From: "Vivienne Sobek" Date: August 24, 2004 4:52:58 EDT
Dear All,
At last I've got Viv's computer going. Had to replace a couple of cables which the golden rock rats had eaten right through. That of course meant a 2 hour trip each way into Darwin. Now I only have to figure out a suitable way of protecting them from future banquets! Might try encasing the cables�in electrician's tape or some such.
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The weather here has been typical of the dry season with days reaching 33 C and most nights going down to about 19C (there's been the odd one of 12C when I actually had to wear long track suit pants in bed). There are no lines on my tan which of course will look quite out of place when I get back to Ballarat :) Have taken the obligatory photos of lace making in the nude in Burrell Creek.
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Viv has been doing what is known as "hard" and "soft" releases of native animals - particularly the Northern Brush Tail Possum. However, there is one which has proved particularly difficult. She's a young female known as "Blanche" who has refused to go bush. Blanche regards Viv as her mother and had taken to attacking anyone who stays here - that's always in the dead of night when you're least expecting it. So Viv had rigged up shade cloth protection over my bed, which works well but does prevent any breezes getting through as well. Blanche tried for 3 nights to get me. She would sit on the shade cloth about 6" about my face and snarl and growl. If I snarled back it made her worse. I tried clapping but that was useless. A shrill whistle was not to her liking but she only wandered off slowly and I can never guarantee that� my whistles work first time every time.
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After those 3 nights she seemed to totally ignore me and perhaps even accept me, so one week later we removed the shade cloth. Blanche had only been biding her time!!!! That night we went to bed about 11:00 p.m. and one hour later I just felt the slightest touch of a little pink nose on my left arm. I lay perfectly still hoping that she might be about to groom me. However, only about 5 seconds later her two very sharp front teeth raked across my arm at the same time as her 2 front feet ripped another 6 tracks!! I couldn't tell whether Blanche was inside or outside the mozzie net (as it turned out she was outside and had just ripped a hole big enough for her head and 2 feet) - otherwise she might well have had her neck wrung!
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Viv made me a coffee and we had a smoke while I attended to my wounds. I reminded her what they do to dogs who attack people!! But she wouldn't hear of that as Blanche is pregnant with a little one in her pouch. I was the 4th person she'd attacked and something had to be done! To cut a long story short, we were able to get her admitted to rehab in a lovely trichery (possum equivalent of aviary) up at Noonamah. So I had the priviledge of nursing here in a wired up basket for that 100 km trip while I whispered sweet threats in her ear!
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A few weeks ago Viv and I went up to Darwin for a night at a restaurant etc. and decided to get a cheap hotel room rather than worry friends with late nights etc. We took the opportunity of seeing Michael Moore's film "Farenheit 9-11" and then had a beautfiul Indian meal - even got to watch TV in the hotel and caught up on "The Bill" :) However at 1:00 a.m. Viv woke with a dreadful gall bladder attack and I had to drive her to A&E where we were eventually seen at 7:00 a.m.!! Of course the place was air conditioned and we only had shorts and T shirts on so we froze all night! She's to go back next Monday for cholelithiasis. Sure did our dough on that hotel room, but will make up for it next Sunday. I shall stay up there then at friend Barbara's place on [EMAIL PROTECTED] Then fly out on Wed at midnight.
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Last week was dreadful here for the Aborigines from the Port Keats settlement had decided to light up the land. The resulting fire started about 15 km south of here and we watched the glow nightly as it came closer. It reached Viv's neighbours 8 days later and so we had to get out the old 1972 Toyota fire truck whose number plates are purely for decoration, and drive about 10km to save their house. The woman was home on her own as her husband works down in the Tanami Desert in the mines. As the flames raced up the hill to the house I manned the pump while Viv was on the hose. The 2 SHERIDAN brothers who farm nearby did some back burning and between the lot of us that house was saved. Then after coming home and cleaning up, we got another frantic phone call from Ken and Frank SHERIDAN as their home and orchards were being threatened. They have acres of pineapples, paw-paws and mangoes. The dead spear grass surrouding their property was about 7' high and I only wish I'd remember to take my camera. The sights I saw that evening were tremendous - in it's true sense. The 4 of us saved their farm as well.
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Next morning we woke to a wall of flame immediately over the Creek from Viv's camp - about 150 metres away!! So there was no rest that day either as we hosed, back-burned and patrolled all day. The fire is now finished in this area and has gone NW into Litchfield National Park. So it's now been going for about 12 days and will not stop until it either runs out of fuel or there is some very unlikely rainfall.
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There�is the usual fabulous range of occupants in Viv's camp. Apart from the golden rock rats and Melomys mice (who conduct their own Olypmics every night), there is a Quoll (native spotted cat) living in a 44 gallon drum in one corner and possibly another behind the sink. Now that this is the only unburnt land in the distrcit we are surrounded by mobs of wallabies, goannas etc. as well as a huge menagerie of birds. Just this morning we sat and watched a 5' fresh water crocdile�as it sunned itself on the banks of the Creek while an equally long goanna slowly approached it.
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OK I'd better go. Have to turn the computer off so that we can cook on the stove - can't overload the generator.
Love
David
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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