Mungo National Park

On the map, the lakes of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage Area show up as big blue expanses, a deception. In reality, they are dry, salty, scrubby plains and have been thus for most of the past 10 000 years. So we didn't come here for the swimming, but instead, the Wall of China, a 33 km long white sand dune. It was very beautiful and, of course, we visited it at sunset to capture the colours.





But the thing about this outback park is not so much what you see now but the stories in it. 40 000 years ago, these were permanent lakes with huge wombat creatures, 3 metre tall kangaroos, giant Tasmanian tigers, and the ancestors of the local Aborigine groups all living here. As the winds have sifted through the sands of the dune, bones of these extinct animals, the people and their artifacts have been uncovered. Two most famous discoveries are of Mungo Women (1969) and Mungo Man (1974), two people that were buried here around 40 000 years ago in a ritualized manner. They are, as the archaeologist who found them, Jim Bowler, says, 'the earliest evidence on earth of cultural sophistication.' It just make you ponder our human history--the immensity of time we're dealing with and how very little we really know of our collective past.

Cdn Politics

Do you know what's weird? Stephen Harper is our Canadian prime minister. I was reading the Aussie Time magazine and there was a quote from him, and, really, it just threw me for a moment. Harper? I haven't lived in Canada since he became PM so therefore it's not real.

The Outback

I loved the outback. It was very flat, dusty and dry with scrubby bush and a few red rocky hills amidst the sandy soil. I admit, it does remind me of my home province Saskatchewan. It's different in a lot of ways but evokes that sense of spaciousness and the wind was ever constant.




This deisel drum is one of the outback mailboxes. Remote stations (i.e. big ranches) and national parks like this one get mail delivered weekly, as long as roads are passable.

Ohh laa laa, the view from our tent in the morning at Mungo National Park. While chilly, it was at least dry enough to sleep with the fly off and the screen open--divine! Look at the red red earth!





Scrub, scrub, scrub and one very long fence just out of Silverton. Some of the stations are millions of acres big.

Interesting but sad fact: it's so dry and dusty in the Outback that kids often get ear infections that, if untreated, cause them to go deaf. In a town near Uluru, a good chunk of the little kids have hearing aids. The solution? A community salt water pool like the one in Jigaloo (a town featured in Rabbit Proof Fence). See all the interesting things you learn as a Social Studies teacher watching the weekly news program with the kids?

wildlife attack!

It's not so much the wild animals that are dangerous here but, rather, their plastic and fun fur counterparts. These rare photos depict some of the more horrific moments from on the road in Australia. From giant koalas who grope and choke, to montrous Cadbury chocolate Freddo frogs, swarms of bush honey bees or surprised red Mallee bulls, the average tourist needs to be constantly on the lookout.

Broken Hill

We completed a major road trip over the Easter weekend (about 2000 Kms round trip.) It's funny - when you're on vacation it seems like no distance is too far. At home, it's the opposite, any distance is too far.

Broken Hill is on the western edge of New South Wales and is actually closer to South Australia's capital of Adelaide. It's a city founded because of its enormous silver deposit. Since then they've developed a thriving artist community as well. We couldnt help but think Nat would love the place, except for the flies, and the heat, and the cold, and the barrenness. But other than that...ya.

Just outside of Broken Hill is Silverton whose population peaked in the ealry 1900's and then crashed. At its peak it had over 2000 homes. All that's left now are piles of bricks, a bar, and a few other buildings. The other buildings are, by and large, are local artist's galleries. In addtion to being a ghost town, Silverton is also where Mad Max II was filmed.

Can you tell which one's the REAL mad max??

relics of the convict past

One of the prettiest towns we stopped at in Tassie was Ross, where we stayed overtop a wood-fired stove bakery (yummy!) in a coaching inn dating from the early 1830s (convict build, of course). This same bakery is also the Anne of Green Gables destination in Australia for Japanese tourists because it is the setting for an anime film about Kiki, a cute little witch (Kiki's Delivery Service by Miyazaki).


The highlight of town is this interesting 1836 bridge, built by convicts after the first bridge collapsed. The main stonemason, Daniel Herbert, carved all the intricate arch stonework with Celtic imagery and stylized people he knew--the gov't officials he didn't like were depicted as grotesque monsters!

As this was the only major road between Hobart in the south and Launceston in the north, the bridge was needed urgently. However, it took much longer to build than it should have--material kept disappearing mysteriously, convicts got rich, the town houses aquired elaborate sandstone decorations and the government had to pour more money into this project. As a tourist, you can solve this mystery by buying a Skulduggery book and following the clues all around town--here I am sleuthing at the local hotel bar. We were disappointed it wasn't a murder mystery but it was still fun.


It seems almost everything old in Tasmania is convict built. This bridge was near the east coast on the way to Freycinet. I like all those spikey stones sticking up. No one really knows why they are there although they guess perhaps it has something to do with keeping the cattle on the bridge. Instead, I think it's all about upholding the convict image--a spikey bridge looks much more menacing.

Deadly Spiders

This post is dedicated to the smaller arachnids that live in our community. Friendly critters such as the white tip, the red back, the brown widow, and the trapdoor spider none of which, despite urban legends to the contrary, are in fact 'deadly.'

First, the white tail (also known as the white tip.) This much maligned spider has been suspected of causing necrotising wounds around the bite area. This means that the victim ends up with ulcerations and lesions around the bite area and, in the worst cases, advanced gangrene resulting in amputation. Recent evidence debates this and seems to point to this spider causing no worse than a very painful bite.

That said, it is only recently that I learned all of that through research. Everyone you meet here tells you how dangerous these spiders are and so far I've seen five of them (three in our house.) One actually crawled into my shorts that were lying on the floor. When I put them on, she crawled down my leg trying to escape. I freaked out because I thought I had narrowly escaped a horrible case of gangrene of the penis leading to the commencement of my career as Androgo-Damo. Turns out, from what 'the authorities say' I had nothing to worry about.

We ended up killing the white tip that you see in the picture anyway because we also learned that they prey solely upon other spiders which are generally good in that they eat all the other nasty bugs.

This little fellow lives just outside our back door and is a trapdoor spider. Trapdoors also have also been the victim of a misleading media and urban legend blitz as they are often mistaken for the very deadly funnel web (the only truly deadly spider) and have been suspected of killing people in the past. The truth is that their bite, although very painful, causes no severe illness in humans.

They are nighttime spiders and hide during the day. I didnt even know this guy lived there until one night when I was sitting out back and happened to look to my right to see her poking her head out of her funnel home waiting for some misfortunate critter to crawl by. Since then I've been feeding her ants and moths, one such victim you see in the photo. She is super fast and darts out, grabs the victim, and carts it off to her home to be devoured in seconds flat. Glad I'm not a moth.

Last but not least are the 'widow' family of spiders including the red back and the brown widow. The former we have only seen in museums & zoos. The latter I almost put my hand into her web while cleaning our barbeque. I'm pretty sure it was a brown widow as it had the telltale leg patterns and a small white marking on its back. I missed being bit by about an inch and the widow's bite, while not as bad as the redback, is very painful and can cause illness.

I took the photo of the redback you see to the left in the Melbourne museum. She was alive and spinning a very intricate web. The redback can kill small children and will make an adult sick. Their bites are common since it lives in places where human contact is likely - such as urban areas, gardens, tool sheds, etc. So far we have not seen one in the wild.

In a later post I'll discuss two other spider types. One is very cool & unique - the huntsman - of which I've only seen one so far. The other is very scary and deadly - the sydney funnel web - which I have yet managed to avoid. Thank God.

For now I'll leave you with the deadliest spider we have come across to date - redbacks that have come into contact with radioactive waste and grow to massive size as a result. Nicole narrowly escaped with her life after I successfully beat it back with an oversized broom stick.