All posts by Jon

Milestones

Random Musings

So, this happened:

ZPlus

My Thursday night basketball team won the Premiership (championship) in the B-Grade league.  That means we get promoted up to A-Reserve, with only A-Grade left above that.  Being in a higher grade should yield a better caliber of basketball, which will be nice.  I’m getting tired of the footy mentality of some of the teams we play against that seem to crave unnecessary physical contact.  Crazy to think I started this season shortly after I got here, and it is just now finishing up 6 months later.  Don’t worry, the summer season started the week after the grand final, so I’m already back at it . Our Monday team didn’t make the playoffs, so our goal for the summer season is the get the Monday team up one level.

Another major milestone that occurred:

Car1 Car2

We bought a sweet-ass ride.  This is our 2013 Toyota Yaris 4-door sedan.  As if driving on the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road was not challenging enough, we got a 5-speed manual to shift with our left hand.

We made our way onto the bowling green for the first time.  I hope to get to play again soon, because I was terrible.  I either got the right distance, or the right direction, never both.

bowls

Also, since we’ve been here, we’ve been looking for a Victorian number plate (license plate) with our shared initials on it, and we finally found it :

NumberPlate

So we got that going for us, which is nice.

Handel Holiday (part 4 of 4)

Travel

We’ve strung you on long enough, so this will be the final post about our trip up to the top end.

Waking up early in Jabiru, we headed out to do a 12km loop hike up and around Nourlangie Rock. The trail took us through many different ecosystems.  The trail was shockingly narrow at times and included harrowing drop-offs.

Nourlangie Rock
Nourlangie Rock
No margin for error
No margin for error
Narrow passageways
Narrow passageways

The hike featured aboriginal rock art at various spots along the way.  This helpful sign points the way.

Hand

Art2 Art1

We managed to finish the loop hike in about 4 hours without encountering anyone else (so crowded!)

We then headed back to Jabiru and hit up the German bakery for lunch.  Then back to our room / pool for some R&R.

 

Lodging

That evening we headed up to Ubirr to witness the sunset – it did not disappoint.
Sunset1

Sunset2

During “the wet” the entire plain below this rock is completely flooded.  Looking out on the large expanse of green, it is very hard to imagine that volume of water.

After the sun set, we made a quick dash back to Jabiru, as we were warned it is very dangerous to drive at night due to the high number of single vehicle accidents involving wildlife.  I didn’t want to hit any kangaroos and thankfully didn’t.

The next morning we awoke for our last day in Kakadu with a 3 hour drive to Darwin in front of us.  We checked out some wetlands on the way out of the park and were generally surprised by the amount of water (and birds!) even though it had been 3+ months since the last rain.

Birds

After seeing smoke everywhere the entire time we were in Kakadu, but never seeing fire, we finally came upon an active bushfire right along the side of the road.  Apparently, these are, for the most part, set intentionally to refresh and renew the landscape.  Still shocking to drive by.

Fire

We made it to Darwin and checked into our nice big hotel room with a big balcony on the 25th floor.  In Darwin we saw the Axis of Awesome (comedy rock band) and also saw a movie at an outdoor movie theater.  Other than that, we mostly just relaxed and spent time at the wave pool.

Darwin

A good quality Handel Holiday all around.