Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic EvolutionSM
 (click on this image for satellite view) |
Australia! For my 50th birthday, in November '05, Tami and I drove over 5,800 km (3,600 miles) along the west and north coasts of Australia. Our plan was to cover about 10,000 km but Tami broke her leg so we came back to the States a bit early to finish up her surgeries. Nevertheless, it was an interesting road trip and these three web pages cover about 10 percent of the photos we took! |
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Click Here for my Australia Part Two page... |
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Click Here for Tami's broken leg in Australia... |
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Australia is a huge, wonderful country that's nearly the size of our lower 48 states. They're very lucky in that they don't have our gigantic population problem so there's plenty of elbow room and real freedom for everyone. Other things they do well include universal health coverage, sales tax included in all advertised and posted pricing, no speed limits outback, and lots of personal security and safety!
A couple of negatives are their slow drift toward a narrowing distribution of wealth and their eagerness to join us in illegal wars and other military adventures. Also, like everywhere else on the planet, Australia's indigenous peoples received a thorough screwing but there's a very conscious effort underway to right those wrongs throughout the country... |
Australia Miscellanea:
Aussie Grown Kangaroo Steaks, Tami's ominous encounter with an Australian Chemist, Roger finds another mailbox, Australian Rice Bubbles look very familiar..., Space Center antenna, a bit of Colorado can be found everywhere!, lots of hot weather outback, flies and the police always seem to be following Roger. In the lower row is a casino where we lost money, wild animal poisons, and the ubiquitous signage of military the world over (always reminding the civilian population who is really in charge...)
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Australian Termite Mounds and Wide Open Spaces:
The picture of Roger, in the middle, was our first encounter with an Australian termite mound. At first we weren't sure what it was as there was no sign of insect activity and it was literally as hard as rock. After asking around, and seeing thousands more of these throughout the country, we learned that they were, indeed, termite mounds. Apparently each mound maintains an internal temperature of 120 degrees F with 100% humidity. The colony can last as long as 50 years and their earth-churning activity is similar to that of earthworms except that the climate is too hot and dry to support earthworm activity.
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Aboriginal Issues:
Okay, one of these pictures probably shouldn't have been taken (I'll let you, gentle reader, figure that one out...) but I felt it would help illustrate what's going on. It appears most of Australia's aboriginal peoples (there were over 350 different "clans," with over 200 distinct languages and dialects at the time the Europeans arrived) want to distance themselves from the European influence and invasion of their country - I can respect that so I did a pretty good job of not photographing people and individuals so as not to make them a spectacle on these pages...
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The Australian Government's Park Notes (dated 11/04) states that; "[Aboriginal] ...languages have extensive vocabularies and complex grammars. Today about one hundred languages are still spoken to some extent with fifty languages having a significant number of speakers." Parks Australia also goes on to say that these languages are as distinct and and different from each other as English and Bengali...
Kakadu National Park and Ancient Aboriginal Rock Art:
Kakadu is a World Heritage park that's located in Australia's Northern Territory. Apparently the land's original "owners," at Ubirr, have disappeared so another clan is now watching over the area and leasing the park to the federal government. Like most parks throughout Australia there was no entry fee! Kakadu is huge and has an especially impressive display of ancient rock art - some of the pieces dating nearly 20,000 years BP...
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Camping in Australia:
As I mentioned earlier, Australia is huge and wide-open so finding a campsite is no problem. Water, especially in the State of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, is a problem. So, Tami and I usually camped at a public site either in town or at a "Roadhouse" so as to have plenty of water...
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Bats, Kangaroos and Wallabies:
The second photo, looking up at the night sky through a hole in the trees, revealed hundreds of bats flying away from their roosts for the evening. It was a wild scene that we barely captured on camera as the bats, as seen here, came out as small "blurs" in the photo due to the open shutter...
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Box Jellyfish, Crocodile Danger, and the Arafura Sea:
If you look carefully, after clicking on the third "thumbnail," you'll see a "log-like" featured floating in the middle of the river. This is a wild crocodile that Tami was able to capture by camera!
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