En-route back to Mojave from Sacramento last Sunday I stopped in at the Merced National Wildlife Reserve, one of a chain of wildlife reserves throughout the extensive agricultural region of the Central Valley.
The loss of the 'Selamat Dua' is one of the great nautical regrets of my life, because two years later I was living and working in East Timor following the crisis and the 'Selamat Dua' would have been perfect over there - Tony Haritos.
While returning from a publicity trip to San Francisco in Sept. 1940, Fr. Crowley struck a steer that had wandered onto the highway. His car was forced into the path of an oncoming truck, and he was killed instantly.
I spent three nights in the Rodeway Inn & Suites in El Centro in the southern Imperial Valley last week. This sign was the best thing I saw there … […]
Alerted to danger, the snake coils up, vibrates its tail and hisses a warning. The Gopher snake can also spread and flatten its head, thereby resembling a rattler even more. An unsure predator mistakes this behavior and the somewhat triangular head of the Gopher snake for a rattlesnake and backs off from its pursuit."
A bargain at $45 bucks a night! The rooms at the Elliott Hotel might be a little rustic, but they are the cheapest beds in a town that the Territory, time, Tripadvisor, Trivago and the rest of the country forgot.
Mark Raymond is a deserved legend in these parts. He is an ex-copper and lead singer of the great and sadly retired Kulumindini Band, who made three great albums (one with the best title - "You're Not Useless" - I've heard in a while) in the late eighties and mid-nineties. Kulumindini gave us a long "tuning-up-song" intro and then launched into their greatest hits and more. The crowd, as they say, went wild.
These guys just don't give a shit, and have a great time doing it. I don't know if this species is the loudest bird in the world but I reckon even the FA-18s from the nearby Tindal RAAF base would be hard-pressed to cut through the Blue-winged Kookaburra's cacophonous clatter at close quarters.
Ear-worm of the week: The song that has been on high rotation in my head for the past two weeks is the first track on Rayella's eponymous debut album, "Wrong Kind of Man", a love-gone-so-wrong-but-feels-oh-so-right kind of tale.
Paul Kelly and his fellow Merri Soul Sessions collaborators – including Dan Sultan, Clairy Browne, Kira Puru, Vika Bull and Linda Bull as well as his long-serving touring band rolled into Darwin for the last but one of their current tour.
