Darwin Water Gardens

A small portion of these delightful, "cooling" gardens.

www.olympicdameis.com

Olympic Dam Mine SA

Olympic Dam Mine in SA. The worlds single largest known uranium orebody! Massive and growing. Over 200 km of underground roads, allowing trucks to drive down from the surface, an unmanned railway,750m below controlled by a computer operator above ground, and in my mind the ideal site to store Australia’s nuclear waste. The Stopes from which the ore is excavated are caverns the size of 20 story buildings, spaced apart so that when the material has been extracted are filled up again by pouring a wet concrete mix down from above and then left for 12 months after which the material between the original Stopes can be safely removed. All the machinery and engineering expertise is already on site to enable vast reinforced concrete bunkers to be constructed in a disused Stope, concrete many metres thick if necessary. The mine security already in place is impressive by any standard, but could very easily be upgraded to a new world standard. BHP Billiton owns all the surrounding Station properties so no problem with the neighbours. Responsible Government, State & Commonwealth, could save taxpayers a huge amount of money by telling BHP Billiton, “If you want to continue mining uranium, you will store Australia’s nuclear waste! Under Government specification and supervision” End of story!

Yeah, fair dinkum footy club

The undercover spectator area is quite upmarket.

Outback footy ground

Gravel Rash?, well dont trip over the rocks might be a good warning!

Always smoke over Darwin

Coming into Darwin the other day, it was a Total Fire Ban, and the rating was "Extreme to extreme!" but as usual this time of year there was smoke rising. In this instance on the Darwin side of Humpty Do.

Settlers Bistro, Mango Farm NT

Really relaxed atmosphere

Daly River "Saltie"

There were few "bite size" ones about

Daly River Supermarket

Next to the Daly River Pub, the climb is a bit much so we have been going to Nauiyu Mission Store, which is a bit easier access.

Other interesting sites, www.broome.blog.com.au and for photos from Outback Air Race 2006, www.outbackairrace.com.au/ and for photos of the Daly River section "Leg 5"

Barra bait.

This one is about 9 inches, and the serrated "killing spike" protruding from his forehead can be seen. For humans the nippers of even small ones draws blood.

Daly River Cherabin, for bait!

Friday Sept 8th, at www.ntnews.com.au

This item is about a "big" croc. been seen a couple of times recently at Corroboree Billabong

Lovely!

Areas of colour

Flooded earlier this year a swamp area of colour, with the heavy scent hanging in the afternoon heat.

Tide going back down

Tidal effect at the pontoon

A 7.6 metre tide has an effect even this far inland. In the other photo the end of the plank was under water an hour ago.

Settlers Bistro overlooking the Daly River

As we add updates the site automatically places the early postings into the history file were they can still be accessed by clicking on"Archives" on the left side of the window.

Settlers Bistro overlooking the Daly River

The stone building is just visible in the centre of the photo behind the palm trees.

An isolated downfall in September?????????

As sunset approached last night (Thursday 7th) a few cumulus clouds began to change shape and as they crossed the River a slight rainbow was visible. The clouds became darker as they moved around the camp towards the setting sun. Anticipating some interesting visual effects I began taking photos of the development of the precipitation and took 70 frames to finish filling up the card in the camera. The frames are 2272 x 1704, between 1.74MB up to 1.97 MB each, so we get just over 200 on a 512 MB card. However we do a 640 x 480 copy, about 117 kb for the upload to the “blogg site”. The laptop cried “mercy” last night, and we have emptied out some photo files, as they are on CD anyway, & defragmented to provide a little working space on the C drive.

Daly River fishing companions

Contractors drilling beneath the Daly to take 3G down to the aboriginal communities at Port Keats, by Fibre Optic cable

Afternoon on the Daly River NT

Wednesday afternoon 6th Sept. looked more like late October with a sky full of typical late afternoon “Build-Up” clouds during the lead up to the “Wet”.
Probably doesn’t mean anything at this stage??????? We have had humidity the last few days, but that could go away?? After taking the photos we went on to practice catch & release on a few undersize Barra.

Air Race 2006 at Day River NT, the band played on!

Air Race 2006 at Daly River NT

Air Race 2006 came to the outback last night here in Daly River District! Gary & Rhonda asked us if we would like to attend a fund raising event for the Royal Flying Doctor Service to be held downstream at Perry’s, $50.00 a head, Sunday night. This was “dress up stuff” and some of the blokes decided not to go. BUT truth was long or stubbies shorts and thongs were accepted, but us blokes from Mango Farm did look a cut above some!!!!! Going on 7pm “all dolled up” (blokes in long trousers) ladies looking beaut, we climbed in the back of a “Troppie”, with a towel on the longways bench seats to protect our finery from the likely ingrained dust. Gary at the wheel we headed off in the dusk with enough pace on to hopefully bounce the medium size things off, from a variety of wildlife crossing the track from every direction and my sincere hope that the buffalo we have have been finding fresh sign of, didn’t suddenly emerge. There has also been fresh wild pig sign but no hope of seeing them if they crossed the winding, undulating track we were boring along on. Would be just “wack” and hope for the best. Jeanette & I were wisely back near the rear doors, watching the huge plume of dust we raised and occasionally being raised ourselves over humps! The “do” was well under way when we came to Perry’s clearing in the scrub. The tables were adorned with burgundy table clothes, clam shell folded white napkins, shining cutlery, wine glasses etc, all located under a rusty open sided old shed, with a uniformed military band set up outside the open end of the shed. RAAF Catering Corps were up from Tindal Base at Katherine, and one of the bar attendants had navy insignia, so a range of ADF personnel were represented. There had been much effort to create an “atmosphere”. Considering access and distance from a populated area, absolutely unreal!. The abundant food was well presented and delicious. The beer and bottles of wine fair priced. The three female vocalists all dressed in black outfits, were excellent including the lady that appeared about nine months pregnant and jigged around a lot while singing, which was of mild concern! The ADF personnel were all friendly people, circulating and chatting. The calibre of people in the Australian Defence Forces is to be admired. The pilots from Air Race 2006 also made their way around the tables to talk about the fund raising event, and to ensure sociability. They were mostly from WA, Perth area, but there were some from Tasmania and New Zealand as well. Two nights previously at Borroloola they discovered the pub had changed hands and their bookings had not been honoured, all accommodation was full!! Some slept at the police station and others were put up wherever there was a bed, so their adventure was having some unplanned for aspects. Both their “fines master” and Richard Perry acting as auctioneer ensured some money into the cause, with both local police and an MP. being out of pocket. Gary is also now the “proud” owner”!!!! of an expensive Air Race 2006 floppy hat, and monogrammed shirt. Took part in some fairly energetic dancing and gave our all to what seemed a somewhat long rendition of “Eagle Rock”, on the bumpy ground outside the shed before climbing into the “Troppie” to return to our camps at the Mango Farm. ANOTHER WONDERFUL EVENT TO BE REMEMBERED!

Jeanette caught a Barra at the regular time of 5pm, and after we put the fillets in our freezer, we showered, changed and went down to “Settlers Bistro”, a quaint, building constructed of stone overlooking the river, to partake of the Mango Farms Friday night “Barra & Chips” prepared and cooked by Gary & Rhonda.
Les Hiddens the Bush Tucker Man, & his lady set up camp alongside us a couple of days ago, and they went down for the Barra & Chips, so was also their idea of “good tucker”. Going down for the roast lamb tonight.