Archer as target

Vagabond · #1 01-12-2008, 07:14 AM

Late night flight from Heathrow – hours and hours to Singapore – then staggering half asleep around Changi airport, waiting several hours for connection to Darwin – more hours across the Sundas and the Timor Sea - staggering half-asleep around Darwin airport, waiting four MORE hours for the flight to Kununurra. Mercifully only an hour or so in flight, with VERY interesting terrain below – a great complex of mangrove creeks, sand bars and islets.

Good news at Kununurra – our booked apartment was being re-furbished, so we were upgraded to a luxury unit at no extra cost! Went out for a non-airline meal (we seemed to have been living on tray meals for weeks) and enjoyed an excellent kangaroo steak.

A few days to look around the Kimberleys – Certhia was off into the nearest canyon with her telescope.

Here she is accoutred for bird watching in the Australian bush – I’m just there as minder and water-carrier.

Lots of things to see

A baobab tree

A bush spider

A termite mound – as Paul Hogan would say “call that an ants’ nest ? THIS is an ants’ nest!”

…and one of the things we had come to find, a bower bird’s bower. There are several bower birds, this was built by the biggest – a Great Bower Bird

The male bird builds these as a sort of courting couch – a bit like blokes having a flashy sports car with reclining seats! (the nest is built separately elsewhere)

Note the bling with which the bower is decorated – if you are really lucky and in the right sort of terrain the decoration might consist of sapphires, rubies or emeralds. Here it was valueless pebbles, some ringpulls off tinnies (beer cans) and a few bits of broken green glass stubbies (that’s Strine for beer bottles).

BTW both tinnies and stubbies come in “slabs” of 24 or “blocks” of 36 or 48 – non of yer nancy six-packs here. The phrase “I’ll shout you a slab” is pure Australian poetry.

After all this bush-walking and birding, it was time for a spot of fishing. This is part of the Ord River Irrigation scheme (two huge dams impounding two very big lakes – this is just a corner of one of them.)

One of the fish I wanted to catch was the Archerfish, and here is the first!

One of the most aggressive fish I have encountered – they don’t grow very big, but punch well above their weight.

So that’s one more for my personal world species hunt.