Beer Can Regatta

This weekend was pretty interesting. On Saturday, Sarah and I went to one of my field sites at Robin Falls. It's about an hour and a half south of Darwin, and is a nice, hilly spot to spend the afternoon and evening. We went down in the afternoon, and had a bit of a walk around. I hadn't spent much time up above the falls, so we climbed up there and walked around a bit. Unfortunately, a lot of that area had burned earlier in the year, so it was not terribly interesting. The stream below the falls, did prove to be quite interesting though. During the day, we saw one native species of frog, Litoria meiriana, which is a tiny little thing that hangs around the near the water's edge, and behind the falls. Unfortunately, we also saw several cane toads hanging around in the moist crevices along the rock faces. They've been there for about 2 wet seasons now, and I hadn't been to the site since they arrived, so I wanted to see how the native frogs were doing.

We hung around until dark and walked the path again. We managed to find another 4 species of native frogs (L. nasuta, L. wotjulumensis, L. coplandi, L. pallida), which is most of what was there before toads. One species, L. tornieri, was mysteriously absent, but that could have just been that particular night. In fact, most of the natives were quite abundant. We also saw a few reptiles, one gecko (Gehyra australis), and a long-necked turtle (Chelodina rugosa), as well as two children's pythons (Antaresia childreni). Unfortunately, nighttime also brought out the toads in full force. Lots of cane toads there, including some very un-toadlike places like up the rock faces and hanging from fig roots (those toads looked pretty uncomfortable). At least there were still some reptiles and native amphibians around.

Sunday was the world famous Darwin Beer Can Regatta. The idea is that first you drink a lot of beer. Then you use the empties to make a boat. Then during the regatta these boats have a race to find a hidden object in the water. They are entirely human propelled (paddles, hands, swimmers tagging along behind, etc.), and most acutally float. Great fun, and truly a Darwin experience. It's a whole day event, including several beach contests, including thong tossing, 8-man tug of war, ironman contest (something to do with beer, I think), and a race where teams of four have to carry a PVC sailboat down the beach ("Henley on Mindil" race). Pictures will follow (they're on the other computer).

Sunday night we went to see the movie 10 Canoes. That's a new movie by Rolf de Heer, and is an aboriginal story, narrated by aborigines, written essentially by aborigines, and filmed entirely on location in Arnhem land. It's really a great movie, both because it's a great story, and because it really gives an idea of what aboriginal life is like. I highly recommend it if it comes to a theater near you. I'll probably buy a copy when it comes out on DVD.