Archive for March, 2007

Because You Need to Know:

Amanda March 27th, 2007

If you’re like me, there’s times when you really need to know what the weather is up to in Antarctica. This is the website for you:

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW0920.shtml

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Wet!

gadget March 25th, 2007

We get excited when it rains…

Yeah ok. Minds out of the gutter. Not that excited!

So far this year, Alice Springs has had 98mm in January, nothing -not a parched drop- in February, and now in March, we’ve had another 80mm already (you might note that the ‘official’ rainfall figures collected by the Bureau of Meterology don’t reflect this because the weather station is about 12km out of town on the other side of the range in its rainshadow!).

To celebrate our love of precipitation, we’ve taken a few photos of watery things.

This is the waterhole at Ormiston. I haven’t seen it this full for about 3 years.

This is the Pioneer Creek crossing on the way to Ormiston Gorge. Ususally it’s bone dry.

In town, the Todd River was a torrent! This is the causeway at Wills Terrace (near the Todd Tavern) closed to traffic and open for kayaking only.

Here’s another picture of Wills Terrace causeway:

This is the big bridge on Stott Terrace, looking south:

And this is Wigley’s Waterhole, north of town on the Telegraph Station Reserve. Wigley’s is usually not much bigger than a backyard swimming pool…

Talk to the Hand!

Amanda March 20th, 2007

I could more appropriately title this blog ‘Idiots 101’ or ‘Assholes Inc.’, but I’ve decided against it. Basically it’s another rant by me (Amanda) about life as the NT Parks & Wildlife Service’s only anthropologist.

Sometimes –a lot of the time- my job becomes very political, positional and constrained by an ideology for which it is still 1976. This week is one of those weeks.

It began with a disagreement late last week. I fumed. I ranted. Both parties negotiated a deal after five days of me stewing about it. But personally, I feel it’s the 1976 thing happening again. Of course, we at Parks want to share our secrets with tour guides (NOT).

And then there’s those people with whom I deal –those who still have the 1976 calendar on their desks- that choose to take a legal eye to white board dot points compiled by more than a dozen people a meeting … only ever intended to be a summary of topics discussed … but by metamorphosis, the dot points are suddenly interpreted an all-defining organisational statement of position.

ARRGGHHH!!!

Is it just me, or are these people from another dimension? Or are these people dreadful alien abductees with experimental lobotomies gone wrong?

To cope with this dilemma, I have come up with a strategy.

Tactical Advice to Others who Encounter Similar Life Forms:

1. Hang out with the rangers from the West Macs on a Friday night at Owen Springs.
This reassures me that there are nice people working in my organisation. Real people who care about what they do and operate in the real, physical world (not the imaginary 1976 that never was).

2. Identify a suitable location to send these Life Forms to.
Ashmore Reef (excised from our migration zone) is a remote and suitably barren location.

3. Find friendly and supportive archaeologist to whinge to.
Pay me money and I will reveal my friendly and supportive archaeologist’s identity. Also note, you can swap case studies of Life Forms with the archaeologist as they too have these regressives inhabiting their office space.

4. Make it obvious that you’re looking for another job.
Your supervisor will get worried. In the NT, human resources are worth almost as much as mining resources.

5. Ignore Life Forms and their incomprehensible jabbering.
My supervisor and his supervisor do this all the time. There’s merit in this approach. (I think). I’ve noticed that the Prime Minister does this, too. Ignore it, trivialise it, and it will go away, or become labelled as ‘too politically correct’, or ‘the chatter of the intellectual elite’ and you can then (apparently) pooh-pooh the idea and disempower it altogether.

6. (Most preferred option). Go trekking in the Himalayas.
Stuff em!

You Have to Work for a Living…

gadget March 15th, 2007

As a ranger you have to be able to carry out a diverse range of tasks. Some good, some bad and some in between. Last week in a bid to encourage a good team relationship we, as in the whole Ormiston team at present, decided that a trip up Redbank Gorge was something we could do together.

What you may ask has this got to do with working for a living as it sounds like something that an every day tourist might do? Well some misguided soul had placed a chain three quarters of the way into the gorge to help people up an otherwise unascendable rock face. So on the premise of risk reduction we decided that removing the chain was a necessary evil to minimise the chances of the park service being sued by someone not willing to take responsibilty for their own safety if they fell while using it.

The gorge, when filled with water, is a delight to travel through. It is often overlooked due to the coldness of the waterhole protecting its opening into the narrow chasm beyond. It is a place of serene beauty and isolation which for the more adventurous traveller opens up a new world in an otherwise mostly dry place. The rewards are great for those venturing in to explore what the gorge has to offer. Hang on you say….you guys are supposed to be working! Well we are…we are lucky in that we rangers get to do daily what most Australians, and for that matter visitors from many overseas shores, aspire to do during their annual leave.

As I said the water is cold so the best way to journey through the narrow chasm is by using a flotation device or as we did an inflated rubber tube. The gorge comprises a series of pools generally separated by a small rocky shelf or pad of sand. The relatively smooth, rocky walls are almost vertical and about 40 metres tall. Some climbing between pools is required and often the width of the gorge is only just wide enough to allow the tube to pass. The gorge is about 750 metres long and opens out at the other end into the catchment of Redbank Creek immediately NW of Mt. Sonder.

After getting to the other end and allowing our team to thaw for awhile in the warming rays of the sun we returned to the offending chain which was wrapped around a rock and dangling down into the chamber below. It was quite a long length of chain and would have taken some effort to have even got it in to this location. I know because I carried most of it out along with the boltcutters I had taken along for the ride. Had I thought about it more I would have taken an old backpack with me to lug it out rather than having it slung across my tube and weighing me down.

For those that often don’t see wildlife in their visit to this area there is also a myriad of different life forms in the gorge. The flow of water down Redbank Creek encouraged an explosion of life in the form of thousands of tadpoles and subsequently frogs along with the predators that feed on this bountiful harvest. Lizards were numerous and we rescued a small goanna found floundering in the cold water unable to find a footing to remove itself to a warmer perch.

Job done we returned via the path taken revelling in the ever warming water as we returned closer to the gorge entrance. My staff, albeit a little colder and rejoicing the return to the climate outside the gorge, thoroughly enjoyed their “work” over the course of the morning and I couldn’t help but to make the comment that where else can you work like this to make a living?