Start off: Here's the sign from the pub that was the general favorite of our group:



Left to right: Lindsay, Rachel, and part of Amy



Molly and Amy, Jeff in the background



Left to right: Duke Tim, Liz, Allan, Lindsay



Left to right: Liz, Sarah H, Jeff



These next two pictures are revenge that I vowed to take on Jeff after he got some embarrassing pictures of me asleep on the bus with mouth open and generally looking stupid... all in good fun, though :)






And now we enter the random picture Darwin wrap-up. First, the drive through liquor place... sending a real good message, that!




This is the deckchair cinema, where we went to watch a movie. Neat idea and a good time



And last, this little crab was scuttling around Mindil Beach. There were many of these guys about:






Next update will be a large one, as it will include all of Kakadu National Park and the pictures I took on my day trip to Litchfield. It may take a while, but I promise it'll be there eventually!

First off, this is a view towards Darwin taken from the MGM Casino where we had our orientation:



Here's a picture of the sign from the amusingly-named Ducks Nuts where I had a couple of good breakfasts and one dinner:




Here's the bedroom I was in with Will after coming back from Kakadu (I didn't take a picture of the first one, it was a two-person unit and after the camping trip we were in a 4)



Here's our kitchen:

These are from Lameroo beach, which was below a long park that I walked through the first day in Darwin with roommate Will and a couple of guys, Dan and Zaid, from the Duke program who we met on the way to breakfast that day:





Left to right: Me, Dan, Zaid and Will



Next up is Mindil Beach.  Here, we played ultimate frisbee, a bit of coconut rugby, didn't do much in the water thanks to crocs... got sun and watched sunset, did some stargazing and also frequented the markets in the park along the beach:






This next one is from the overlook (extreme right of the picture above these words) that catches the whole beach... the sunset ones were also taken there.







This one is a bunch of the folks who were at this sunset taking pictures... at one point I think more of us were seeing it through cameras than just watching :p

Here we have Cobar the Kangaroo, everyone's favorite Eastern Grey from the Taronga Zoo in Sydney:

Boyd's Forest Dragon... endangered critter living in the Daintree rainforests.  We spotted this one on a night spotlight walk:



A horned devil: found in the desert, in this case in the Alice Springs Desert Park reptile house



This dude is a Merten's Water Monitor that I found in the camp ground of Wangi Falls in Litchfield park... big guy, around a meter long.. really cool.  By random chance, some pictures I have caught him with his tongue out





random wall lizard from Darwin:



And the Sydney Aquarium salt water Croc... if you can't read the sign, it says "if the fall doesn't kill you, the crocodile will" which was inordinately funny to me...

This guy is a wedge-tailed eagle. This particular one is part of a wildlife show at the NT park, but we saw them in the wild too.  Australia's largest bird of prey:




This is a white-bellied sea eagle, which we observed at Yellow Waters billabong, carrying fish back to their nest as well as sticks for the nest (it's been there for 8 years or so according to rangers)




This is a rosella(sp?) a type of parrot that I saw in Sydney, at Botany Bay Park

These next few are from the Jumping Crocodile cruise we did down the Adelaide River the first day of our trip into Kakadu... what they are is pretty self-explanatory:









Up next: The sulphur Crested cockatoos that plagued us just about everywhere on this trip... noisy little buggers:



And a red tail black cockatoo, followed by a rosy cockatoo:






Following on the Kakadu and birds theme, here's the fork-tailed kite that stalked us during lunch on the first day, including going for someone's sandwich:





And some other pictures taken before the jumping crocodile cruise:  Myself with Medusa the water python (she's the gray one with yellow underside) and Olly the Olive python (he's bigger with no yellow)

Ok, so I'm working on sorting out the digital pictures, sizing them and getting them on my WAM webspace... I'll be putting up animal pictures first, then Darwin, Alice/Uluru, Sydney and Cairns in that order. Just now I'm about to run, so I figured I'd put up the schedule post with a sample picture of everyone's pal Mr. Jones the red kangaroo from Sydney:

The day after Green Island, we had our final exam for the Wildlife class.  Nothing too difficult, and Geoff said they were good after he graded them, so no worries there... Right after, I headed out to Cairns Tropical Zoo.  I had my picture taken holding a koala, which was awesome for an animal dork such as myself... His name was Aussie, a young male. Very cute, soft, and sleepy. The picture was done by the zoo folks, so it looks great. The zoo was small, but they still had some cool stuff.  I saw adult cassowaries (very impressive) red pandas (so pretty, I think they're my favorite critters now) and some huge crocodiles (4.5-5 meters on some of them). I also bought a dollar bag of kangaroo food and fed some Eastern Greys and Antilepine Wallaroos.  Nice, friendly critters who enjoyed a chin scratching.  I spent a while there watching one female who obviously had a joey in her pouch, but the kid wasn't showing. Then, back to town to take a nap... The sunburn was getting to me, I think, feeling a bit off but not too bad.  I went out to get dinner and came back to watch some Law and Order and type this up before sleeping.  I'll get a lot of sleep and do my best vampire impression tomorrow, hiding from the sun before my weekend on the Reef.  I'll probably check this blog and my email tomorrow night, but after that there'll be nothing till I'm back in the States. I'll spend Saturday and Sunday on the Reef, then up at 4:30 AM Monday to fly to Brisbane and then on to LAX and points east. I'm really looking forward to this weekend, as Hastings, Saxon and Norman reefs are supposedly amazing, with lots of turtles, reef sharks, and all sorts of cool stuff. It's unlimited snorkelling and diving if I pay a little (65$ for first, 35 after for introductory) so I may do that Saturday... I also get to do a nifty bit of time travel on the way home. My trip back will take minus 40 minutes! I leave Sydney at 11:25 AM Monday and get to LA at 10:35 AM on Monday (or something like that, time may not be exact). Anyway, the Reef should be incredible but I'm also looking forward to seeing all y'all again... It'll be nice to get home.  See you in a few days! (when I'm back alive after jet lag, anyway :-p)