TIGERS, TUNES & TRAGEDY

Tunes to remember

Doug, unstressing

My beautiful friend (much better enclosure than this depicts)

Battery crocs?!

Starlight Dinner Party

Hello, how goes it? I figure you have had a big enough break from my meanderings and are ready for another onslaught. Well, we ended up staying at Darwin until the 1st August. The caravan park had some bad problems with power and we all suffered three days of on/off power supply. Some folk had major problems with this, one camper blew the Inverter in his lovely Winnebago. The park was very good with all of this, and paid for any out of pocket expenses caused by the power problems and offered those of us, most affected, one free day. We took up the offer and extended our stay again by that one day, hence leaving on the 1st August.
The last two weeks of our stay in Darwin were lazy and lovely. We did finally succumb and visit Crocodylus Park – we were pleasantly surprised by the park – extremely professionally run and a treat to stroll around. We saw my beloved tigers, one of which is a mascot to one of the local army battalions – apparently he joins them on marches – I would love to see that! I also finally saw a wombat. It’s hard to believe that as a born and bred Aussie, I have had to wait to turn 60 before seeing a wombat. He was a lovely little fella, but sadly his enclosure left a bit to be desired, as he really had nowhere to go to get out of the daylight. The park actually farms crocs and as a result has literally hundreds of them at all different stages of development. They told us that the farmed crocs develop and grow much faster than those in the wild. I guess this is really a form of battery farming. They did have the crocs jump for us, and it was quite fascinating. Some of my enjoyment was dampened when one particularly nasty and large fellow leapt out of the water and splashed lovely smelly crocodile pen water all over me, yuck! TBBITW tells me he fared even worse when some of the lovely water made its way into his mouth. The park sells all manner of crocodile products and ladies, you can forget about acquiring a nice little handbag, that is, unless you wish to divest yourself of a couple of grand. Beautiful and all that, but.............. Crocodile meat is also available from the park, and that too is fairly pricy at around $24 per kilo. We decided we didn’t really need to fill our freezer with croc meat.
We were again reminded of the fragility of the human body as one of our fellow campers suffered two strokes while at the Caravan Park. The second one had him in hospital for quite a spell and he and his wife were compelled to sell the caravan from the park in order to free themselves up to fly home where he could receive further treatment. This is the second caravanner we have seen experience a stroke in a caravan park and the 5th time we have seen an ambulance come to take someone away from a caravan park. The reality I guess is that most of us living the dream, are 60+ and many of us are unfit. Added to that is often unaccustomed physical exertion and probably more relevant, a tendency to overdo the sundowners. Over indulgence is a real problem – particularly alcohol, which many of us consume in copious quantities. With the alcohol come the nibblies, my particular demon. It is interesting to see too, that many of our fellow travellers just don’t seem to ‘get’ what this is all about. It amazes us to see how many people do everything the hard way, making their lives soo much more difficult and stressful than it need be. You would be amazed at how many travellers are pedantic about the appearance of their vehicles and their vans, spending an incredible amount of time washing and polishing something that will at the next step be at least as dirty all over again. I have to say, TBBITW is an extraordinarily sane type and certainly does not spend undue time in these mad pursuits. You will have gathered too, from earlier editions that he makes sure I don’t make the interior of the van any sort of shrine either. Although it does nettle me from time to time, I have to agree that it is a better approach than some. Sitting here this morning, sorting photos, we saw the man next door get some overspray on his neighbours car, whilst washing his own, his neighbour, fairly predictably emerged from his sparkling van to demand the car washer run a chamois over his now slightly damp vehicle. Amazing! The same sort of thing applies when parking the van – so many folk must have the van absolutely straight, and we watched in amazement yesterday as one particularly fastidious woman instructed her man exactly where she wished the car parked, right down to the last inch. The car had to line up completely with the van, it seemed. The old fella next to us spent no less than 5 hours trying to get his TV aerial perfect. To make it worse, he is only staying 4 nights – why bother?!! Why do people come out here to watch telly anyway?? With all this adopted stress, no wonder so many fall by the wayside.
We were as usual blessed with our neighbours, we made several lovely new friends while in FreeSpirit. One couple, who had been staying the full season in Darwin for the past 7 years were musos. Yvonne, who was a brilliant hairdresser, also made the most beautiful jewellery and played the organ. Have you ever met one of those people who make you feel drab and frowzy. This lady was one of those. Every morning she emerged from her van looking like she had just walked out of a beauty salon – what was even more annoying was that she continued to look like that all day and all night. This was despite a continuous line of 'hair' clients at her door. She and her hubby Hank threw a dinner party one night, and I was dismayed to find that she was able to throw a banquet without even raising a sweat (not an easy task in that humidity). The food, needless to say, was delicious and the whole event went off without a hitch. Hubby Hank played the guitar and sang – mostly country and western, and I am pleased to say, mainly Australian stuff. These two delightful folk would come along to sundowners with their musical instruments and many a pleasant hour was spent in musical harmony. Our old mate Hugh was even persuaded to bring along his guitar and then we really did have a treat, as Hugh’s playing is an absolute delight. Just before we left, we had a big get together with all and sundry, all of us whetting the vocal chords and getting involved – a great night was had by all – Thanks Yvonne and Hank.
Despite the wonderful time we had at FreeSpirit, I was actually glad to leave. Having a good time is all and well, BUT.............too much of a good thing and all that...............I felt it was time for a ‘dry-out’ and a few quiet nights. See you again at Jabiru! Steph.