Friday, June 4, 2010

Darwin Sunset and off to King River Camp

The last couple days have flown by. A couple days ago my old boss had me over for a BBQ and a quick drive to the beach. The scenery available is great and I was able to dip my hand into another ocean (Timor Sea which is part of the Indian Ocean). A lot of people in Darwin have a pool. They don’t have a jacuzzi they have a pool. Mostly because they don’t ever have to warm up in the water they just need to cool off. It’s their winter right now but they really only have dry and wet seasons. During the dry season (just started a couple weeks ago) the temperatures are lower (highs of +30C and overnight lows of +15C) and rain is non-existent. Because the wet season just ended some of the creeks are higher than they should be or are around when they should be dry.

 "Cahill's Crossing, it floods with the tide but at this point it was crossable. Salties love this spot because it funnels the fish."

Yesterday we got the last of our equipment ready and drove out to King River Camp. On the drive the floodplains were visibly still full in places and some of the creeks still ran over the road. Almost all of that will be dry within a couple months. The landscape is so different from anything I’ve seen before but really familiar from what I’ve seen in media. Discovery Channel does wonders. Oddly enough, if you watch Crocodile Dundee, you’ll see what sort of bush I’m in (not New York, the outback part, you sarcastic bastards). Our camp is about an hour northeast of Kakadu National Park.

"Sandstone plateau in Kakadu National Park. I'll be mapping similar formations later in the summer."

"Cathedral Termite mound on the side of the road on the way out to King River Camp."

The fieldies (camp workers who also help us do some things on the core) helped a ranger pull a trapped croc out of our billabong (where we get our water, basically a slough). A pig was kind enough to donate its leg in order to set the trap up again. More than one croc has been spotted in there but so far they’ve only pulled the one out. If we catch another one I’ll be sure to get some photos/video for you to check out. Luckily these are the freshies and not the salties. Coming in at only 2.5 m the freshwater croc that was caught was large but not that big compared to the saltwater crocodiles which routinely hit 4 m. Salties are found more in rivers and closer to the coast. Needless to say, you don’t go close to the water’s edge.

Wildlife spotting for myself has consisted of birds, bats, spiders, ants, mosquitoes, flies and wallabies. I found out I won’t be seeing any kangaroos out this close to the coast. They prefer the open desert/grasslands while the wallabies occupy the bushy coastal vegetation. I had the biggest spider I’ve ever seen in the wild on my tent wall this morning, luckily it was on the outside. It was a Huntsman Spider (http://www.ozanimals.com/Spider/Huntsman-Spider/Neosparassus/sp.html) and not very dangerous. With its legs splayed out in front it was easily 6 cm across. No snakes yet but they’ve been spotted all through the outer limits of the camp by the fieldies.

I'll leave this post with a shot of Wunyu Beach. Our drilling is close to the coast that it's only about a half hour drive to get to the coast. Again, you can't swim in the waters. There have been shark sightings and there's saltwater croc tracks on the beach. That doesn't mean it doesn't look spectacular, because it does.
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