Typical!

"What's happened to Rusty?", I hear you ask.  I know, I haven't mentioned him for a while.

Well it's bloody typical.  Not a single squeak from him the whole time CI was home.

So now he thinks I'm making it all up!

Today I took a trip to Casuarina, which takes about half an hour by bus and has a big (by Darwin standards) shopping centre, to look for CHEAP workclothes, not having found any in Darwin city centre.

I really enjoyed the journey out of the built-up city and through the residential suburbs full of huge tropical plants and palms and houses up on stilts.  We passed the Darwin Oval, the Botanical Gardens and a couple of schools.

At one stop a bunch of schoolkids with yellow and green tops (they reminded me of those indigenous budgies) all piled onto the bus and as it pulled away, all moved towards the window and started peering out at something, chattering away to each other and making the bus lean precariously to the left.

"There she is, there she is!"

"Hahaha she's not going to make it!"

"Look at her, look at her, hahaha she is bright red!"

"I told her not to start walking to the next stop, she's going to miss the bus now and it's her own stupid fault!  Hahahahaha!".

And sure enough, as we sailed past I spotted a worried looking schoolgirl doing the 500 metre sprint, with rucksack bouncing, arms and legs flailing everywhere and hair flying in the wind.

A wave of faces turned to face the driver:

"Stopppppppppp!!!!!  Stop the bus and wait for her pleeeeeeeeeeease!!!"

One little voice piped up:

"Noooo, don't stop, it's her own stupid fault, the stupid idiot!"

We all watched the driver intently to see what she would do.  At the very last minute she swung the bus into the layby.  We clung on for dear life.

A big cheer went up along the bus.  The budgies all watched out of the window and flapped about in excitement.  We waited for what seemed like an age.

"She's coming, she's coming!"

"No, she's not.  I can't see her."

"Yes, she is, she's nearly here!"

"She's here, she's here!"

"Haha look at her running!  She'll prolly have a heart attack!  Hahaha!"

We all craned our necks to see out of the back of the bus, but nothing yet.

We waited for what seemed like another age, the budgies all squawking and flapping about, and then finally a huge cheer went up along the bus!

The windmill of flailing arms and legs crashed up the steps of the bus and collapsed in a heaving heap on the floor.

The budgies all leapt up and down and screeched with delight.  I turned round to look and the whole bus had erupted into laughter!

Out the bus pulled again throwing us all sideways, the budgies tumbling about and squawking loudly, and off on our white knuckle ride we continued.  It all felt like a bizarre cross between the Simpsons and a Nightmare on Elm Street.

I managed to find my cheap workclothes in K-Mart.  I love K-Mart!  I also found a purple saucepan for $2.  I thought of a friend of mine who is purple-mad.  Her whole house is purple. 

Big W is pretty good too, I think it's some relation of Woolworths.  There I found a curtain pole for $4 so that I can hang some voile up at the window.  I haven't opened the curtains since I moved in as you can look straight in at the bedroom from the carpark.

On the way home I thought I'd have a fight with the bus driver over my curtain pole but he just waved me on. 

A friendly lot these Darwinian bus drivers!

OUCH!!!!!!

Today I got a nasty pinch from this little beggar:

I know, it's my own fault! 

Unfortunately for him though, he came out of the encounter a bit worse than I did. 

I had approached him from the rear and very cautiously attempted to pick him up, however he suddenly decided to reach down and grab my finger in his claw. 

I screamed and threw my hand up in the air, he let go and went flying upwards in an elegant cartwheel and then, gathering momentum, back down again, landing on the stones with a thud. And then he limped off back to the sea.

Luckily he only caught me across the width of my fingernail and gave it a good squeeze.  But I can't believe he chipped my nail polish, the little begger!  ;)

We were down on the beach at Cullen Bay with some friends.  One of them, a hardened fisherman, had sat out all day on the rocks in the sweltering heat and all he managed to catch was an acrobatic crab.

To be fair to him, he has had better days.  The other day he caught a shark, and has also caught catfish and a ray.

I had another fight when I got home.  This time with the rubbish chute on our floor.

 

 

 

Now, normally I love our rubbish chute.  You just step out of the flat, walk ten paces along the corridor, open the hatch and throw your rubbish down the chute!  How convenient is that!

 

But not today.  For some reason it decided to pick a fight with me.  I lifted up the lid and tried to push the bag down the chute.

 

For some reason it decided to spit it back out at me.  And all over the floor. 

It was a terrible mess, avocado skins, mouldy tomato, coffee dregs, yoghurt, chicken skin, you name it.

I spent ages clearing it all up and mopping the floor in the unbearable heat (why is there no aircon in the corridor?!) and this time managed to get the chute to swallow it and keep it down. 

I needed a shower after all the exertion, so I got back to the flat and jumped in the shower and guess what ..................................?

That horrible nuclear power station soundalike fire alarm went off again.

Aaargh!!!!!!!

Pimp my Ute!

Darwin's Australia Day Ute Run 2013 - needs no explanation!
 
 


 
NT News 2013 Ute Run Photo Gallery

  
 
A shaky YouTube 2013 Ute Run video

 

 Vimeo Ute Run video
 

 

Parap Saturday Market

Rambutans, paw paws, ginger lillies, Thai massage, dragon fruit, laksa, heliconias, Chinese massage, hammocks, coconut custard cream in banana leaves, tie-dye dresses, pad thai noodles, jewellry, fried coconut, mud crabs.....

 

 

Rambutans and Dragon Fruit

 

Dragon Fruit

 

Coconut Custard Cream!

 

Green ants have wrapped leaves around to make a nest

Two contenders for the Tackiest Souvenir Competition

G'day! 

C.I. is back from the mine for a week so we've been out and about exploring, which is why I've been a bit quiet for the last couple of days.

Today has been by far the hottest day so far.  The sky was black this afternoon with a huge cloud hanging ominously over us, but it refused to rain, just got hotter and more humid.  Our skin was literally soaking with sweat that couldn't evaporate as the air was so charged with water!  And C.I. has an annoying habit of patting me on the back when I'm most sweaty, leaving big sweat hand prints where my shirt sticks to my skin!

We had an extremely rude awakening at 4am this morning.  At first I thought that Rusty had surpassed himself in a frenzy of squeaking.  Then I thought I was dreaming that we were in a WWII air raid.  Finally it sank in that it was the fire alarm going off in the corridor outside.

Pants, I thought.  What do we do now?

I made C.I. poke his head out of the door, but he reported there was not a soul to be seen, just this horrendous siren squealing louder and louder.  He was all for going back to sleep but I decided we should get dressed and evacuate.

Locking the flat behind us, the squealing now at a deafening pitch, we opened the fire exit and made our way down 4 flights of stairs in a dimly lit furnace of a concrete stairway.  I felt like I was in Derren Brown's holocaust.  At the bottom of the stairs we turned a corner into a dark passageway flooded with rusty coloured water (I just hoped it wasn't sewage).  The exit door was at the other end of the passage.

Stepping gingerly through the rusty (omg, that word crops up everywhere!) lake, we opened the fire exit door and looked out at a group of people sitting across the road staring at us.

For some reason they all burst out laughing as we stepped out, which only added to the bizarre surrealism of the whole experience.  At least we weren't the only two standing outside in the middle of the night!  However there were only 10 of us in total, the rest having turned over and gone back to sleep.  Someone told me that this was the 9th time this had happened since Christmas, so we have this to look forward to!  Eventually the alarm stopped and we all trooped back in again and back to bed.

This afternoon we decided to go and watch the sunset in Fannie Bay (that's such a quaint name!). 

On the way to the bus stop we stopped to have a look in a souvenir shop and I found the best contenders so far in my quest to find the tackiest Northern Territory souvenir:



Genuine stuffed toads - who on earth would want to buy one of these?
  And who on earth came up with the idea?

Is there some kind of relevance to Darwin and stuffed toads that yet escapes me? 

I decided I have a lot to learn about this place.

Some Darwin News:

 

 

 

You can read more comments on this post (be warned - you read them at your own risk!), and more news items, at the Nine News Darwin page at the following site:

 

Facebook Nine-News-Darwin



Rain, rain, rain and yoghurt!

Today it rained all day, Rusty shagged all day and I made yoghurt.
 
It's so easy to make yoghurt in Darwin:
 

1. Buy a pot of live yoghurt.
2. Eat most of it.
3. Put the rest into a large pot.
4. Top up with milk.
5. Leave out on the table overnight.

And in the morning you have fresh yoghurt!

 
Keep the culture going by doing the same thing each time using your home made yoghurt - keep a tiny bit and top it up with milk to make a new batch.
 
My first batch was a bit of a disaster though.  I rushed to take a look at it in the morning to see if it had worked and it resembled moving stracciatella.
 
The hyper ants had taken up residence and were tucking in before I'd had a chance to.
 
So if you live in Darwin, make sure you stand the pot in a bowl of water, creating a moat that the hyper ants cant cross!
 
I'll write some more on these wierd hyper ants in another post.

A bit of a scary day!

Today I was rudely awakened by Rusty again – at 6am!!!  I opened the balcony door and stuck my hand out to test the temperature, it felt a bit cooler.  Feeling unusually awake for so early in the morning, I decided to go out walking for an hour to get some exercise.  I had been feeling a bit frustrated because it is too hot to exercise outdoors here and the gym is prohibitively expensive.  I set off around 6.45am (the time is relevant, you will see later), walked along my street and took a circuit around the city for an hour.
 
These are some photos taken on my walk:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Orange Footed Scrubfowl
 

The last two photos are of Orange Footed Scrubfowl, which are are mound-builders or incubator birds. This means that they don't sit on their eggs to incubate them but bury them in a mound to keep them warm. Then the chick breaks out of its egg with its claws and tunnels up through the mound to the surface.

 

When I got home from my walk and looked in the mirror, a dripping wet, bright red tomato looked back at me – I looked like I was going to explode!  No wonder everyone was staring at me on the way home!  And this was on a very slightly cooler day.  It took at least 2 hours for my face to return to a normal hue.

Later on I walked to Woolies to get some milk and the Saturday paper to look for jobs.  On the way in there was a man collecting for the blind and he had a big white Labrador which reminded me so much of one of my three doggies back home in Spain that it brought tears to my eyes.  The man took pity on me and suggested I volunteer for the RSPCA in Darwin, which I thought was a great idea.  I could do it at least until I could find a job.  The only problem is that it is out near the airport and I don’t have transport.  I will have to check the bus routes or look for a bike.

 http://www.rspcadarwin.org.au/pages/Volunteering.html

I found out today that the budgerigar, or budgie, is native to Australia and is commonly known as the common pet parakeet or shell parakeet.  Their natural colouring is green, yellow and black but in captivity they have been bred with blue, grey, yellow or white colouring.  The budgie is the third most popular pet in the world after the dog and the cat.

 



http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223299/A-beautiful-plague-Australian-outback-town-invaded-swarm-colourful-budgerigars.html

 

"The skies are thick with budgies"

Budgerigar in Aboriginal apparently means “Good Tucker” meaning nice to eat!  The aboriginals would track the breeding patterns of the budgies and when the fledglings left the nest and were nice and plump, they would catch them before they started to fly and cook them in the same way they would cook kangaroo, by burying them under hot coals.

Male budgies rate among the top five talking parrot species, which include the African Grey, the Amazon, the Eclectus parrots and the ring-necked parakeet, and are able to learn up to 100 words.

When I got home from the supermarket I logged onto Facebook and saw a post on the Nine News Darwin page that made my hair stand on end.  At 6.45am this morning a man attacked a woman in my street, right next to where I live and dragged her down a side road.  Luckily some quick thinking café workers witnessed the attack and immediately called the police, who managed to arrest the offender.

All in all a bit of a scary day.