Pandanus Trees

Pandanus palms are my favorite trees up here in Kakadu. On the pandanus trees pic you can see the nuts hanging on them, they look like pineapples and honest to goodness smell like hot cinnamon buns. I picked a bunch of them and now have baby
pandanus trees growing in our back yard. The Aboriginal ladies make the most beautiful baskets and mats out of the leaves.
They have jagged edges, and sometimes the ladies will have bloody toes and legs and hands from handling them. They pound the red and yellow rocks to dye them and the purple comes from the root of a native plant. I love to watch them work and we
have collected quite a few of the baskets.

New Look

We did a little stenciling on the front of our store, gave it a new look for the upcoming tourist season!

Ian & I

We had a road trip to Dundee Beach, beautiful spot but no swimming,
too many crocs!

The painter's kid gets painted!

The Painters

Here are the painters at work. If anyone is interested in aquiring authentic Aboriginal art, let me know and I will put you in touch with the artists. They are an excellent investment, with many of the canvases selling for thousands of dollars.

Poor guy, I know just how he feels. Yesterday I went with one of the local ladies to find a special weed that is used to do the Aboriginal cross hatch style painting that is unique to our area. We waded through slimy marshy water up to our knees to find just the right specimens. Then I had the luck of watching 6 men do paintings of mimi spirits and gingas and big barras. It is amazing the technique and accuracy they achieve with these weeds. I am still waiting for my new camera to arrive so I don't have pics of my own to show you but I borrowed a camera and took a couple and when I get copies of them I will pass along. In the meantime, this is Harry's story.

Magella Crossing

Magella Crossing is where the Magella Creek crosses the road to Ubir, about 20 k from home. In the dry there is nary a trickle across the road, but during the wet, it often becomes impassable. The big 4x4's can get through when it is just under a meter deep, but our little jeep would probably have trouble if it were any more than half a meter. Here are some pics that I have been taking over the last couple of months.

We won a free 1 hour scenic flight on Kakadu Air so we took it last Saturday. In December of 2004 we took a helicopter flight over the park but the wet had not started in earnest at that point so the land was pretty dead and burnt out. This trip was in the middle of the wet and there are unbelievable amounts of water out there. Not only were Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls flowing like Niagra, there were at least a half dozen smaller falls at various places on the escarpment. This flight was on a fixed wing plane so we covered a lot more country and so much of it was flood plain, just unbelievable. Here is a photo collage of the trip. My own camera just died right after the flight began, I couldn't believe it, so the pics at the end are not mine.

Hello All

I thought it might be fun to keep a blog of my adventures here in Australia. Living in Jabiru is an adventure in itself. Actually
each day since I arrived in Oz over 8 years ago has been filled with new experiences.