Territory day
Today was quite an interesting day. It began with a trip to Crocodylus Park to have a look at some facilities there. We're thinking about starting up a project on crododile physiology, and have been talking with Graeme Webb at the park. It should be a fun project if it gets off the ground. One of the things we want to do is measure resting oxygen consumption. Now, that sounds easy, until you have a face to face look at a 4.5m croc that weighs 600kg and try to imagine either putting a mask on the thing, or making an airtight caget to hold it. Very big animals. We'll meet again later in the week to talk about whether this thing will fly or not.
The other interesting thing about today was Territory Day (aka Cracker Night). So, Territory day is supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the NT becoming self-governing (meaning that it has its own territory government, and was no longer under the direct control of Canberra). It's the only day of the year when it is legal to shoot off fire crackers and in theory it is only legal to launch them in certain areas and only between 6-11pm (hence Cracker Night). The whole thing is an amazing experience, so it is hard to know where to begin. When I went to the park this morning, I saw the first amazing site - firecracker stands had sprouted like mushrooms all over town. Now paired with the 5 hours of legal firecracker launching, is about 24 hours of legal fireworks selling. Every few blocks there was a new stand (with the same selection of course).
I'll digress a bit here and remind you that July is the middle of the dry season here. It hasn't rained since May, and right about now the huge biomass that grew up in the wet season is tinder dry. One might think that this would not be the best time to go about lighting fireworks, but there it is. Of course, much of the Top End has already burned this year, but it would be safe to say that the rest is in peril on Territory Day.
One of the places where it is legal to launch fireworks is Casuarina Beach. It is truly an amazing atmosphere. Imaging thousands of people showing up on a beach that is about 5km long and a few hundred meters wide (depending on the tide, which I'll get back to later). Starting as soon as it is dark, most of those thousands of people start launching their fireworks. It's really an amazing site - fireworks going off in a strip along the beach as far as you can see. It makes an unbelievable noise, and a truly spectacular sight of flaming colors. Everywhere you look, things are exploding and launching screaming sparkles into the air. And the fireworks that are sold here are not just spinning flowers and meager roman candles - some of them are quite large and impressive. I managed to get some "bad boys" which launched about 15m in the air and exploded into red, purple or green flowers. And of course, every once in a while, something would go off that would rattle the cliffs and cause everyone to pause and go "whoa, that was a big one". Some of the things lit must have been professional or at least modified a bit from the fireworks stands.
I went down to the beach with Keith's family, the family of a marine sponge taxonomist recently arrived at the Museum and the fish physiologists who are in town for a few weeks (5 guys from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand studying physiology of an air-breathing fish - they descend on us about once a year and set up some incredibly sophisticated experiments in Keith's lab, including using doppler radar to measure blood pressure in the aorta, or using a 4 micron optode implanted in the swim bladder to measure oxygen concentration after they take a breath). Anyway, we went down to the beach and launched some bees, some roman candles and some 'bad boys'.
Of course, part of the atmosphere includes the inherent danger of not knowing when they group next to you has lit something, or what they are launching. And of course there is the question of whether they have pushed the base far enough into the sand that the spinning, flaming explosives will launch into the air instead of into the next group. One particular type seemed prone to falling over tonight. One of ours tipped over and launched a bunch of exploding balls into our own group. Tim had one bit bounce off his leg and explode in golden glory (no damage done). Then 10 minutes later, the group next to us had the same problem, with about 5 consecutive exploding bits screaming into their group (no obvious injuries from what we could see). Another interesting atmospheric component is the tide at Casuarina beach. Turns out that the tide was coming in between 7 and 11pm, so we periodically had to pack up everything and move farther up the beach, as the water would sneak up and threaten to innundate us and the errant fire balls. For those of you not familiar with Darwin tides, they are quite large - tonight the difference between low and high tides was 3m - and the beach has a very shallow slope, so the water can move up the beach very quickly.
After we'd exhaused our pyrotechnics, and retired to Keith's place for cake, I went home through the haze. Every year I'm amazed that the entire city is shrouded in smoke on Cracker night. And not much of it is from the many bush fires started by the fireworks. Most is directly from the fireworks. Amazing.
Of course, tomorrow I expect the newspaper to be filled with accident statistics and outraged residents complaining that cracker night should be stopped next year. That furor should last about a week, then everyone will get on with things again.
The other interesting thing about today was Territory Day (aka Cracker Night). So, Territory day is supposed to celebrate the anniversary of the NT becoming self-governing (meaning that it has its own territory government, and was no longer under the direct control of Canberra). It's the only day of the year when it is legal to shoot off fire crackers and in theory it is only legal to launch them in certain areas and only between 6-11pm (hence Cracker Night). The whole thing is an amazing experience, so it is hard to know where to begin. When I went to the park this morning, I saw the first amazing site - firecracker stands had sprouted like mushrooms all over town. Now paired with the 5 hours of legal firecracker launching, is about 24 hours of legal fireworks selling. Every few blocks there was a new stand (with the same selection of course).
I'll digress a bit here and remind you that July is the middle of the dry season here. It hasn't rained since May, and right about now the huge biomass that grew up in the wet season is tinder dry. One might think that this would not be the best time to go about lighting fireworks, but there it is. Of course, much of the Top End has already burned this year, but it would be safe to say that the rest is in peril on Territory Day.
One of the places where it is legal to launch fireworks is Casuarina Beach. It is truly an amazing atmosphere. Imaging thousands of people showing up on a beach that is about 5km long and a few hundred meters wide (depending on the tide, which I'll get back to later). Starting as soon as it is dark, most of those thousands of people start launching their fireworks. It's really an amazing site - fireworks going off in a strip along the beach as far as you can see. It makes an unbelievable noise, and a truly spectacular sight of flaming colors. Everywhere you look, things are exploding and launching screaming sparkles into the air. And the fireworks that are sold here are not just spinning flowers and meager roman candles - some of them are quite large and impressive. I managed to get some "bad boys" which launched about 15m in the air and exploded into red, purple or green flowers. And of course, every once in a while, something would go off that would rattle the cliffs and cause everyone to pause and go "whoa, that was a big one". Some of the things lit must have been professional or at least modified a bit from the fireworks stands.
I went down to the beach with Keith's family, the family of a marine sponge taxonomist recently arrived at the Museum and the fish physiologists who are in town for a few weeks (5 guys from Australia, Canada, and New Zealand studying physiology of an air-breathing fish - they descend on us about once a year and set up some incredibly sophisticated experiments in Keith's lab, including using doppler radar to measure blood pressure in the aorta, or using a 4 micron optode implanted in the swim bladder to measure oxygen concentration after they take a breath). Anyway, we went down to the beach and launched some bees, some roman candles and some 'bad boys'.
Of course, part of the atmosphere includes the inherent danger of not knowing when they group next to you has lit something, or what they are launching. And of course there is the question of whether they have pushed the base far enough into the sand that the spinning, flaming explosives will launch into the air instead of into the next group. One particular type seemed prone to falling over tonight. One of ours tipped over and launched a bunch of exploding balls into our own group. Tim had one bit bounce off his leg and explode in golden glory (no damage done). Then 10 minutes later, the group next to us had the same problem, with about 5 consecutive exploding bits screaming into their group (no obvious injuries from what we could see). Another interesting atmospheric component is the tide at Casuarina beach. Turns out that the tide was coming in between 7 and 11pm, so we periodically had to pack up everything and move farther up the beach, as the water would sneak up and threaten to innundate us and the errant fire balls. For those of you not familiar with Darwin tides, they are quite large - tonight the difference between low and high tides was 3m - and the beach has a very shallow slope, so the water can move up the beach very quickly.
After we'd exhaused our pyrotechnics, and retired to Keith's place for cake, I went home through the haze. Every year I'm amazed that the entire city is shrouded in smoke on Cracker night. And not much of it is from the many bush fires started by the fireworks. Most is directly from the fireworks. Amazing.
Of course, tomorrow I expect the newspaper to be filled with accident statistics and outraged residents complaining that cracker night should be stopped next year. That furor should last about a week, then everyone will get on with things again.
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