Crazy critter tales # 1
A little freshie. Harmless little pup.
There are lots of critters in Australia. I grew up here, so I’m fairly nonplussed when it comes to such things as poisonous spiders (nothing a shoe won’t kill) and huge lizards that bask in the sun and like to bite fingers (lucky they don’t have teeth!), not ot mention something like 9 of the 10 most poisonous snakes in the world are Aussie (OK that stat scares the shit out of me).
On top of the usual critters that are the norm ‘down south’, the Northern Territory comes with an impresive array of critters in its own right. The most famous of these is, of course, the crocodile. Of which there are two types: the very big and deadly saltie, and the smaller and slightly less harmless freshie (pictured above at Katherine Gorge Nitmiluk National Park).
Before I moved to Darwin, I actually thought I would be happily tripping down the street and come nose to nose with a friendly croc (never smile at a crocodile!)
When I moved here, I realised how ludicrous my daydreaming had been. Crocs are only in rivers and oceans! Rangers keep our local waterways croc free! I’ll never come across a croc! Crocs are our friends!
That was during the Dry. During the Wet is a different story.
The sheer amount of rain that’s dumped on this relatively flat land in the Top End during the Wet season means that it’s very easy for crocs to move. And move they have. So far the government has removed a number of 4 metre-plus salties from drains in Darwin suburbs and apparently the traps in all the waterways – of which there are many – are often filled during the Wet.
So what do they do with the crocs when they catch them?
Well, let me answer your question with a question.
Where do you think your snazzy Hermes crocodile skin accessories come from?
That’s right, the Darwin Crocodile Farm!
Every year a contingent of Grand Fromages from Hermes Paree comes a-visiting to this humble little backwater that I now call home. While here, they visit the Darwin Crocodile Farm and their eyes glaze over as they imagine all the lovely pumps and handbags those silly trapped crocs will make.
And that’s the end of the story!
Which I may have taken a little creative licence with, but apparently it’s more or less true.
And I really don’t mind too much because the saltie numbers are exploding at the moment, so a few extra pairs of shoes in the world doesn’t bother me…
Oh I’m not a humanitarian when it comes to crocs.
Ba-bye!
Daily wrap
Breakfast: Coffee at home, fruit and yoghurt with nuts at work. Today with added flavour of macadamia nuts! Yumbo.
Lunch: My vege sticks and more dip. However, had a very shit day at work today so indulged in a few cookies (a gluten free Monte Carlo and a Gluten Free Melting Moment), chocolate (Lindt Orange Intense) (Mini Mars Bar) and chips (Twisties fun pack) in order to line my stomach in preparation for waging an assault on our poor graphic designer.
Dinner: Chicken, bacon and soy sauce omelette, concocted by Mr Moi. Was very yummy!
SprogFood: Weeties for breakfast. They didn’t go down too well today. More leftover stir fry for dinner, which didn’t go down well either. I have a feeling we have some teeth rearing their ugly heads. Resorted to number one comfort food of cheese – a few sticks went down. Lots and lots of water.
Noteable moments: Almost getting my eyes gouged out by our graphic designer. I flouted his usual (and reasonable) lead times and required a job to be created and finished today. So I was actually prepared to be maimed.
UnNoteable moments: Getting tagged as a duck in someone’s Facebook FarmVille page. I mean, what the fuck? Couldn’t I have at least been a horse or something remotely big and strong and far less likely to become a meal? I think the tagging was payback for me jeering at her for spending real money on FarmVille.
Most brainbusing moments: Trying to think of something to write here. Seriously, everyday I think about this question and I’m overwhelmed at my daily lack of cerebral activity.
It’s not the heat that kills you…
Like a nuclear explosion on acid
… It’s the humidity.
Most people (Southerners, erk!) talk about Darwin as having two seasons – the Wet, and the Dry. There is no winter here: from May through to September, everyday is bright, sunny and around 33 degrees, with humidity around 20 per cent. At a guess.
From October through to April, everyday is sunny with an afternoon shower/storm (except for when there is a monsoonal trough over the Top End – then everyday is a 24 hours torrential downpour) and around 33 degrees. With humity around 99.99999 per cent. Just at a guess, mind you.
Darwinites, however, talk about a third season – technically part of the Wet, the Build Up is the general disgustingness suffered from September through December, where humidity gets really high and never, ever, I mean, EVER, lets up.
Well, after record downpours in January, when Darwin received four times the monthly average rainfall in the first week of the New Year, we’ve hardly seen any significant rain since. All that water left over from the rain is getting soaked into the air by the gigalitre, and it’s really fucking humid. Again.
Boring technicalities aside, let me put it this way. Features of build up number two:
- Walking out of a building and literally choking on the thickness of the wet air
- Swimming to work
- Sweating through a shirt before you even leave the apartment
- Application of make up and moisturiser, while possible, is misguided, as these melt off as soon as they are on
- See above and apply to sunscreen
- Sitting in a room without a fan results in sweat dribbling from every pore. As I type this, I can feel multiple trickles snaking down my neck and back
- Tempers rise
- Tempers flare
- One feels opressed
- Power bill soars
- Unpleasantness abounds
- I can’t even enjoy a cup of tea anymore. CAUSE IT’S TOO FUCKING HOT!
So, that’s what it’s like in Darwin at the moment. EXCEPT, multiply the unpleasantness of the aboves by eleventy million, and then you’ll know what it really feels like.
A few people told me that during the traditional Build Up, suicide rates in the Top End soar. Well, I’m sure with the revisiting of the shit unpleasant weather, they are skyrocketing again.
And everyone wonders why Territorians are mad as cut snakes.
(And as I type this, I can hear a domestic in a near by house. A women just shreiked “Get out! Get out of this house!” about 20 times).
Daily wrap – 9 February 2010
Breakfast: Fruit and yoghurt again. Lots of that magic fibre stuff this time. Wonder how I will be feeling in about 12 hours. Methinks I should stick close to a building with accessible toilets.
Lunch: Caesar Salad at Salvatores. It was nice but there was TOO MUCH parmesan cheese. Lovely anchovies though – I adore anchovies! Still felt like a porker afterwards.
Snacked on some Lindt Orange Intense Dark Chocolate during the afternoon.
Dinner: High fibre pasta (I think I purchased by mistake) and roasted pumpkin and sweet potato, sprinkled with vintage cheddar. Yum yum.
SprogFood: Weeties for brekky, left over hokkien noodle stir fry for dinner. She’s a noodle eating machine.
Notable moments: Laughing at a colleague because of her Farmville addiction. Addictions of this kind are funny.
UnNoteable moments: Working. Meetings. Bleagh.
Most Brainbusting moment: More of a busted brain moment: taking three minutes to understand why “church conversion” is funny.
Daily wrap – 8 February 2010
If you didn’t catch my rant last night, you won’t catch it now because I deleted it.
Here’s the daily wrap from yesterday.
Breakfast: Fruit with nuts and yoghurt. Added some extra spice (actually, it was fibre) in the form of mixed crushed seeds. Not sure of the name, but it’s designed to clean out one’s insides.
Lunch: Vege sticks with dips – hommous, salsa, and tzatziki. Celery was a bit rotten on the inside – yuk. No carrots to be had in the house. I have noted, however, that my increase in carrot consumption is doing wonders for my eyesight. I didn’t feel the need to wear my glasses yesterday when driving, despite rather torrential rain.
Also partook of yet more quinoa. I think the weightloss properties of this grain are starting to become evident, because after choking down a meal of quinoa, my tummy feels so yuk that I can’t eat for the rest of the day.
Dinner: Pork and vege stir-fry with sweet chilli and soy sauce. Also with hokkein noodles. The approaching use-by date of the noodles was the motivation for cooking this meal. Nothing special, really. As mentioned above, I wasn’t really physically ready to stomach dinner.
SprogFood: Weeties for brekky, ham and mayo twirl from Baker’s Delight for afternoon tea while we shopped, and pumpkin and sweet potato spaghetti for dinner. I am attempting to teach her to feed herself. The results are hilariously messy, and I just hope that pumpkin and sweet potato come out of clothes because it goes everywhere. She bloody loves sucking noodles in though. Noted that child can throw food with scary precision. I am main target.
Notable moments: Turning onto a road about 1 minute after a huge tree blew over in a storm, blocking two lanes of traffic. The tree fell on two cars, but as I was waiting to get through the bottleneck, all the inhabitants of the car emerged from the tree/car safe and sound.
Oh! And I got @ messaged by Girls Gone Child on Twitter. Yay!
UnNoteable moments: Timing my speedy departure from work with the heavy monsoonal downpour. I got drenched in about 2 minutes and it took me the rest of the night to dry. Note to future self: when it happens again, get changed when you get home. It was quite a storm.
Most brainbusting moment: Reading something with lots of numbers in it. I really don’t do well with numbers.
Afternoon storm from a mobile phone
Storm over Fannie Bay
It’s been a while since I haven’t had a drink on a Friday night. But, as I am doing FebFast, I didn’t have a drink. Instead, I read a book while we ate pizza for dinner.
Today contained many moments of hilarity but no major notable moments.
A storm blew in early in the evening – just as I was picking up our pizza dinner – blowing away the remnants of a rather blah week. Blah, but with many moments of hilarity.
Daily wrap
Breakfast: Fruit with nuts and yoghurt once again
Lunch: Leftover vege sticks with leftover hommous and salsa. Mr Moi and I were supposed to indulge in a hot lunch date, but I missed his call so he went out. And didn’t take his mobile with him.
In addition to the vege sticks, I rememberd some quinoa with stewed apple and sultanas in cinnamon I’d left in the fridge at work. I’m learning that quinoa is an acquired taste. I’m not sure if I’m acquiring it.
Dinner: Caprice pizza from Fannie Bay Super Pizza. Despite the name, it’s a rather traditional old Aussie style Italian-run pizzeria. In fact, when I walked through the door, the smell and decor transported me back to our pre-married days in Gladesville, circa 2004, when we indulged in pizza every night, drank lots and went out without having to organise a babysitter first.
SprogFood: Weeties for brekky, pizza for dinner. She loved knawing on the crust. Mental note to provide yoghurt after meals this weekend. The kid won’t touch milk.
Notable moments: Learning that there was a monkey on the loose in Darwin. While amusing in itself, the funniest moment was the report that “Police have been informed about the monkey and are making plans to catch it”.
UnNoteable moments: Being woken by the Sproglette at 4.14am. Not sure what was wrong, but she wouldn’t go to sleep. I didn’t manage to catch more than a doze after that. No wonder I have the concentration span of a gnat.
Most brainbusting moment: Not sure I had one today. Certainly the moment that stimulated my grey matter the most was when my mate KahleeRose pointed me in the direction of Servant of Chaos. Contrary to being the satan worshipping site I thought it would be, it introduced me to this ad…
Have a great weekend lovely peeps xo.
I am a savvy queen
Watercolour by Olechko. Available for purchase from Etsy
It’s coffee, tea, soft drinks and cordial all the way for me. For the next 24 days, anyway.
This year, I am participating in FebFast – a month of going without alcoholic drinks to raise money for charities that help young people overcome addictions.
I am a member of the team Savvy Queens, and if you click through, you’ll notice we haven’t received any donations yet! That’s no big issue, as I only signed up today, but it will be an issue if I get to the end of the month and that total is still zero.
So if you’re feeling generous, please click through and donate. Lord knows with my love of wine, I’ll probably benefit from someone’s charity one day in the distant future.
Daily news wrap
I am going to make an attempt to post lost of boring details on here regularly. The reasons are three-fold:
- Firstly, I want to regain my blogging mojo, and thought something regular might help
- Working full time, the weeks just wizz by, and I really can’t remember what I cook, what the Sprog eats, what she doesn’t eat, and how I spend my time. In general. Besides working. In other words, I want to be able to look back and INSPIRE myself
- I want to keep track of how (in)sane I remain during FebFast.
Here goes:
Brekky: Fruit, nuts and yoghurt with a coffee here (@home, plunged) and there (@work, skinny flat white)
Lunch: Can of Campbell’s Chunky Hearty Irish Stew soup. Lots of vege sticks with hommous and salsa
Dinner: Stir-fry cooked by Mr Moi
SprogFood: Weeties for breakfast, hunger strike for dinner. The dreaded molars are assaulting her from all sides
Notable moments: Today the Sprog walked all by herself. She trotted off with perfect balance and finesse. It was as though she’d been waiting til she mastered her technique before she wanted to walk.
UnNotable moments: Snacking on Mars Bar biscuits and Cadbury Mini Easter eggs.
Most brain busting moment: Trying to comprehend the 45 minutes of stream of consciousnness that came from a colleague today.
