#i saw a post about frilled sharks so i looked them up and found out they're prehistoric

[scyaxe]

are there any fish (true fish) that had legs at one point in their evolutionary lifecycle? like how whales and other aquatic mammals at one point lived on land. did any fish live on land at any point?

[ashuribbon]

Any fun facts about the Sea Beasts u haven't told before? :o

THE FACT I GOT EXCITED TO SEE SOMEONE ASK ABOUT MY SEA BEASTS AU... /POS

Anyway, some more silly facts about my Sea Beasts AU! All of them under the cut, since it's a long one!

Hardshelled Oyster Cookie pretty much earned her name after she, in her early 20s, was injected a powerful serum that was supposed to act as a cure for a fatal illness that would've crumbled her, but ultimately gave her a massively increased boost. Her flavor had some nice spice, her metabolism reached crazy highs, immaculate strength almost comparable to a certain Herald, and her personality now seasoned with lack of patience and hothead behavior. Salty Shark pretty much lived to see her suddenly 180 into who she is now.

Unfortunately, Lord Oyster died during the ongoing fight to acquire one of the Soul Jams, so he never got to see what would become of his younger nephew. Emperor Abalone Cookie, however... Well, he managed to get it, and was the one to have given her the cure.

At one point during her 20s, Hardshelled Oyster Cookie felt great shame in her newfound capabilities and her need for destruction, so she ran away from home to what remained of the Land of Fire and Ruin (since some areas were making way for Emperor Abalone Cookie building a city in certain areas) and never came back for an entire year, which worried the Oyster family. Oddly enough, she was comforted by two centaurs: one a saffron buffalo and another a red tiger. They treated her like she was... some sort of old deity. Even though she didn't know why they saw her as such, she didn't mind.

By the time she returned, she was seen walking with what looked to be a parashu, one that was large but easy for her to carry. No one knew where she got it, but all she said was that "he" granted it to her.

Salty Shark Cookie and Hardshelled Oyster Cookie are still friends, very close friends in fact! It's just a little hard for him to handle her lack of patience and her destructiveness. Also, he knows how she gets a bit too excited when she walks into the Beast Tournament. Also, he thinks that parashu she holds is awfully similar to the old the Herald of Change held... too similar, in fact.

Hardshelled Oyster Cookie, Crispy Durian Cookie, and Frilled O' War? Post-tournament, they pretty much have a weekly vacation where they spend their days tending to one another. Frilled O' War is given the chance to at least her who she used to be again, though it's hard to forget what happened to Tearcrown without it showing up in her dreams like a broken record. Crispy Durian Cookie at least gets to have time off from celebrity life, and away from the sheer guilt he feels when he becomes a killing machine under Emp. Abalone's command. Hardshelled Oyster Cookie pretty is the oldest, so she does have her moments where she has to be sure their needs are in check.

And when Rye Flour Cookie joins? They all collectively become a found family!!!! :D

As for Rye Flour Cookie, she was a bit tough to raise, especially since she was prone to outbursts due to her having no way to cope with the loss of her mother. Saint Whiskey Cookie would see her weep, and felt it hit too close to home, since he led the overthrowing of the Witches after the Virtue of Knowledge was crushed last, being the biggest straw to break the camel's back and make him start a war in a blind rage.

Rye Flour Cookie's outbursts stopped when, one day, she saw him weeping during his morning prayer, and thus realized she wasn't alone. She pretty much decided to weep with him, and thus the two would see each other as family from here on out, despite Rye Flour's rebellious nature and Saint Whiskey being a Cookie of peace and order.

Think Chirin and the wolf from Chirin no Suzu. That's basically how I can best describe Saint Whiskey Cookie and Rye Flour Cookie's familial bond.

Icy Tundra Cookie never allows Cream Soda Cookie to go to the Beast Tournaments. She trained her so that way she can join as one of the champions, but she feared that she's... just too young to be in the blood battles she's witnessed over the years. No matter how much Cream Soda begs, she can't afford to see her get wounded.

The Anti-Beast Hunters is a particular group Icy Tundra has been aware of for... quite a long time, ever since Saint Whiskey warned her and the other Sea Beasts about it. All she knew was they are hooded figures in different colors, each with the symbol of the Soul Jams to indicate who the Cookie is targeting. Her Anti-Beast Hunter is a soft-hearted Cookie who is leading the pack, pretty much taking notes on anything happening in the Endless Ice Kingdom before heading out.

OH, and she always drinks a warm coffee in her meetings so she can warm her hands, seeing her powers are becoming corrupt with the overwhelming influence from the Soul Jam.

[quark-nova]

Sometimes I see you on my dash doing a science and it makes me happy and do you have any shark facts pls? Sharks are so cool. Especially the weird deep sea sharks that always get ignored when ppl talk about great whites and such (no shame to great whites they are very lovable,)

Of course I have quite a lot!

Okay so we can start with the first shark ancestors, the spiny sharks! They lived in the Silurian, more than 400 million years ago. They looked pretty unique as each fin was actually a spine supporting the whole fin, and had already reacquired the cartilaginous skeleton that modern sharks have!

Nobu Tamura / CC BY-SA 4.0

They often had a bunch of little pairs of "finlets" (not real fins, but spines serving a similar purpose) between their actual fins! So spiky!

Then we come to the true sharks (and rays). Or, nearly. Turns out, there are two main groups of shark-like cartilaginous fish alive today. On the one hand the sharks and rays, and on the other hand the chimeras, majestic creatures often found in the deep sea!

Havforskingsinstituttet / CC BY-SA 4.0

Turns out however, the ancestors of chimeras were historically way more shark-like! And ranged between adorable and pretty weird, and more often than not both! Here's one of them: the sawblade shark, Helicoprion!

Entelognathus / CC BY-SA 4.0

And here's the anvil shark!

DiBgd / CC BY-SA 4.0

And the wtfshark, Squaloraja!

Nix Illustrations / I don't know the license but he's on Tumblr

And now we can move on to the actual sharks. And rays. And sawsharks. And sawfish. And sawskates. The design so good they had to invent it thrice.

Here's a sawfish (these ones are closer to rays!), heavily judging whoever took the photograph. Surprisingly, they're the largest of the bunch, reaching up to 7 meters - while sawsharks are barely a meter in length at best, and sawskates aren't alive anymore but could reach a respectable 4 meters! (although they were wider relative to their size, which has to count for something?)

Simon Fraser University - University Communications / CC BY 2.0

Now that we saw the saws, we can move on to actual sharks... wait what's that? An interruption by the coolest species of six-finned ray?

Robert Fisher, Virginia Sea Grant / CC BY-ND 2.0

Seems like it. Of course I had to mention my favourite cartilaginous fish in the bunch. Cownose rays (and their manta ray cousins) are the only vertebrates to have developed an entire new pair of fins - on their face, to help them grab stuff! Since fish paired fins are homologous to our limbs, it would be like having an extra pair of arms coming from our face!

Robert Fisher, Virginia Sea Grant / CC BY-ND 2.0

Back to sharks now (finally)! And speaking of stuff it's rare to have six of, what about sixgill sharks?

No author information / Public domain

The most divergent group of true sharks alive today, the deep-sea creatures that we call frilled sharks are actually very derived, despite their prehistoric appearance! Ironically, their more ordinary-looking sixgill cousins, the cow sharks, are more representative of how sharks started off back in the days!

NOAA / Public domain

Still six gills because why not. Or even seven, because really, why not.

Next step on our shark list (and back to the regular five-gill pattern), the angelsharks! Or sand devils, because they really couldn't decide on these ones. Angels or devils, they're absolutely adorable pancakes.

Nick Long / CC BY-SA 2.0

Now, we would still have five more orders of sharks to go, but these are the pretty well-known ones (great white shark, hammerhead shark, etc.) and this post is getting pretty big, so I'm happy to have presented cool unique ones already! Have a nice day, and don't forget - there are always more shark species to learn about!

[spotsupstuff]

Hey, I was just wondering, could you tell us more about your Yin's flood au? I instantly fell in love with it!

yin's flood... i haven't heard that name in ages.... well, if you wanna kno smth specifically, feel free to send another question!

in an another post i had planned out but i never got around to do i was gon introduce the Yin's flood's Six Ear, who, in this version, i've had planned to be as different from the fruit twins version as i dared to in Yin's flood, i wanted to go n try out the theory of "Six Ear used to be a student of Sun Wukong, just like Qi Xiaotian is". I'm still kind of deciding if he used to be human originally, or if he was always a monkey monster (lowkey leaning to the first version just cuz it's different). His og name was meant to be Li Gen (meaning plum root), but it might change cuz i later found out a yaksha general who was killed by Nezha had the exact same name

He seeked training from the monkey king mostly out of selfish reasons, his goal was to one day become stronger than SWK. SWK saw thru it basically right away, but accepted him just to amuse himself (maybe). Flash forward multiple years of relationship building to when The Flood happens n the two have their giant fight at the shores of mountain huaguo, with SWK struggling to fight the now six eared macaque (grew to care for him like for a son) while also spendin his energy on saving mount. huaguo from The Flood (that came in as a tsunami) ofc, SWK ended up victorious. as punishment for Six Ear for turning against him- at such horrid time, no less- he cursed him into becoming a deep sea siren. The curse can be broken only if he swims above the water surface during a full moon, but since Six Ear is now bound to be a deep sea creature, a singular trip upwards at a wrong time would end with him dead because of the drastic pressure difference Naturally, the "s1e9" ends up with Qi Xiaotian helping Six Ear escape his curse

here's some old sketches I have of him:

he generally sticks to the frilled shark version cuz -kicks the vampire squid version- i couldn't get this thing to look satisfactory enough

Mountain Huaguo is, just like in the canon cartoon, protected by the Flaming Mountains-

-except SWK made them grow during his fight against Six Ear/during The Flood. The heat of them vaporates away the ocean water, creating something aking to a crater where mount. Huaguo lies, hidden in the mist (pretty similarly to HTTYD 3, when i think bout it but with less waterfalls). As a baby, Qi Xiaotian managed to get into the inner mount. Huaguo waters thru underwater tunnels in the foundations of the Flaming mountains There he "terrorized" the monkeys by being a not-monkey and very curious bout what the yes-monkeys were doing on the shores, until SWK was called to deal with the "dangeer". He ended up basically adopting Xiaotian in a matter of a week or so Xiaotian's red bandanna is actually a gift from SWK in this au. Xiaotian kinda forgets about ever actually meetin SWK cuz baby memory sucks n once SWK helped him get back into the actual ocean, he didn't know how to come back cuz, once again, baby navigation has failed him

Tang shifu is this fucking thing (Mantis Shrimp):

because it looks like a flashy stuck up nerd who's boutta cry at any given moment but packs a surprisingly strong punch

Chef Zhu is either a Goliath Grouper or a pufferfuck cuz i have a surprising amount of pufferfish memes n am known as the pufferfuck meme dispenser in my older friend groups

Sha Dali stays the same n Long Xiaojiao is either a sea horse or straight up just some kinda human n dragon hybrid

Wan Qian Cheng is flooded pretty hardcore (with only the upper parts of skyscrapes sticking out n the homes built on top of the mountains- only yaoguai live there instead of humans) so the main place of shenanigangs is usually the city of the Eastern Dragon King which was built larger than what is seen in the canon cartoon to accomodate basically all humans (everyone was turned into a mermaid/siren as a way of preservation. one day they are supposed to come back on the surface but the restoration of the earth is going pretty slowly)

The main antag is Wuzhiqi instead of WBS, since Wuzhiqi is also known as "the great water ape sage". She caused The Flood and SWK is training Xiaotian after he gets Jingu Bang to one day try n trap her again. No clue what i wanna do with either Six Ear or WBS yet in the grander scheme of things cuz Wuzhiqi wouldn't care to enslave Six as her "champion" or whatever n WBS is prolly aggressively twirling her thumbs in her now claustrophobia-indicing Submerged grave

N yaaas, Xiaotian gets legs on account of being trained by SWK n Red Son, while generally stickin in normal bipedal mode, can magic himself a tail (prolly a mako shark.....) so he can cause Issues to team QXT. BDK, PIF, Jin & Yin, spider gang n others i may be forgettin rn r still normal. The encounter with spider queen happens because of scavenging thru Wan Qian Cheng (as do most of location locked plot points)

oh yea also Jin n Yin wear this shit while underwater:

important information here

[ericadownunderpart2]

The Great Barrier “Ralph”

Tuesday and Wednesday I checked off one of my bucket list activities.  I took an overnight boat and snorkelled thr the Great Barrier Reef.  We visited one of the Outer Reefs, the Thetford Reef, 3 hours out from Cairns.  One of the ost spectacular sites ever!

So full disclosure, this might be one of my least visual appealing posts because I did not have an underwater camera and really didn’t use my phone too much because everything on the boat is soaking wet all the time.  Most of the pics from topside are mine, but all the fish/coral pics are courtesy of the internet.  They are all things I really saw though..Anyway, sit back, put your comfy pants on, get a glass of wine...cause this is a long one.

My Great Barrier Reef (GBR) voyage was aboard a small 65 foot motor sailing schooner called the Rum Runner. It was advertised as "an affordable reef experience for backpackers and budget-conscious travelers" (You know how I love a deal) It lives up to it's no frills expectations. The boat is owned by a man named Richard who is also known as Rum. He also owns the hostel I am staying at...another no frills frills experience. Rum is a kind of wiry frantic man, who when I told him that the door to the refrigerator fell off when I opened it, he said  “Oh yeah, that...well, you can put your stuff in the other fridge.”  Hmmm.  No frills indeed.  But it is actually a nice room with my own bed and A/C.  All the basics covered.

Anyway, back to the reef...the captain of the Rum Runner was also quite a character.  His name is Jace and he looks exactly like what you would imagine a grizzled sailor to look like (only he’s on the small side).  Long, unkempt hair and covered in nautical tattoos,.His personality is a grizzled as his exterior would suggest.  Classic! (No photo, use your imagination)

A motley crew

We were at full capacity on the small boat with 16 passengers and 5 crew.  (I actually think we might have been over capacity, but its not the kind of boat that is concerned with that kind of thing.)  My fellow passengers on the trip were a fun and eclectic mix of international backpackers hailing from 9 different countries including Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, New Zealand, France, etc.

The ride out to the reef was a 3 hour trip.  It started with fun a chatting and general excitement.  Things quickly turned sour.  The reason I named this post The Great Barrier “Ralph” was due to the rough seas heading out to the reef and the puking/ralphing fest that ensued.  Of the 16 passengers, at my best count 9 were lined up along the side of the ship throwing up for most of the ride out.  A seasickness extravaganza.  I was shockingly one of the only people not throwing up.  Considering my general aversion to water for most of my early life, I was shocked to be one of the ones who had my sea legs.  This air of cockiness would catch up to me later, but more to come on that...

By the time we got out to the reef, most people, although a little sad, queasy and haggard had stopped ralphing over the side and it was time to get our diving/snorkeling on.  Most of the passengers were certified divers.  There were only three of us who opted for the snorkel only package, which proved to be the best decision.  My snorkel buddies are my new favorite travel friends, Sophie & Oscar.  Sophie is a “Kiwi” (a person from New Zealand) and Oscar, Sophie’s BF, is originally from Sweden.  They would turn out to be my travel companions for the rest of my time in Cairns.  

Snorkel buddies

The three of us had nearly free reign of the reef on each dive, as the crew was preoccupied with the divers.  On day one, we did 4 dives at sites around an Outer Reef known as the Thetford Reef.  Although the GBR is in danger due to global warming, it is absolutely huge and some parts of it are still flourishing.  We were on just one of over 3,000 reef groups that make up the GBR!

So what is it like to snorkel in open ocean?  Absolutely terrifying.  Thanks for asking.  If I’m being totally honest my entire first & maybe second dive I was freaking out.  I made them give me floaty because I was scared I would drown and never be seen again.  As it turns out, it is salt water and we were all wearing wet suits so, I was so buoyant I couldn’t have drowned if I wanted to.  It took a few dives for me to realize this.  Most of the reefs we saw were shaped like giant mountains or mushroom clouds under the water.  You can snorkel right over the top of them and the corals are only a few feet from you.  Once I got over the initial fear of drowning or being eaten by sharks, I discovered it is one of the most magical experiences ever.  You can swim with schools of beautiful, iridescent fish.  There are so many of them.  The fish and the reef are ever color imaginable and they are so close to you!  One of the best experiences is when you swim over the top of the reef and get to the edge...all of a sudden it drops off into huge caverns, sometimes hundreds of feet deep.  It feels like you are flying.  You’re first instinct is that you are going to fall off the edge, until you realize you are floating above the void.  It is literally like flying above mountains and valleys, except they are underwater and made of coral.  

In the deep dropoffs there are schools of large fish, we saw Tuna, which are huge and Unicorn Fish, which are hilarious.

Again, disclaimer, I did not take these photoss, but this is what they look like.

“Unicorn Fish” -  Naso brevirostris

Tuna

In the shallows of the reefs, we found Nemo!!  (Clown fish are the cutest), these crazy neon blue worms that hide when you splash water at them, and other smaller fish.  Some of my other favorites below:

Butterfly fish.  So cute, they were always swimming in pairs.

Five banded Damselfish.  I could just swim right in the middle of a school of them.

Blue Puller Damsel Fish

Bi-color Clown Fish Nemo!)

Coral Trout

Giant Clams

Table Coral

Brain Coral

Blue Coral

Each dive was about an hour and I didn’t want to come back each time.  It was beyond words...]

Pics from rear of the Rum Runner at dusk 

The other thing that is amazing about being out on the reef  is the sunset and at night there is almost no light and we were out on a clouody night.  We had dinner and a beer and headed to bed in our tiny bunks.  I don’t think I have ever been so tired.  I’m pretty sure I was asleep by 8pm.

The next day we were up at 7am for our morning dive.  The first of two for the final day.  On each dive the reefs got progressively more amazing (maybe because I could finally fully relax and enjoy them) The abundance of fish chasing each other around the reef and hiding in little reef caves was phenomenal.  On our final dive of the day, we swam out to a large, shallow thin reef, with deep crevasses running through the reef.  I was swimming a little further away from my companions, near a crevasse, and all of a sudden a HUGE fish came out of the black of the crevasse and swam right past my face.  It was what is known as a Humphead Wrasse.  They are one of the largest fish in the reef.  The one I saw was easily 4 feet long.  

Humphead  or Maori Wrasse (They can live up to 30 years, but are currently on the endangered species list)

Of course, I immediately thought it was something that was going to eat me.  I panicked and swam down to avoid it, this led to me taking in a ton of water into my snorkel and completely forgetting how to blow it out again.  I ended up swallowing a TON of salt water in my panic.  I eventually pulled myself together and figured out the fish was completely harmless.  I then took off in pursuit of it.  After sprinting after it for several minutes I finally caught up to it and swam alongside of it for what felt like hours, probably a minute or so.  Then, it hit me...I had just swallowed an inhumane amount of salt water and was completely wiped from chasing the fish.  My bravado in being one of the non-pukers caught up to me.  All of a sudden, I just lost my cookies and puked in the ocean.  I had officially left my mark (and my breakfast) on the Great Barrier Reef.  And that friends, was my final hurrah on the Reef.  The Wrasse had disappeared back to the depths of the ocean and it was time for me to swim back to the boat.  Epic, right?

Anyway, the conclusion of this story is that I continue to leave my breakfast in the GBR for the rest of the 3 hour trip back to Cairns.  Seasickness is no joke, folks.  Lesson learned, don’t eat a giant breakfast, swallow a ton of salt water and then ride on rough water for three hours.  Was it worth it?  YYYYYEEEESSSSSSS!  In fact, I couldn’t ask for a more hilarious and epic final hours on the Reef.  This will probably go down as one of the best experiences of my life.  It was also one of the best moments ever to stand on solid ground, take a shower in my hostel, take some anti-nausea medicine and sleep!

[lindoig]

Days 34 to 39

Day 34

We left the poor penned animals to their fate and headed through Kakadu, south-west towards Pine Creek on the Stuart Highway – the main drag from Adelaide to Darwin.

We called in at all the places we could along the road, but several were marked as ‘4WD only’, ‘No Caravans’ – and some of them (including some of the better-known ones) were still closed due to the extended Wet this year. We had been to Nourlangie Rock with the Tour in the previous week, so zipped past that and went in to Cooinda where we had read about two interesting walks at nearby Gun Gardun.  Unfortunately, one was still under water, inhabited by the Big Bities, so we decided our flippers and water wings could stay in the closet – but we did the other one through the woodlands.  It was supposed to be a couple of kilometres and the recommendation was to allow up to an hour.  But as usual, we found so many things to look at and photograph – birds, plants, fungus, rocks, termite nests, trees, even the distant hills – that it took us more than 2 hours.  Funnily, when we got to the end of the walk, we found ourselves in a carpark with our car nowhere to be seen.  It took us several minutes and an extra few hundred metres walk to find the right road out of the carpark to where our car actually was.

We called in at the Warradjan Aboriginal Cultural Centre: a really great museum/interpretative display, still in Kakadu.  It was very well done in all respects with many hundreds of interesting artefacts, heaps of written information, very readable (with my glasses on) on all aspects of traditional indigenous life - food collection and processing, medicinal use of plants, marriage laws and clan associations, animal and plant information and so on. The only problem for me is that there was simply too much and they had very strict rules against any form of photography or recording processes.  I read a lot of information, but became quite overloaded with it and gave up after 45 minutes or so, less than half way through.  Heather kept going, but I sat outside for half an hour or so watching the birds.   It was a bit disappointing because the information was really good, interesting and well-presented, but simply overwhelming.  Normally, we would have photographed some of the display data to read and absorb later, but with this not being an option, a lot of the benefit was lost.  They certainly lost me and I would have liked to learn more in a more orderly and measured way.

We headed south again and turned off the tar to Gunlom Falls.  It was 37 km of really rough road, full of corrugations, bulldust, rocks, potholes, a couple of water hazards (and quite a few speeding car hazards) and some sudden unexpected bumps.  When we arrived at the end of the road, we decided to stay there overnight.  No power or water available, but there were showers and toilets for $30-something a night.  Oops - when we opened the van, we found that the rough and rattly road had worked loose the latches on our bathroom cupboard doors and EVERY SINGLE item was on the floor of the shower recess.  We reckon that there were a few thousand items to be resorted, repackaged, restored in their containers and put back into the cupboards before we could do anything else.  We didn’t want to face that again on the way back to the highway the following day, so we found a better way of securing the doors to prevent a recurrence.  (Not to be outdone, however, our great new $200 12-volt gimbal fan contrived to detach itself from its moorings and smashed itself on the floor.  We are now enjoying a slightly extended stay in Mataranka: waiting for a replacement to arrive in the mail in the next day or two.)

Gumlom Falls are quite spectacular – not a huge volume of water at the moment, but very high and dropping into what seemed to be a very deep crystal-clear pool maybe 150 metres across.  It was very beautiful with quite a lot of birds, some flowering plants and warnings about crocodiles.  Needless to say, that discouraged us from swimming, but not so for quite a few other people – including the ranger who decided the warning didn’t apply to her.  We saw some clowns at the top of the Falls, risking life and limb, clambering around the very brink of the cascade, one with his girlfriend on his shoulders(!!!) taking selfies.  One tiny slip and 200 metres of rock wall awaited the plunge.  It was too much for us to watch so we retreated to cook dinner and went back to the Falls to take our photos next morning.  It was very beautiful!

Days 35 to 37

Once we got back on the main road (shaken and stirred), it was a short run into Pine Creek and then on to Katherine for fuel and groceries.  We decided to go on to Mataranka to camp, but a few kilometres out of Katherine, a light came on in the car, warning that the water level in the fuel filter had reached its limit so we turned around and headed back to the Toyota agent in Katherine. It was good that it happened where it did because the next closest Toyota dealer was over 1200 km away.  I carry a spare set of filters and could probably have replaced it myself, but we preferred to have it do professionally. We arrived back in Katherine shortly before closing time at the service centre so booked the job in for early on Saturday morning and stayed two nights at the caravan park next door to Mr Toyota.

For the record, I will just update the inventory of our wildlife sightings (other than birds and the thousands of species of insects and arachnids) for the trip so far.  We have seen red and grey kangaroos, several species of wallabies, emus, echidnas, a dingo, large and small fish of numerous aetiologies, porpoises, sharks, rays, turtles, salties and freshwater crocodiles, a couple of unidentified snakes, buffaloes, a perentie and several other monitors, a frill-necked lizard, numerous little geckos and probably a dozen other beasties I can’t think of right now.  What, no koalas?

As for birds, the species count stands at 192, including 37 that were new ticks for us.

Days 38 and 39

It is only a bit over an hour from Katherine to Mataranka so we arrived here in time for lunch – Happy Birthday Kerry and Pat!

We had been told about quite a new place (only opened in April) called the Little Roper Stock Camp and we are now booked in here for two nights.  It is really rough and ready, but very interesting too.  The guy who runs it is a character – when it comes to hats, Les Hiddins, eat your heart out.  He uses an amazing Landcruiser to collect wood and other things on the property – it is quite a recent model, but has obviously rolled at some stage so the top has been removed – by the looks of it, with an axe!  It is a total wreck and has several tyres tied onto it to protect from possible body damage if/when it hits something – but not sure if the body likely to be damaged is the car of what it hits!  The place looks very run down, but he is obviously working hard to make a go of it as a bush camp with outback experiences.  It has power, but no water.  Plenty of water here, but it is very limey so he recommends not to use it in any caravan appliances.  We have filled the bucket a couple of times and used it for washing and laundry and it is fine for that – and it even tastes OK – but we have not used it for cooking or drinks.  We have plenty of good water with us – I topped us up in Katherine – so we don’t need to use limey water if we don’t want to.  The farmyard here includes buffalos, Brahman cattle, pigs and chooks at least and there are all sorts of quaint old stuff to explore.  There are a couple of huge fire-pits and he cooks ‘johnny-cakes’ for breakfast for anyone who wants them – some sort of damper.  Twenty-odd people sat around the massive fire last night and yarned until quite late (a 6-7 hour happy hour) and maybe 30 people enjoyed the johnny-cakes this morning.  We didn’t, but we have booked for the 3-course roast dinner tonight (beef, buffalo and lamb) and may indulge in the brekky tomorrow if we are up in time.

After lunch, we went back into Mataranka (7km) and out to Bitter Springs – some thermal springs 4-5 km out of town. We did an interesting short walk there – probably less than 2km – a loop around a section of the springs where dozens of people were swimming.  They get into the water with a ‘noodle’ (plastic float) and just drift with the current to a pontoon a few hundred metres downstream – then return and do it again, and again, and again…..  At 37 degrees, the water was not inviting for us, but the hoi polloi obviously love it. Except for a few too many people. it was quite a lovely scenic place, with hundreds of palms, some beautiful birds, plenty of reeds, trees and other plants, all with this crystal river flowing gently through it.  It is a couple of metres deep and you can see every feature on the bottom as if looking through sheer, polished glass.

We drove half-way back to Katherine and did 30-odd clicks out to some Aboriginal communities on the Mainoru road towards Nhulunbuy.  You need a permit to go all the way out, but we didn’t think we had time to drive the 700+km each way that afternoon, so we never even enquired about permits.

Today (when I am posting this) is Monday, 5 June and it is a lay-day for us. We need to go into Mataranka to the Post Office and servo, but we are planning a bigger week to more remote places near and beyond the Queensland border, probably starting tomorrow, so gathering our energy for the fray today is probably a good opportunity to potter around a bit and bring our blogs up to date – it will be the first time since we left home that mine has been up to date.