19^th June: Jabiru

It is hot, still,smokey and steamy. Despite the fact that it is the beginning of winter, you really know you are in the tropics. And everyone is applying insect repellant! I am breathless and, as I told my lungs while swimming at Edith Falls, they have no business protesting; their job is to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide and they should just get on with it!

Katherine is so dry at the moment. Plenty of water in the river but the area around is grassless and even the eucalypts are dying. It is hard to imagine water 5 metres over the bridge which is 10 metres above the river!!

We drove up from Katherine and the Parks &Wildlife people were obviously burning off. Finally, they have learnt something from the aborigines: burn to clear in the early dry in small patches. That way most trees survive because it is not so intense,the weeds burn, the birds and animals survive and seeds are germinated ready for the rain. Dew will extinguish the fire at night. It creates a mosiac pattern of burnt and unburnt, green new shoots and brown old growth.

I forgot to mention the aircraft at Katherine. The Tindall Air Base is there and planes take off and drone across the sky frequently, Hercules mainly. Then there are the fighter jets; they scream overhead in pairs at any time of the day. Noiser than Cockatoos! The kookaburra here is the same one as up the Cape:small,blue wings and unable to laugh properly. They do make a racket at first light1

The roads up here are excellent. I can't help remembering the dusty, rough extremely corrugated roads we travelled on last time. Even the road to Nourlangie Rock which was all sand and impassible, is now sealed and all weather! Jabiru is a small community, mostly mine related but now involved in servicing the tourist industry. (Despite this, Glen has so far been unable to book a flight over Kakadu because nobody is in the office and they don 't return calls.) Imust say though some of the road-users leave a lot to be desired: huge vans travelling too slowly or ridiculously fast; road trains slowing down on hills; a Peter's icecream van that raced past another truck, 2 vans and a car – all at once on the wrong side of the road, around corners,over crests! X-ray vision!

We wentto the Visitor's Centre herethis afternoon. Excellent display.

Mossies are making their presence felt. Time to pack up!