photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Pauline | all galleries >> SIrwin Trib.4 > SI.jpg
previous | next

SI.jpg

WEDGETAILED eagle, near Tennant Creek: I see it first as a silhouette, one of a pair hunched over the carcass of a kangaroo.

The Mertens water monitor, one of Australia's most elegant reptiles, at Buley Rockhole. Picture: James Jeffrey
At the sound of my approaching car (a well past its prime Commodore), one bows to its better instincts and flaps off through the low trees. The other waits until I'm almost next to it before it spreads its vast wings and heaves itself into the air, unfortunately in my direction. I've seen plenty of wedgies before, but never have I come so close, nor so quickly, to one in my life. For a moment the sun vanishes and all I can see is what looks like a hectare of chocolate and caramel feathers and a full armoury of talons and scythe-like beak; for an interesting nanosecond or so, I'm convinced it's about to pass through my windscreen. And then a flood of light and it's gone. I haven't been so startled by a bird since the day that a randy emu tried to mount my stepfather at Bullen's Animal World.

Mertens water monitor, Litchfield National Park: I always used to be hard-pressed to pick my favourite lizard moment; the Northern Territory isn't exactly stingy on the reptilian front. Was it the frill-necked lizard scampering away on its hind legs through the scrub near the Arnhem Highway? The impossibly huge perentie, with its fat belly and tessellated skin, swaggering across red sand in the Simpson Desert? The perpetual chorus of Asian house geckos in the eaves of Darwin? The prize comes during a wet-season swim in the sweet, clear water of Buley Rockhole in Litchfield National Park. As I climb from the water, I come face to face with a Mertens water monitor. One of the most elegant reptiles given breath, it seems untroubled by my presence. We gaze at each other for a few minutes until it gives a flicker of its pale, forked tongue and quietly walks away.

Rock wallabies, Chambers Pillar: On a February day on the edge of the Simpson Desert, the sun blazing straight down through the empty, dry blue sky, my companions Margaret Campbell and Loretta Kenny -- sturdy Aboriginal women from the nearby community of Titjikala -- have spotted wallabies. They point to one of the smaller rock formations near the 50m sandstone monolith that is Chambers Pillar. The other members of the group and I squint towards the vertical rock face and the boulders beneath. When this yields nothing, we pass the binoculars back and forth, guided by Campbell. Still nothing. "Give me your pad," Campbell finally says to me. In it, she draws a careful diagram and suddenly all becomes clear. In the minuscule pools of shade, we spot one wallaby, then another, and another; a whole mob is spread right before us and, until a moment ago, was invisible to nearly all of us. Campbell and Kenny may not be in the first flush of youth but they have eyes like military satellites.

Crocodile, Litchfield National Park: The crocodile at the bottom of Tolmer Falls isn't doing particularly much. It isn't surfacing near my elbow like one did once upon a time when I was sitting in a small boat (giving my heart a jolt equivalent to 50 espressos). Nor was it belting the stew out of a huge file snake, like one I saw at Yellow Waters, its jaws clopping noisily in the morning air. No, this one is simply floating in the water near the edge of the spray, its tail slowly rippling to hold it in place in the current, its jaws primed to snap the moment any lunch came down the waterfall. It's a perfect Territory moment: the combination of the languid with the lethal.

Budgies at Kata Tjuta: Budgerigars may be one of the most familiar members of the avian world, but it's not until I go walking along the trail that meanders between the Rubenesque curves of Kata Tjuta, or the Olgas, that I finally see them in context. There, in the little green oases that lie unexpectedly beneath the bluest of skies and between the vast walls of orange stone, they burst exuberantly from the trees in volleys of green and yellow, their colours finally making sense in this blaze of unfiltered sunshine.

They look like they're a million light years from the nearest cage and their rambunctious jollity is both infectious and perfect.

The water pythons of Fogg Dam, Humpty Doo: The Northern Territory doesn't want for beautiful pythons. There are tiny Children's pythons (named for a Victorian-era zoologist) that could coil up in your hand and gargantuan olive pythons that can easily stretch from one side of the road to the other, sometimes with a wallaby stowed in their bellies. Then there are the womas and the equally beautiful, if prosaically named, blackheaded pythons of the dry centre and, for the lucky few who encounter them, the elegant and ghostly Oenpelli pythons of Arnhem Land. But it's the water pythons, especially at Fogg Dam -- a failed rice farm turned wetland near Darwin -- where they gather in their thousands, that have my heart. Normally their colours are subdued shades of dun and custard, but when one's just shed its skin and goes slithering luminously across the causeway, that whole rainbow serpent thing starts to look a whole lot more likely.

Green ants, Kakadu: I've already been introduced to the fine art of licking the backsides of green ants (for the citrussy zing, as you'd expect) in north Queensland, but it's in Kakadu that traditional owner Patsy Raclar pushes me a big step forward. While my brain struggles to assemble the proper response, she hands me a clump from a green ant nest: it is a mass of white ant larvae and a few adults panicked into action. With a speed that somehow surprises me, I stick it in my gob and chew. The flavour? Coconut and lemongrass. And perfect on a hot day.

Whistling kites and magpie geese, Mary River floodplain: It's an hour after dawn and the sun is burning off what's left of the mist. Water buffalo splash bulkily through the lilies and the spike rushes and, unseen beneath us, crocodiles of varying degrees of hugeness lurk. But the main drama is playing out between the magpie geese -- ubiquitous in the Top End wetlands and at this time of the year tending to their newly hatched chicks in their floating nests -- and the whistling kites, which are keen on breakfast. From my vantage point on an airboat from Bamurru Plains safari camp, I watch as the kites try to hound the adult geese from their succulent broods. Their efforts are largely in vain, but then a pair of geese tries to distract the kites by running in separate directions from the nest. It's a doomed tactic and even my guide is stunned as a kite snatches a gosling from the nest. The mid-air battle over the hapless chick is protracted and magnificently undignified, but I can hear my inner Steve Irwin bellowing, "Crikey!"

Bats, Simpsons Gap: It's just before sunset in the West MacDonnell Ranges, the last stop on a happily bumpy drive from Kings Canyon along the Mereenie Loop. Alice Springs is just a few kilometres down the road, but here it's just me, a friend and a couple of wallabies cautiously lapping at a waterhole. Then, without so much as a squeak of warning, bats start tumbling from crevices in the rock face above us. Tiny, fragile-looking creatures smaller than an outstretched hand flit and swoop; a few climb high enough for the last light of day to shine through their miniature, translucent wings. Mesmerised, we watch until the sky crowds with stars. It is, as my friend observes, bloody magic.

Cane toad, Oenpelli/Gunbalanya, Arnhem Land: Usually there's little to be said in favour of this devastating pest, except that in all likelihood they didn't ask to be brought here. But this particular toad is well and truly dead. Already blackened by the sun, its carcass lies on its back, its innards ripped out by a bird. The poison glands behind its head, though, are gloriously intact. Any reminder that our native wildlife is learning to eat these beasts without dying in the process is enough to put a song in my heart.


other sizes: small original auto
share
Type your message and click Add Comment
It is best to login or register first but you may post as a guest.
Enter an optional name and contact email address. Name
Name Email
help private comment