the barges in the river and then subsequently on-loaded into the final transport vessel. The inlet/river is very shallow - the extent of the tidal flats would, I guess, suggest that to a geographer's mind. There used to be a crocodile farm just a bit north of the ore dump, but we discovered later that it is now closed.

We did see a large crocodile swimming in the river later in the day; the photographs don't do it justice at this scale. All I can say is that it was big (we were able to compare it to a large boat), and quick. Not quick when you were watching it, but quick when you looked away for 10 seconds and then saw how far it had moved when you looked back and tried to spot it again.

Mary River National park

More for artistic effect than information - I actually took the picture because it was possible to see the moon and sun simultaneusly, but the auto exposure is dominated by the sun, which makes the moon hard to find. It is there, on the left. This is Leichhardt Point, in the Mary River National Park, the edge of a large billabong/wetland. It's a good spot for birds, although you need good binoculars. Our best bird was a bee-eater, with a truly stunning green front. There were lots of grebes (lesser), and cormorants, darters, ducks, and kites. Light and camera not really up to pictures though. My phone does do a fair job with closeups, and, perhaps not spectacular, the ground is very

interesting. Not that I know what I'm looking at, but the more you look, the more there is - witness the curious flat-leaved reddish plants above (I started by photographing the flowers).

The extremity of the dry/wet contrast amazes me; no subtle gradations. Less than 100 meters from the wetland is this view, termite-mound dominated, dry grass and struggling trees to (deceptively) the horizon. Not that everything is brown; looking down, another small flat spot of colour. The rangers did some backburning one of the nights we stayed. This brown grass burns beautifully, but there was never enough of it for a fully fledged conflagration. Some low lying water, a sudden stand of established trees, and the fire is gone.

Ord River - Kununurra

Liz was planning to go to the Ord River with her DAS (previous dragon boating club) mates, and I thought I'd tag along for a comeback half-marathon, which was serendipitously scheduled for the same weekend. Unfortunately it was rescheduled (or maybe I had misread the dates/year), so I ended up settling for a 20km walk on the day. That was good, anyway, and didn't have any risk of damaging old injuries. Plus walking in Kununurra heat is a non-trivial form of exercise.

I had about 5 cameras in my hands while taking this shot - it's most of the crews of the 7 boats that took part in the marathon itself getting themselves organised for the final photograph. Shooting into the sunset wasn't such a clever idea. You can make out the Ord in the background - it's pretty wide here, about 2km upriver from Diversion Dam - and in the far right background you can see what's on the other side of the river. Vast expanses of not much.

 In fact, although I didn't get over that side of the river, I'd be pretty happy to bet that it looked like this, which is the view walking from town to the caravan park where we stayed, about 2.5 km. Pretty much every view looks like this.

Sometimes there are lumps. Usually not. That's the main highway you see in the foreground; right to Katherine and left to Wyndham/Broome. I'm on the bike track, which is a bit of a puzzle really. It goes from the edge of town to the Diversion Dam barrier wall. Approximately 4 km. Maybe there was once an engineer who liked cycling, and a town council that liked the engineer. Who knows? But it was good for running for me, and a few locals in training as well.

Sadly I didn't get to meet the linguist/manager here; it was closed 2 of the 3 days I had free, and he(?) was busy on the day when we both managed to be there. Saving languages is a highly worthwhile aim - I don't know how practical/useful it ultimately will be, but if it's possible then it has to be tried. Of course it's a highly complex project, because a language that is, in some sense, propped up, is a language acquiring some of the ethos of the propping process. But in the same way that a species remains a species, despite some subset of adaptation/mutation, a language can to.

This is one of the few lumps - Kelly's Knob is the only name I spotted for it. It's being slowly worn away by fig trees, erosion and grasses, but the fig trees make the best pictures. Looking at the stratification in the stone it's obviously been underwater for a long part of its life - and it turns right back into sand if walking around it is any kind of valid testimony - extraordinary evidence of a time when Australia was much smaller than it is today.

 Three views of Mt Cyril (sic), all taken with the same camera and within 20 minutes of each other. It's remarkable how the colours change so dramatically. We didn't go climbing here, because:

•  it was too hot
•  the rock is apparently very soft/breakable
•  it looked pretty easy to get lost, and 
•  it was too hot.

We proved point 3 by getting lost, all the while

 remaining on the road which appeared to be marked on the map. When I say "lost", it was more a case of ending up back in suburbia rather than in the middle of the "Hidden Valley", known locally as the mini-Bungles. We were able to tell from the air when leaving that mini-Bungles is a reasonable name - it's not so easy to tell from the ground, although if you got properly lost you might get the idea.

We proved points 1 and 4 by drinking abut 4 litres of water in 2 hours, as well as multiple ice-creams back in the caravan park.

The taxi driver who took ius home didn't understand what hwe were doing, walking around Kununurra. "Nothing to see", he said, "I only stay here for the fishing".