Musical Kangaroo

Well the drive up the Stuart Highway can be boring to some.

Today we have an extra part to our Pleasant Sunday Afternoon. And it’s for free. Actually, I am unsure if I can even give it away! Those who have read my Top Ten list may have seen a comment from a transmogrified Welshman sandnsurf about wanting a Top Eleven rather than a Top Ten list. I am always one to try and satisfy my readers (don’t push it!).

HighHeels but not in the desert

Ok. I admit it. From the mulch you can see it is not in the desert. And that is a blackberry device and not a satellite phone so it also can’t be me! But the picture may give something else away.

Consider it showing my newer subscribers some earlier “quality” posts.

So my ten most popular posts are:

1. “A Drive in The Country: It took this truck driver and his truck 18 hours. Bogged three times in sand. That’s a lot of wheels to dig out. And some pretty big holes. I guess that is something to look forward to as I drive out next week”.

2. When Remote Australia and Mining Australia meet: This surprised me coming so high in the ranking. My view on how mining companies in Australia seem to disregard and damage the remote communities near their sites.

3. A Little Bit of Rain: With plenty of photos and video it showed what Central Australia can be like after rain.

4. Remote Weather Report was a report I sent out to people who may be travelling in our area which I later posted. Describes what can happen when heavy rain hits - particularly for a very mobile population

5. Can Bush Tucker Reduce the Burden of Heart Disease and Diabetes? Here I commented on an Article in the West Australian Newspaper and talked about food and prices out bush.

6. Kunmarnanya my Lord, Kunmarnanya. I’m known as Robbo almost everywhere I go. I started using my nickname for cultural reasons. This explains why.

7. A Snake in the Hand is Worth…. is a little story about a snake on my fence: I race to the gate and instead of placing my hand on the expected tubular frame it landed on something sinuous, scaly and muscular.

8. Oodnadatta Track is a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon story with a picture of a stop sign in the desert. Believe me. That is all that is there.

9. You Have Peak Hour Traffic and I Have…… was a video looking at the traffic obstacles I have on my way to work. Camels and lots of them.

10. CRANA Opens its Doors where I commented on Council of Remote Area Nurses of Australia opening membership to other professions with some comments on other bodies representing those out bush.

Well that’s it for another year!

But the best use of it I have seen was by Mr Onthemoon over the Christmas period. I am unsure if he was trying to entice followers, perhaps it was for altruistic reasons, but he went crazy and made 90 avatars in 90 hours. He has even written about his extravaganztacular: My twitter avatar adventure meltdown extravaganztacular to gain cheap publicity. You know him as the cartoonist at Crikey with FirstDogOnTheMoon

It started as this white board (me upper right corner) and ended up as this along with 16 million new followers (his words).
If you like what you have seen of him so far take a look here.
Oh, you might have noticed I received an avatar. We are still discussing which one is me.

And this is going in as a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon though it is Thursday. That’s the good thing about having your own blog!

Gurrumul is a Yolngu man from Elcho Island. If Elcho Island sounds familiar it is because I have shown videos of young Yolgnu men dancing to Zorba the Greek.

“His beautiful voice will never leave you as he sings the songs of his Gumatj country. His solo performances are a rare treat and should not be missed”

Gurrumul was a member of the ARIA award winning Yothu Yindi band until 2002 and as well as a solo career is a member of the Saltwater Band

I Was Born Blind/ Gurrumul History
This song is in English

Djarimirri
This is sung in Yolngu. But you don’t need words with this.

here is a brief video biography of Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu. Watch until the end for another beautiful piece of music.

For those who had forgotten where he came from here is Yothu Yindi and “Treaty” which won an Aria award and was a hit in Australia. A lot of whitefellas danced around to this not realising it was a song of indigenous dispossession.

If you like this post and what else you see on the blog please subscribe by RSS feed (the orange button) or by email. The email subscription is just under my profile picture. Or you can visit my subscription page.

I guess it is one way to know you are alive. This little fella (a metre long) was sliding along the top of the gate. I guess he was as startled as I was. He couldn’t really give me a nip as his head was sliding through the mesh.

After a few words lept from my mouth the locals say “Don’t worry about that one, that one’s a quiet snake”. “He bin probably up there ‘cos another snake him bin chase him”.

Comforting words as I look around my feet in the dark.

I assume it is a Stimsons python. They have a wide range through arid Australia. However their colour and markings vary markedly throughout Australia (as do most snakes) and should never be used for identification in case of snake bite. I could have counted the scales for a positive ID.

Pictures of the Area of Distribution and the colour variations of the Stimsons python were sourced from Pilbara Pythons

For those interested in treating snake bite take a look at Life in The Fast Lane. He also has a nice article about the top 12 deadly dangerous snakes.

Enjoy! Just be careful where you put your hands.

Currently the nearest the food truck can get is 125km to us (nearly 300km to the most distant) and we have been bringing pallets of vegies on the back of 4wds and a load of bread in my troopie. We will have to drive over to get our Christmas hams and turkey as it is unlikely a truck will get through in the next couple of weeks

A couple of days ago I posted a Weather Report. It had a few pictures, but today in my Pleasant Sunday Afternoon post there are videos and pictures galore.

The pictures in the slide show are not in any order, but are from December 1st to the 10th. Don’t forget to check out the videos below.

It took us a couple of days before we heard the truck was bogged. It took two cars to get out to him as the roads were a little “iffy”. Watch the video for part of the drive out to the truck. I apologise for the sound…but I love being where I am!

It took us until Thursday to get the truck out of the 1st hole. We had to pump water out of low lying areas to assist the road to dry out and take the weight of 75tonnes. However we had to leave the second trailer behind and hit the road at speed with 45 tonne on the back.

Eight kilometres down the road and the truck was stuck again. There was no way to get past, forcing us off the road with the troopie in low range as we led our little earthmover along the high ground to try and get in front of the truck. This also sank and took us a little while to get out.

The pump got rid of a lot of the water, but we had to manually unload 8 tonne of food stuffs to lighten the load on the rear axles to make it easier to pull out. The food, box by box, was placed into the bucket of our little tractor and driven out of the mud to then load into a small truck for the run into the community.

Two days later right on dusk the truck was freed and did a high speed run into town as the rain started to fall, thankfully not getting stuck again.

Watching rain on video can be a bit boring. But there is an occasional flash of lightning and clap of thunder. If you haven’t heard the sound of rain on a tin roof then this is also the video for you! Only roughly edited - do I need to fade in and out for rain?

If you have made it all the way to here, take a look at the following posts that you might enjoy such as my video on my Peak Hour Traffic and my little post about a Drive in the Country.

Click on the picture for the best view.

If you like this post and what else you see on the blog please subscribe by RSS feed (the orange button) or by email. The email subscription is just under my profile picture. Or you can visit my subscription page.

Coober Pedy in outback South Australia is Australia’s premier opal mining area. As you drive in the landscape more resembles a moonscape as you get closer to town.

The town has all the modern amenities with many people living underground. The community prides themselves on having minimum regulation and every now and then things have been exploded (including the police station on a couple of occasions).

Needless to say, on the oil soaked sand “greens”, it may not be as peaceful as it should. Click on the pic for a better view

If you liked the post and what else you see on the blog please subscribe by RSS feed (the orange button) or by email. The email subscription is just under my profile picture. Or you can visit my subscription page.