Oh the carnage

We were supposed to get a cyclone but it never came. The last cyclone that never came, over Christmas, gave us beautiful weather. This non-cyclone gave us 2 days of torrential rain and some very high winds. In the grand scheme of things this wasn't really such a bad storm but it left behind some grief in it's wake.

We personally came through unscathed and are thankful for it. 

The toll in the back yard is a different story

1. 12 fish dead, 1 unaccounted for. Probably got caught up in the roots of the water plant that we had to rescue out of the pot because the winds had shifted it and were threatening to break it to bits. They theory is that the rain is acidic and the fish were affected by the change in PH.
2. Unknown number of tadpoles dead, although I'm not sure if it was the storm or some food we put in there made the water acidic as well. After a while the water tends to smell acidic.
3. 2 displaced plants, we had to rescue the water plants.

Last night the tide was higher than normal combined with the storm the waves were washing over the parks path and onto the road. That was happening about 100meters down the road from us. The road had about 3 inches of water on it. But after the tide had peaked the water disappeared. 

It was pretty windy last night and this is what we woke up to this morning.

 We've pretty much got it cleaned up.

Last night we went for a drive and down by the Nightcliff cliffs this is what we saw.

Yup surfers, in Darwin the water when it's calm is the most dangerous. But when the water is rough it's the safest in regards to stinging Jelly fish and crocs. I didn't know we had so many surfers in Darwin.

L and I went out for a drive and this is how the palms looked.

 

Here is the Nightcliff Jetty, it looks pretty rough and to think only 100meters up the road are the surfers.

Hopefully this is the last we've seen of bad weather for this year, although the wet season has really just started.

Frogs on the Brain

One thing about living where we do is that there isn't a week goes by before the male green tree frogs start brapping for his mate. Usually they do this when it is at night and raining but the wet season is a little messed up this year so they are brapping at unusual times, like first thing this morning.

Our tadpole farm is going well and we started a 2nd fish pot. We figured we'd start anew and bought 5 fish, 2 male and 3 female. We also transplanted 5 fish from the other pot. But these new fish don't eat and don't seem to be all that happy, in fact I'd say they're down right depressed. They are like bringing the whole mood of the other fish way down. I'm thinking of putting them all in one pot together and hopefully they'll get the idea that when food goes in the pot it's time to eat as frantically as possible. That's the mood in the old pot and we like it that way.

Where does one find a fish whisperer ?

But we are having great luck with the tadpoles turning into frogs and the other day I got out my old digital SLR that L bought for our wedding and took this picture.

You can click on any picture for a larger view.

If this picture isn't worthy of National Geographic worthy I don't know what is ? Plus he's cute.

Here is a wanna be National Geographic photographer.

Here is one of the parents. We just found out today that the females are larger than the males, we thought it was the other way around.

Look at this little guy he is fresh from the pond he still has his tail.

They seem to stick around for a few days before the hop off to their future. This guy hung around for a few days.

Well this trip is certainly interesting and this is just in the backyard.

RALPH COMES HOME

Well it's been over 2 1/2 months since we've seen Ralph and today he just wanders in like it was yesterday. He stayed around long enough to get well fed with some left over pork chop and some rare beef that L was getting ready for hot pot which we had tonight.

Ralph is back and he's hungry.

Yup hot pot, we bought a burner for the cyclone just in case the power went out so we used it tonight for hot pot.

As well as Ralph showing up we had another tadpole become a frog. Here he is here inside a milk jug that I cut in 1/2 for emptying water out of the pond.

A new graduate.

 L was cleaning out the pond (if that's what you can call it) so we could see who was what. In the next few weeks we will have a lot of graduating frogs. We love these little guys but they are a lot of feeding. We put some bamboo shoots in the hot pot it was an epic fail to eat so the bamboo that was not cooked went into the tadpole pond. They actually quite like it. It's got lots of roughage for them. But the nice clean water has once again become cloudy. All these guys do is eat and poop, what a day job huh.

Tadpoles from this bucket go in the nice clean pond.

Just in case you live on the other side of the world ... wait a minute most of you do ... L got a hair cut. Here is a before and after of her.

New Years celebration with Fire Work‏

Well we rang in the New Year in Darwin 14 hours ahead of our families. We went to the Dinah Beach sailing club and the event was held outside, that's one of the advantages of living in the tropics. There were three bands and we had an amazing dinner plate each at a great price. What I found was funny was that the band came on stage about 5 minutes before midnight then started playing their music. At some point they must have figured out that midnight had passed so they stopped playing and said "oh 3, 2, 1 Happy New Year", then we had a great fire work display. When I say work I mean single fire work flare went off. They must have had that left over from NT Day the only legal day you are allowed to have fireworks.

The bands were good, we met up with a few of L's workmates and we danced lots. It's kinda funny when you are soaking wet from sweat from just standing around and you haven't even danced yet. Plus I wore long pants which I don't normally wear. The mozzies were out as well, but all in all a great experience. We will go back again for dinner because the prices were so good and the food was excellent.

Over the holiday L had a haircut. She had about 1 foot taken off at the back, as it had been getting quite long. She decided to go short because it's just too hot here for long hair. She got a quote for $80, which is a little hard to take considering she was getting cuts for $20 in Canada. But she found a place that did it for a good price and the lady that cut her hair had a hearing impairment but could actually read lips. I think L will go back to this lady for a trim because she did such a good job. Everyone likes her hair cut and I agree that short hair does suit her. I'll try to send a before/after picture out soon for all to see the new L.

I am back at work the company I was temping for asked me back for a few more weeks, L is getting one more day off. We have had to undergo our medical tests again for our visa as the results cannot be found within the government. We're not worried they wouldn't have let us in if the first ones were bad.

We had about 1 week off and it went quickly but we relaxed and the weather was sunny, which is pretty good because this is supposed to be the wet season. We cleaned out the tadpole pond so we can actually see them now. We have had many baby frogs graduate from our experiment. We still have more than a hundred of the little critters in there.

Our fish, on the other hand, aren't doing as well. We have had many die and we can't figure out why. We have had the water tested and it was perfect. We had these leech looking things in the pot so we removed all the fish, that was fun, took all the plants out washed them and have finally returned them to the tank yesterday. Hopefully we will reduce the mortality rate a little. We also were given 7 other fish. These are orange coloured, not sure what they are, they are the same size as the guppies but the person that gave them to us said that they will probably out do the guppies and take over. Well they are smaller but they certainly have a better appetite and eat like crazy. During all of the changing of the water I guess one of the fish had babies and it was hiding in a plant that we had in the bucket, their temporary holding area, after we removed the plant the bigger fish were chasing the little guy all over, trying to eat him. We isolated Fry, his name, in a yogurt jug for a while until he gets a little bigger and then he can go back with his buddies. These types of fish actually give live birth and don't make good parents because the other fish, even the mother, will eat the babies.

Just in case we have started another pot which will populate with new fish and new plants. Last night rained so hard that it filled the pot 1/3 full of water. Now most of it came off the roof I'm sure but I figure we have about 25 liters of rain water in an 80 liter pot. We certainly do have pretty intense storms here. Luckily they don't have much wind but the rain just buckets down.

Happy New Year all here's to more stories in 2012