Darwin and surrounds Part 2

Corroborree Billabong - View from Boat Ramp

Took a cruise on Corroborree Billabong, which is about a 75 minute drive from Palmerston along the Arnhem Highway, the highway that leads you into Kakadu National Park. It's a favourite fishing spot for Barramundi. I always thought a Billabong was a relatively small pond left after a river receded. Well, the “pond”  in this case comprises over 20 km of navigable waterway with an area  measured in the 1000‘s of acres. This Billabong is a permanent “hole” in the Mary river, and unlike most other rivers up that way, it doesn’t have a coastal river mouth. 

Female Jabiru - Corroborree Billabong

As a consequence, the water is fresh water. The Billabong is home to an amazing array of aquatic life, including birds, snakes and of course, crocodiles, both fresh water and salties. The Billabong is the home to the Jabiru, a member of the stork family. These birds come in at probably 30” (750mm) tall for a fully grown male or female, and you can tell the difference between male and female most definitely through eye colour, with the female having yellow eyes and the male black. The female also has pronounced deep aqua coloured neck feathers that glisten in the sun and give the appearance of being like velvet. 

Sea Eagle - Corroborree Billabong

There are also Ibis, Pelicans, Brolgas, Sea Eagles, Magpie Geese and the Whistling Duck which has a habit of rounding up other bird species, keeping them together and making sure they’re safe from harm - a sort of Kelpie of the Billabong if you will. The Billabong is also home to wild pigs. These pigs cause havoc with the environment, and according to our guide, in order to eradicate them entirely, you would have to kill off 70% of the entire adult pig population each year in order to achieve that, such is the rate at which they breed. There is a culling process that takes place, but it can only maintain a kind of status quo.

The main star of the Billabong is undoubtedly the crocodile. There are both freshwater and “saltwater” or saltie crocodiles there and Corroborree Billabong is thought to have the largest concentration of Salt water crocodiles anywhere. As a result, the saltie or Estuarine Crocodile, is the dominant predator , eating anything that moves, including freshwater crocodiles. They take anything from pigs, bull Buffalo - that’s bull Buffalo - to fish, birds and given the opportunity, the odd tourist stupid enough to hang an arm over the side of the boat or wade too deep into the water around the boat ramp. They’ve even basked in the sun on the boat ramp with all the fisher-persons looking forlornly on - who’s gonna go tap this guy on the “shoulder” and ask him to move along. Not bloody likely ....

A 3.5 Metre Saltie - Corroborree Billabong

Some interesting facts about crocodiles; crocodiles have only been the subject of detailed study within the last couple of decades; studies have revealed, through blood tests, that crocodiles are immune to disease and do not contain cancer producing cells - ie they don’t get cancer. It’s also a myth that crocodiles eat rotting flesh - they don’t because if they did, toxins would develop in their gut and it would kill them. So they only eat fresh. At this stage in the studies, no-one really knows how long crocodiles live for - the way they tell is by counting the number of rings in the bone of one of their legs, just as they do when aging a tree -  and the largest crocodile caught to date came from the Corroborree Billabong - he measured 6.23 metres, or a tad over 20ft long. I say “he” because female crocodiles rarely exceed 3.5 metres or so. Another gem of information from our guide came by way of Steve Irvin, the now deceased and legendary wild life guy from Queensland. Apparently, if you’re going to be taken by a crocodile, you’re better to be taken while in the water than be taken on land (not taken at all sounds better to me !). Reason is that the muscle that controls the gripping power can’t function well while the animal is in the water trying to hold it’s prey; ie you. Apparently, a well placed punch to the muscle controlling that gripping function will disable it, thus allowing you to swim - in total confidence - back to shore. Nobody on our cruise volunteered to test that theory - it was  emphasis on the word "apparently" that did it ....

3.5 to 4 Metre Saltie - Corroborree Billabong

The term Saltwater crocodile infers that they only live in saltwater - not true. Salties have salt glands in their snout that allows them to live in salt water, but they also live in fresh water. So salt water crocodiles may spend their entire life in saltwater, or freshwater or a bit of both. And finally, salties spend their day regulating their temperature within the confines of 33C to 35C or so on hot days  - they do this by taking shade under mangroves with their mouth open. And this is where we saw the croc you see in the photo to the left. He was guesstimated at 3.5 to 4 metres long (ie a big bugger) just lying under a mangrove, minding his own business - and he didn’t flinch one bit, even when the Guide ran the boat up onto the shoreline right in front of him. He would have been maybe 2.5 metres away from the front of the boat and self and a couple of others were right there at the pointy end. Someone asked why he didn’t move. Answer: he knows he’s the top “dog”  - he moves for no-one, not even a boat full of gawking, photo-snapping, well fed tourists. “In fact..”, our Guide continued “... he knows he can jump right in this boat anytime he wants ...”.  As I continued to squint through my camera eyepiece, banging away taking a blaze of photos, the sound of stampeding feet left me, as the solitary idiot, standing there with a virtual sign around my neck saying “LUNCH”. 

It’s one of those “WTF ?” moments everyone has on the odd occasion.

B-52 With City of Darwin Markings

The Aviation museum in Darwin is excellent - yes I’m about to go on about yet another museum and golly gosh, an Aviation museum at that. This one is unusual, however, in that it houses one of only two B-52’s from the USA that have been loaned to foreign museums; ie non - USA museums. The only other museum I can recall having a B-52 is the Duxford museum - to me, the mother of all aviation museums. 

B-52 Cockpit 

Anyway, this thing has a 56 metre wingspan and consumes the entire hangar width, the huge drooping wings acting as if the wings of a brooding hen hovering over her chicks - the chicks in this case being other exhibits. It’s impossible to get a photo which shows the size of it, unless you use a wide angle lens, and then you get too much distortion, which takes away from physical impact this aircraft actually has. The video giving all the stats on the aircraft also has some interviews with pilots. Apparently the B-52 was not an easy aeroplane to fly and it was not comfortable. 

Aside from the B-52, the museum houses an excellent array of aircraft, with the standouts  including a Sabre CA-27, Mirrage IIIO, the front section of a B-25 Mitchell, a Wessex and a Hughy Cobra gunship. There are various items of equipment and other memorabilia and an excellent array of books on aircraft etc. If you an aviation nut, it’s well worth the time.

Sunset FBYC - A bit disappointing on the day

And as a finale to our stay, we headed for the Fannie Bay Yacht Club, which faces due west and has a magnificent beach frontage with yachts anchored offshore. We watched the sunset, which was rather disappointing given the clouds about at the time, but I was pleasantly surprised to bump into two guys from my past life as a Consulting Engineer at Moorabbin airport. Dave Hooten and Tony Smith are both contract pilots that operated out of Moorabbin at the time and Dave did some flight testing for me for some mods we’d designed at the time - I’m talking 1990 to1993. Dave, Tony and a lady flight attendant had flown a Cessna Citation up from Essendon for some contract work in the Phillipines, and they are due to fly back to Melbourne in the early hours of this coming Friday. A very pleasant evening was had by all.

Tomorrow May 16, we head out of Darwin, heading for the East Alligator River in Kakadu National Park. The plan is to take a cruise on the East Alligator River, something I did in 2011, and something I'm looking forward to again.

Darwin and surrounds Part I

Darwin is a city I really like. This is now my second visit and I feel quite at home here. The weather’s been good - around 35C most days, with the humidity around 85% so it’s tropical - no doubt there !. Current population is around 136,000 with what looks to be a significant ethnic diversity. Sadly, along the Esplanade, which is the main road that runs along the foreshore of Darwin Harbour adjacent to the CBD, you still see groups of Aboriginals sitting around in the more shaded areas for most of the day, doing not a lot. It’s really sad because there seem to be two quite distinct mindsets within the general Aboriginal community. One group, seemingly unrelated to any particular tribal group, seem to be able to have a foot in both cultural camps; ie their own and that of Western society. And then there’s the other group that seem to be welded to the traditional culture of their origins and they don’t seem to be able to cope with a modern western-type society. In Alice Springs, I got talking to a local shop owner, and he was telling me that the last Aboriginals that came in from the desert where they’d been living since birth as hunter/gatherers, was in 1980. So when you look at it in that context, 30 odd years isn’t a lot for people with thousands of years of cultural heritage and traditional ways of living behind them, to then accept a paradigm shift in the way they live. I’d heard a lot of criticism of the Aborigines  before I left for the first trip in 2011, but when I got to see for myself what was actually happening, I felt then, as I do now, very sad at what must be for many, a hellish existence. Alcohol abuse is an obvious and very visible problem.

Darwin Plaza Area

When you drive into Darwin these days, the first thing that strikes you is the degree to which development is going on. The number of new building sites on the go and the ever expanding road system seem to be a constant feature, not that the road system is shabby, because it’s anything but. The Stuart Highway, which starts in Port Augusta, ends in Darwin, petering out at the very end to become Daly Street, which after a sweeping left leads you straight onto The Esplanade, the road that divides the CBD from the Esplanade Park and Darwin Harbour. The CBD is a grid with Darwin Plaza at the centre, and the road system leading away from the CBD is well designed, with wide main roads and excellent signage. Darwin International Airport is probably 8 to 10 km from the CBD and is also home to RAAF Base Darwin. In addition, there’s a Naval Base (Coonawarra) - Naval spelt “Navel” on the official tourist map of Darwin -  and an Army Base ,Robertson Barracks, near Palmerston, which although a suburb of Darwin is more like a sister city to Darwin with around 25% of the total population of Darwin residing there. 

Charles Darwin

The origins of Darwin began in 1839 when the HMS Beagle sailed into what is now Darwin Habour, the Captain at the time naming the area Port Darwin in honour of Charles Darwin, who had sailed on the Beagle on the previous historic voyage which provided him much of the evidence to formulate his conclusions concerning the theory of evolution. About 30 years later, the first settlement of Port Darwin was named Palmerston after Lord Palmerston, a previous PM of the UK. In 1911, after the NT was transferred from South Australian Administration to the Australian Feds, it was renamed Darwin. 

Since that time, Darwin has undergone two major rebuilds, the first following the 58 odd bombings it received in 1942/43 during WWII, and then again following cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve 1974. As a result of the last rebuild, Darwin is a relatively modern city when compared with it’s more southern cousins. According to currents statistics, Darwin appears to be growing at an average rate 2 to 3% annually. It's also starting to become expensive to live here, with rents exceeding those of Melbourne and Sydney.

How close we came

Charles Darwin National Park, to the south west of Darwin CBD, houses a very interesting collection of military stuff from WWII. During the war, Nissan huts were constructed and then covered with earth, leaving only the entrance doors free for access. This was prior to the bombing of Darwin and the fall of Singapore, which only happened 4 days apart. The Navy used these huts to store their munitions. The alternate plan was to store them on a stores ship - based in Singapore - and we all know how that ended !. 

But I picked up an interesting bit of trivia from this display - the origins of the Digger’s slouch hat.

The broad brimmed Digger’s slouch hat began life as the hat initially worn by the Victorian Mounted Rifles in 1885. The brim was turned up on the RHS in the cooler climates, and turned down in the warmer climates for shade all round. In 1903 when the Australian Army was established following Federation in 1901, they adopted the same hat - but turned the rim up on the LHS. So, for those keen spotters of Army trivia, if you didn’t know that before, tuck that one away for future use .....

Tom Roberts Etching Print - NGA

The Museum and Art Gallery of the NT (MAGNT) - north of the CBD - is an excellent museum - I like museums, they have really cool stuff - and combines an art gallery with original and traditional Aboriginal art, modern art by the likes of Albert Namatjira and at the time we visited, a display from the Australian National Gallery of some Fredrick McCubbin and Tom Roberts originals, amongst others. Included in the display was an original print of the famous etching produced by Roberts of the formal opening of the first Australian Parliament in the Exhibition Buildings in Melbourne in March 1901 by the then Duke of  Cornwall and York - later to become King George V. The detail in the etching is mind-blowing, with the likes of Barton (Australia’s first PM), Deakin, Hughes and other future PM’s evident in the front row audience. Also included in the display was the original painting of the ceremony Roberts used as the basis for the etching. According to one of the museum curators, the etching was a private commission and almost ended in the death of Roberts over the two year period it took him to complete it. The final result, on close examination, is awesome. I never knew that Roberts was capable of such fine artwork. 

Tom Roberts - Shearing the Rams

I always thought he was more of a brush and canvas artist, such as you see in his iconic paintings of shearers (Shearing the Rams, The Golden Fleece) and his depiction of Bushrangers (Bailed Up). Of the two artists - ie McCubbin and Roberts - I have a personal preference for Roberts over McCubbin as he seems to capture the “liveliness” of the scenes through the action of the figures, rather than through the action of the brushstrokes. Anyway, that’s a personal opinion.

The museum Aboriginal art from across the top end appears to differ from what you see in central Australia. The line work is finer, construction of the images seems more refined but the colours are not quite as rich as those you see in the artwork of the central. The symbology, however, is similar with the Kangaroo, Goanna (or monitor) and snake appearing universally. What I can’t recall seeing in central artwork is the fish and the crocodile, which you do see in artwork from the top end. On the point about crocodiles, it’s interesting to note that there’s a big resort at Yulara - the resort adjacent to Uluru in central Australia - that is shaped in the form of a crocodile when viewed from the air. Now, according to my understanding, crocodiles are confined to the northern parts of Queensland, the northern parts of the NT and northern WA. So I think someone’s telling “porkey’s” about where these animals come from ....

Back to the artwork of the Aborigines: Rightly or wrongly, I have the impression that artwork and the manufacture of artifacts from the Aborigines in the top end appear to be slightly more sophisticated than what you see in the centre. Maybe that’s because they had better materials to work with, like Pandanus reed which you see used in the manufacture of intricately woven carry bags, matting etc. This is just a personal observation because I’m no art critic. You see, a straight line is a cause for celebration to me, coming from a technical background where drafting skills were encouraged over the more creative swashbuckling of the artists paint brush ... You don’t design bits or aeroplanes for aesthetic appeal - so there’s no ....“so what the artist (Engineer) had in mind was ....”; it’s just simply ...... “yep, it’s an aeroplane” - end of discussion. So that’s where my interpretive skills start - and finish.

News report at the time of Cyclone Tracy

Another section of the museum is dedicated to the story of, and devastation caused by cyclone Tracy, which hit Darwin in the early hours of Christmas day 1974. The exhibit contains many aerial photos of the before and after effects and has a sound chamber you can enter where an actual sound recording of the cyclone is played out over a few minutes. The chamber is darkened to give you a similar environment people would have been subjected to - ie no power and therefore no lighting - and the recording goes for several minutes. 

The rebuild of Darwin

The rumble of the 200 mph winds, the screeching of metal sheeting being dragged over hard surfaces and the ever-present sound of hard objects slamming into other hard objects. Scary experience, especially if you close your eyes and try and visualise what might be going on. They also play a short film, shot by a cameraman accompanying the first Journalists on site (ABC bloke) following the cyclone. Seen from street level, it’s a very poingnant study in what must have been an horrendous experience for anyone who experienced it.

The renovated War Museum - New Entrance Building

Out at East Point is the War Museum dedicated, in the main, to the bombing of Darwin during WWII. When I visited this museum in 2011, I thought it was good. Since that time, the museum has undergone major refurbishment and now it’s not just good - it’s excellent. The refurbishment was carried out at the request of the NT Government - that was a request that came attached with no money - so that the museum could be upgraded in time for the 70th Anniversary of the bombing of Darwin, which was held on the 19 February, 2012. You may recall the visit by Barack Obama (US President) at the time and the ceremony that took place in The Esplanade Park. Well, the refurbishment has turned this into another “must” for Darwin. The museum is located adjacent to one of the 9.2” gun emplacements, which is incorporated into the museum grounds, and houses a fabulous collection of newspaper clippings and photos taken at the time of the bombing of Darwin.

Newspaper report of the bombing of Darwin

An interesting snippet of information came from one of the newspaper articles in the museum. The Federal Government ordered an enquiry after the bombing of Darwin, based on evidence that there had been many issues with communication, leadership - or lack of - by the civilian population and general alert readiness of the town for any potential attack. According to the report issued by those conducting the enquiry, prior to the bombing, military communications personnel had detected morse code - in Japanese - emanating from the Daly Waters area, which is south of Darwin by around 600 km. Approximately 40 minutes later, incoming morse code - in Japanese - was detected around the same area. It was never determined from whom or from where these communications were coming however, some Japanese living in and around the Darwin area at the time disappeared without a trace following these communications. So there you have it; perhaps Australia had, at the time, its first incident of 5th Columnists in our midst. 

Red Circles Showing Main Towns Bombed
(May have missed a few between Broome and Exmouth)

Yet another morsel of information from the museum was just how far down the WA coastline the Japanese bombers attacked. The initial attack on Darwin on February 19, 1942 was followed by 86 more attacks on targets ranging from Darwin, Katherine, Derby and Broome, all the way down to Exmouth, which is about half way down the WA coast. These attacks continued through 1942 and into early 1943. 

So, having read through all this stuff, you could be forgiven for thinking that we’re on a “blood and guts” tour of Darwin with all this talk about war, bombings, secret morse code and the like. But Darwin’s history is steeped in the bombing and it’s aftermath. And on the way up from Katherine in particular, you simply can’t miss the signage along the way referencing various WWII sites - it's in your face the whole trip. And then there are the WWII airstrips right beside the Stuart Highway, all the way up to Darwin’s doorstep - about 4 or more from memory - from where they operated Hudson bombers, Spitfires and Hurricanes.  The story of the development of the Stuart Highway is a story in itself; suffice to say that the military, out of sheer necessity in order to support Darwin during the war, transformed what was essentially a dirt track that ran between Alice Springs and Darwin into a hard surfaced highway that provided the vital link for movement of military hardware and other support needs between the south and the north of Australia.

So you see, your brain is already geared to the war experience before you get here. We didn't hear anything about this when I was at school. In fact, we didn't hear anything about Australian history generally - if at all, it was mostly British and French history. Pity because my reading over the last few years convinces me we have a very rich history concerning the exploration of both our coastline and, in particular, the interior. But that's another story - and a long one better told by historians .....

Alice Springs to Darwin

We left Alice Springs on Saturday May 4, just in time to escape the long weekend which we knew nothing about. Apparently, there is a horse race meeting over the weekend and everyone descends on the town. So we were fortunate in getting away before the onslaught.

When you leave Alice Springs for the north, the road takes a bit of a climb for a few km and then you seem to level out - but it’s strange, you have this feeling that you’re continually climbing as you drive on. I remember I had this same sensation on the last trip, and it continued for 100's of km. I’d like to see a survey map of the Stuart Highway and plot the variation in elevation above sea level along the way. Even TJ commented on the same sensation.

TJB Inside the Barrow Creek Roadhouse

We stopped at Barrow Creek Roadhouse - which is adjacent to the old Telegraph repeater station for the original OT Line and latterly, infamous for the location where Paul Falconio met his end - and his girlfriend had a lucky escape. Got talking to the lady behind the bar who is originally from Ireland and was just “sitting” the store for a family member. She told us a bit about the Telegraph Station and how both the Stationmaster and a Linesman were  speared and killed by the Aborigines in 1874. 

Barrow Creek Telegraph Station 2013

Their grave sites are adjacent to the Telegraph Station, which is in surprisingly good condition, and you can wander through at your leisure - which I did. It’s interesting to wander through places like this - you get to see some really cool stuff, especially the inventions that came out of the Blacksmith shop. Some very clever ideas, executed with some seriously good workmanship. The walls on the residential buildings are about 12” (300mm) thick and built from local rock. Even in the heat of the day - it was about mid afternoon when I wandered through and around 35C - the rooms were remarkably cool and I would say about 10C cooler. 

Barrow Creek Telegraph Station 1906

But given the location, which is beyond the back of no-where, I’m guessing you’d have to be very comfortable with your own company - or mad in the first place. Imagine living where there’s nothing and no-one, other than the people who work at the station (and there’s no guaranteeing you’d like them anyway), the local Aboriginals who probably don’t like you being there in the first place (hence the odd spear through the window), and about every 6 months, you get a supply wagon come through with provisions - weather depending. And finally of course, there are the ever present flies - those bloody buzzing, crawling, irritating little sods - besides the mosquito, the most useless insect to inhabit this earth - and they all live in Australia because I’m sure word got out about my visit and they all decided to descend on Barrow Creek mid afternoon on May 4. As a firm believer in Evolution, how did this branch of the evolutionary landscape go so wrong ?. That fly-in-the-ointment comment must have come from Darwin as he reached for his Aeroguard.

Next stop was Wycliffe Well. It’s claim to fame ?. UFO’s ..... now I’m all for questioning these weird things that float about in our skies, but I have to question why Aliens choose to show themselves at Wycliffe Well these days rather than Roswell in the USA which is, after all, UFO central. Now in Roswell, it is claimed, an alien spacecraft crashed nearby the town in July 1947, and the occupants - extra-terrestrials no less - were killed. These Buck Roger types of Planet X reportedly had no ID so they were immediately suspected of being Aliens. According to State law at the time, these blow-ins should have been deported back to where they came from ... but then, as the story goes, they were then sequestered away by the US Military for the purpose of performing medical examinations etc etc .... and on and on the story went. So in the end, the whole episode made money for some , such as newspapers and other comparable Carpetbagger organisations, and simply made others mad, like the US Military who denied any of this ever happened. 

So who are we to believe; the Journalists who reported the story - those moral and ethical gate-keepers entrusted by the public at large to report factually, without bias and without any consideration of increasing circulation through emotionally charged sensationalism; or the Military, who, on the odd occasion, kill people. 

Tough call .....

So Australia now has its own Roswell in the form of Wycliffe Well. Perhaps  ET  called Wycliffe Well when he phoned home.

Devils Marbles - upon arrival

We overnighted at The Devils Marbles, just north of the town of Wauchope. This is a NT State Park and has the most interesting formation of rocks you’ll ever see. The camp site is behind the main rock formation, although that being said, there are many rock formations covering I would guess, around 50 to 100 acres. There are rocks perched on other rocks that you would swear had been placed there by someone. But a wander through this marvel at both sunset and sunrise is well worth the effort. The camping area has a toilet (a “long drop” loo - no more explanation necessary) and has solid iron fire-places for those  folks that want a BBQ or just want to sit around a fire at night chatting. We had no lighting - other than a torch - but it was a great experience and I would encourage anyone who is traveling through this way to take the time and explore what Mother nature can provide - although we still reckon some bloke with an excavator placed all these rocks there before Stuart came through the area around 1862 ..... putting that doubt aside, I've included several photos because these rock formations cannot be represented by just one photo - they are a mind boggling collection of boulders supporting other boulders - and it's all natural erosion. 

Devils Marbles - with a Wycliffe Wellian UFO Light Source

Devils Marbles - Sunrise - note the sky colouring.

Sunday May 5 saw us on the road again, heading for Daly Waters. Well, it had to happen at some point and sure enough - we got ripped off at the Three-Ways Caravan park - paid $6 for a bloody cold shower because the hot water system didn’t work, something they forgot to mention when we handed over the money. Even their fuel price was 14 cents per litre higher than more remote places like Elliot and Mundarra further north. And the drop-kick behind the counter, besides having totally soul-less eyes, was hovering near the bottom of the scale on the service geiger counter. So I now understand why they call it Three-Ways; they find three ways to rip you off; ie $6 cold showers, high petrol prices and soul-less service to the point where you feel like a bit of self inflicted wrist slashing - just to make you feel better. So if you’re traveling up this way, I strongly recommend you accelerate past this blight on the Stuart Highway landscape.

The trip to Daly Waters was uneventful, except for Three-Ways of course, but as we travel, I’ve noticed a lot of Wedgetail Eagles along the way this time, more so than last trip. They are magnificent birds, with huge wingspans up to 2 metres I’m told, but they’re very shy. They operate in pairs, with one feeding on the ever-present road kill of Kangaroo or Wallaby while its mate stays in a tree not far away as a lookout. The approach of a car causes the one in the tree to fly off, which signals the other that things aren’t safe - so away he/she goes as well. Perfect harmony - I’ve seen this every time I spot one feeding by the roadside. I’ve also seen the result of a few that were late in leaving.

Daly Waters Pub - Exterior

When we pulled in to Daly Waters, there was a Rodeo that had just finished and the participants were in the throes of getting ready to leave. The guy at the park was complaining about the noise they’d been making the previous nights. On the night we were there (May 5), these Rodeo blokes took over the pub - as well as taking over ownership of a 20 litre container of fuel which at the time belonged to me - problem was, they omitted to ask me; ie the bastards stole it. We heard them coming past the van late at night - swearing, loud and obnoxious - we were the van right by the path leading from the pub to their campsite. So, all the noise must have been a cover for some low-life to sneak up to the back of the van and steal it. 

Daly Waters Pub - Interior

So the next morning when we realized we’d been ripped off, we showered, packed and were gone by 7.30am - couldn’t get away fast enough because the episode left a really bad taste for both of us. We thought about confronting them, but with 30+ of them and just us two weaklings (by comparison), our hospital expenses would have far outweighed any misplaced bravado ..... needless to say, our opinion of Rodeo types is not high.

Our next destination was Darwin - a 570 km trip, which we did easily. Nothing more eventful along the way - thankfully.