Strychnine too ?!?

Tuesday November 3, 2009 – Kakadu National Park

Strychnine Too?!?

The original owners still own Arnhem Land, a whopping huge hunk of the Northern Territory that is separated from Kakadu by the East Alligator River and the Arnhem Escarpment.

Entry is with the permission of the aborigines only. Permission is included in the cost of your Guluyambi cultural cruise on the river. For a small extra fee, he’ll also gun the motor on the pontoon boat just when your husband stands up to take a close-up photo of a crocodile. Or at least I think that’s what happened.

Paul is 29. His girlfriend Michelle is a Ph.D. dietitian. She lives in Brisbane and he’s going there on Friday for her birthday on Saturday. Paul is from Colaca, in Victoria, equidistant from Lorne & Apollo Bay. His two older sisters are both married, live in Melbourne, and each have 3 kids. His dad is an accountant who, in his retirement, volunteers as the greens keeper at the golf course across the street from his parent’s home.

Paul is our bus driver. We know all this (and lots, lots more) about Paul because today we had a private tour of Kakadu with Paul. Just us, Paul, and a 50-seat tour bus. Apparently, the other tourists have figured out that the Big Wet is on its way and have the sense not to go out in this heat and humidity.

Not my wife, though, she’s got other ideas. WAAAAY before we got to the river cruise, she asked Paul to take us to Ubirr in the far east of the park, bordering Arnhem Land, ostensibly to see more incredible rock art paintings.

Then she suggested we climb to the top of the rocks and then (of course!) she hinted that I might want to lean over to get a better view of way down there for the photos. Hah! Like I was born yesterday!

From way up there, we had a truly Crocodile Dundee 360-degree view of the surrounding forest, savannah, jungle, flood plain, river, escarpment, you name it. And it was, in fact, one of the locations used in the Crocodile Dundee movie (as was much of Kakadu). Paul proved it by putting the movie on in the bus for us to watch on the 2.5 hr. drive back to Darwin

Paul also took the time to explain the different plants and trees and the ways in which they were used for medicines, foods, and even liquid bandages.

Then, and this is one of my favourite-est things so far here, he pointed out the strychnine tree and, at Debbie’s insistence, explained in painstaking detail the process by which the nut of the strychnine tree is transformed into the potent poison. She doesn’t think I saw her trying to surreptitiously collect up a bunch of those nuts, but I did. I’m not going to drink anything she gives me now without her taking a big gulp first.

Which brings me back to the Guluyambi Cultural Cruise. Our aboriginal guide brought his wife and 9-month-old son along for the ride. Paul joined us to. After all, it was a 50-seater pontoon and there was just me & Deb.

I thought that with all these witnesses around I’d be pretty safe. Not so, as I mentioned earlier. Also, it turns out that there are way way way more crocodiles on the East Alligator river. Well, it sure looked like it anyway.

It also turned out that the tide from the Arafura Sea was coming in and upriver which meant that the fish were being pushed right into the waiting line of crocodiles on the other side of a barrage (weir; shallow dam; road) that the fish (and crocs) can’t cross at low tide.

After the cruise we stood on the riverbank overlooking the barrage watching fish literally trying to jump back across the barrage to avoid the line of crocodiles. This wouldn’t have worked, by the way, since a whole host of crocs moved downriver following the fish. And to add to the fun, a couple of guys were fishing for the barramundi fish (good beer battered, as previously noted) but kept pulling up catfish. They threw the catfish back. That attracted crocs. Really, really, closely. Again, my darling wife wanted me to get a good view and kept urging me…. Oh you know what’s happening by now, don’t you?

I took control after lunch and asked Paul to take us to see the Cultural Centre in Bowali. Kakadu is a World Heritage Site. There is lots of interesting information to see and hear about.

He was happy to comply but first Debbie got him to take a detour so we could get up close and personal with the Ranger Uranium Mine. I think she was hoping to get me some souvenir uranium to wear as a necklace or something but, lucky for me, the souvenir shop was closed.

We ended our time in Kakadu with a visit to the Mamukala Bird Blind. The lake is now billabong sized at the end of the dry season and all the birds and animals are gathered there for drinking.

A gobsmack of wallabies (I think that’s what it’s called, anyway) were happily poking around with all the birds. There are amazing birds everywhere here: Rosella; Corellas; White-bellied Eagles; Split tailed Kites; Azure Kingfishers; Jabiru Storks; White Egrets; Black Ibis, and on and on and on. Best name for a bird: Willy Wagtail.

Here’s something funny: Willy Wagtail apparently likes to sit on top of Willaby Wallaby Woo. It’s twoo.

Back to Darwin for Asian fusion at the East/West Restaurant back at the Mantra Pandamus hotel. Over the past two days we saw tons of Pandamus palms. In their honour, we had pandamus chicken for dinner (which, for you King & I fans back home, translates as pandulous chicken.

Arvun, the kind clerk at check in, upgraded us to the presidential suite for 6 hours – the alarm is set for 4am for our early morning pickup and flight to Cairns.

I have survived the crocodiles of the Northern Territories. Now it’s time to have a tete a tete with the Queensland sharks.

Final note: A shocking outcome in today’s Melbourne Cup. Really. The winner was “Shocking”. My $5 ticket to win on Alcopop (more like “Alcopoop” – he faded badly in the stretch) is now just another souvenir from our journey.

p.s. Crocodile warning signs are everywhere in Kakadu. Interestingly, many of them provide the warning in German as well as English. It turns out that the government implemented that program a few years ago when it became evident that the majority of people being eaten by crocodiles were German tourists. Weird kind of cosmic payback, don’t you think?

Nov 3, 2009

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