Tuesday 19th March 2024,
Batty Tales

From C to D

From C to D
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The dusty road between Pormpuraaw and Kowanyama

Unless I am mistaken, Angela and I have been rather lax in our recent attention to this here web page. The last update on our travels occurred not long after we left Sydney and that was well over one month ago. I would love to recount, step by step, our adventures and escapades, but in truth, between leaving Cairns airport and arriving in Darwin, there have been only a few instances of note.

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Our friendly neighbour on the Towns River

If you were to follow our route on a map, you would see we passed through Lakefield NP, travelled to Porpuraaw, visited Kowanyama, did a uni assignment in Normanton (I got 82% if anyone is interested in congratulating me), stopped near Burketown, camped at Boorooloola and fished in the Limnen National Park, all before a one night layover in Katherine and onto Darwin.

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The creatures from whence Butterfly Springs gets its name

Essentially it was hot, there was very little shade, and upon intelligence that one Geoffery Robert Batty was to meet us in Darwin, we hightailed it there as fast as we could be bothered, which was roughly two weeks.

As boring as that must sound to everyone reading this from their workplace computer, I can assure you that at least a few interesting things did happen.

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You know, with sunsets like this, $50 almost seems worth it

In Pormpuraaw and Kowanyama we were charged $50 a night to camp. For our $50 we got a cold shower, a toilet (no toilet paper though), and I found some dumped asbestos in one spot. I did a bit of fishing though, caught a fish, learnt how to throw a cast net and we even went to the local croc farm and checked out all the baby crocs. That was pretty cool.

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Angela’s queenie

pormpuraaw04As I mentioned earlier, we spent a few nights in Normanton while I did a uni assignment. Normanton in September is a living hell. There is no shade, it is stinking hot day and night and if our experience is anything to go by, you will have to do a uni assignment. However, I did a pretty good job, considering the brief was to watch a couple of Westerns, compare them and write 2500 words. I watched half of one because the laptop went flat (I googled the ending) and compared it to another movie we have watched a few times at home. Somehow though, I managed to elicit this response from my lecturer.

“There’s some excellent work in this essay – really good close attention to the film texts, and strong comparisons made which clearly demonstrate your engagement with the course work. Your discussion of key concepts is strong, and you’ve done some excellent additional research. There are a only a few minor areas where you can develop your work further – mainly in terms of how you develop arguments within sections, and some proofreading. Overall, however, this is excellent work and signals a very promising film scholar!”

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Out the front of camp at Towns River

After Normanton, the best few days were spent in Limnen National Park. One campsite, situated a few metres from the Butterfly Springs waterhole cajoled two days out of us as we relaxed in the cool water and watched the archer fish swim around our feet and butterfly flutter around our heads.

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Butterfly Springs, all to ourselves

More exciting was our campsite up the road on the banks of the Towns River. A spectacularly jade coloured river, it was brimming with fish, and we spent two days catching garfish as live bait and trying our best to coax the big queen fish to eat the bit with the hook in it. Angela had the most success, landing a 55cm queenie which went down a treat, roasted on the coals.mareeba03

After this, we were basically in Darwin, where we stayed for nearly a month. Why we stayed so long will be the topic of our next post.

Check out the latest gallery here

Until next time,

Brendan, Angela and River

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2 Comments

  1. Danyelle 9 October 2011 at 10:28 pm

    Congrats on our results Brendan!

    Send us some heat please, the weather down here is merely worthy of a toe dip in any water 🙁

    Jasmine says “Riffa” when asked who is that cutie in the photo, she hasn’t forgotten her bestie 🙂

    • danyelle 9 October 2011 at 10:28 pm

      *your not our results lol

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