Saturday 21^st    2013, Timor Sea,  South Indonesia   11.05.0S  126:17.0E  

Today's Blog by David (Time zone BST +8.00; UTC +9.0)

Corroboree is a Billabong – essentially an Ox-bow lake in the low lying  Wetlands which gets refilled every season.  It was about 3 hours’ drive out of Darwin in the company of our Tour Guide, “Simone”  (pronounced - Simoan) . She is a former high flying broadband capacity sales manager who underwent her own Damascene Conversion during an outback hike after which the only thing she wanted to do was to ‘do Nature’. And she is remarkable because she has prodigious lungs, (……wait for me…..), prodigious only because she did not draw breath for the whole three hour journey.  We had her life history, the life history of a Scots explorer called Stuart  after whom the Stuart Highway was named ……. and a whole lot more besides.

We got to the Billabong and boarded a boat, driven by the same ‘Simoan’, who then took us in search of the local flora and fauna.  In fact, our first experience of Northern Territory fauna had been in the shape of the “Road Train”. The Top End does not have many railways – but there is quite a lot of mining there.  There is also a new Gas field and Liquefaction plant being built. Both of these require large amounts of dirt/spoil to be moved around and also large numbers of men (and I guess, in principle, women).

The labour is referred to as FIFO, (‘Fly in, Fly Out’), personnel flown into the area and accommodated in purpose built complexes of  Mobile Homes (about as mobile as any self-respecting Hampshire gypsy’s mobile home) where they work 12 hour shifts for three weeks, 6 days a week spend the evening  in the onsite gym, pumping steroids. On their day off they are allowed off campus into the local town where they mix the steroids with alcohol and recreational drugs   and are accused of causing all the local disturbances, brawls, robberies , murders and anything else the locals can pin on them………. a bit like those gypsies really.

The dirt/spoil/landfill is among the freight transported by Road Trains (they also transport agricultural produce - cattle, grain and maize  - in this manner. Imagine four articulated  lorry trailers attached in line to a single tractor;  you end up with a vehicle 65 yards long which travels at only 40mph when laden (60mph when empty).

Imagine overtaking one of these on a single track road – even in daylight.

Back to the Billabong. In short we drove around to see what we could see. Simoan was particularly keen to show us the lilies  which happened to be in flower.   There were acres and acres of lily pads but the lilies, while beautiful,  were not that abundant :

Here and there, Comb Crested Jacanas jumped from pad to pad (note the size of his talons):

We were observed from the trees on the bank of the billabong by a White Bellied Sea Eagles and a Kingfisher which Simoan could not name:

And from the water by Pied Cormorants and Darters (although this Darter had made a dash for the trees by the time I got my camera out!).  

There were two special moments  during our cruise. The first was when we watched a bird known colloquially as a  “Jabaroo” catch a snake and proceed to eat it.  Look carefully in the beak of this Black – necked Stork:

The Stork, not the Egret,  dummy!

And then finally, we found a “Saltie” – a Salt Water Crocodile – who seemed to be completely disinterested in a boat load of fresh meat that was poking in under a tree to ruin his day. This one was about 3.5 metres long: