i am staring at the ask box and starting to think about how to tackle it again, there’s still a backlog of about 25-30 that ideally i would like to get through before the end of the year.

i have this anxiety sometimes that i spend lots of effort on some and little on others, either because of a lack of time or patience or a shift in my art style or whatever reason, but I should just lean into whatever i’m feeling and not worry too much about doing something very polished. the blog is, as always, a work in progress that i’m doing for free out of my own energy and i need to be okay with contradictions and inconsistencies, including in the quality and effort put into my responses. 

I can always revisit ones I’m not satisfied with later, and I hope no one will take it personally if I don’t answer their particular ask as a multi panel full colour comic with an added bibliography if I can’t for whatever reason. likewise- current event asks are fine and dandy but they will range wildly from “sat on them for a year and forgot” to “answered in 5 minutes in ballpoint pen” and I just gotta be okay with that.

since i have basically lost my previous job that i was lucky enough to be able to draw during, sitting at my desk all day at my current job now actually requires my full attention / a lot of mental effort, and it means the first thing i do when i’m done work is go for a walk or do chores, so my ability to put effort and focus into my art is changing and I just need to roll with the punches at this point.

thanks for your patience with me, and please fill out the survey in the pinned post if you haven’t yet! :3 it will help me lots!

Unveiling The Latest Keep Seismic Target Drilling Insights

In a groundbreaking development reported in October 2023, Boab Metals has harnessed the power of seismic data interpretation from petroleum exploration to unveil significant updates on the Keep Seismic Target. Let's delve into the details of this remarkable achievement.

Utilizing advanced techniques and insights gleaned from the Burt Range Sub-Basin, Boab Metals executed a successful drilling operation, penetrating the Keep Seismic Target with a 306.5-meter-deep drill hole. The drill hole, identified as SHSD_185, made a fascinating discovery when it encountered the lower section of the Knox Formation at a depth of approximately 224.6 meters.

Boab Metals Limited (ASX: BML) is a Base & Precious Metals Exploration and Development Company based in Perth Western Australia. The Company is edging closer to development at it’s 75% owned Sorby Hills Project following outstanding drilling success and a recent Resource update (47.3Mt at 4.1% Pb equivalent).The Sorby Hills Base Metals Project is located 50km north east of Kununurra in the East Kimberley and just 150km from Wyndham Port.Established infrastructure and existing permitting allows for fast track production.

I’m so jealous to were at the game last night! I was out last night so I was getting updates throughout. Literally got home and tuned in a min before Smith and Talbot went at it. It’s so much better since several players were on the other team just last year. On the broadcast we didn’t see smith until he was close but was there any reaction or recognition on what was going to happen at that moment from the crowd or was everyone focused on their net? As an Edm fan it was very satisfying BOAB.

It was insane! Smith kinda just skated out to centre ice and waited for a bit, looking bored haha, but then he started beckoning Talbot over, and nurse pointed it out to talbs, and off he went. The crowd was wild from the minute smith started taking off his gloves and helmet

Day 3 9th August

We now have 13 on the tour from today(max is 21) plus driver and hostess. 3 are from the tour I was part of in the past 2 days and rest joined today. The group joining are a group of 7 people all friends or related and about 30ish age group. Remainder are in the 50- late 60’s ,1 81yr old and a daughter of one in her early 40’s. A very nice group so far so should be a happy trip. Today we left at 0630 and dove to about 2+hrs to a famous Road House on the way to Derby and had breakfast. It was all set up on a lovely shady lawn area and very pleasant. Even able to buy a real coffee at the road house and of course a toilet. Toilets become a real focus when you are driving distance and don’t have control on stops. However of course there is the Bush wee option if desperate😂. The Roadhouse was very busy with road trains and horse carriers,caravans, cars and tourist buses. Took your life in Your hands to cross from where we had breakfast at one side to the roadhouse door! Apparently the horse transport numbers are due to a big Rodeo and Broome races all occurring the weekend we are away.

Seen lots Boab trees and then the Derby Prison Tree and big trough. Here we also filled in our census online as we are out of reception for several days once we leave derby. There is also very little to no access to power for those days so couldn’t charge if we did have acces😂. Then depends on you provider after that.To do it on the night we would have had to travel 30kms do it by paper and drive back and access to the paper versions closed before we got anywhere close🤔.

We then drove to Derby to Norval Aboriginal Gallery. Beautiful paintings and even had someone sitting outside painting. I didn’t succumb to pearls bu did to a beautiful vibrant painting from the gallery! Fortunately I had it shipped home so no extra luggage. Then as I am told everyone who passes through Derby does we went out to the Jetty.

Now on the Gibb River Road with our destination Windjana Gorge where we’re camping.

Just saw some Brolgas which are apparently harder to see in the dry. Then stopped on the side of the road to collect wood for tonight’s fire (no power at the site). Discovered that collection of wood is another task we do every few days. We all went into the Bush dragged it in and then helped pass it up to Sean (Doc) our driver who was storing it on the roof. We turned out to be pretty fast and good collectors.

We went to Windjana Gorge and camped. Very remote and unpowered site again. Your headlamp is definitely your friend on this trip🤣. There were showers and toilets all set out individually but only about 6. This night we had swags and our sleeping bags and could put up our own little tent if we wished. However it was recommended to sleep in the swag under the stars which I did. An unreal experience. Even had a wallaby sniff around me and the swag next to me. We had a bit of a laugh when one of the younger men complained of being cold overnight and turns out he slept directly in his swag, no sleeping bag! We also had a drama when both men lost their mobiles, everyone mobilized and found one still in the pocket of the stored tent and one had been put in his wife’s bag for safety but he forgot to tell his wife🤣. Has become a bit of a joke all trip.

The stars that night were spectacular because no light pollution.

In the late afternoon we went for a walk into the gorge which is incredibly pretty with lots of water and lots fresh water crocs! One pool is ok so we had a swim in that.

We of course had a fire pit fire that night which was lovely as we all sat around had dinner and chatted.

We couldn’t do Tunnel Creek due to a rock fall a few days earlier.

Notes 10th

Notes Bells Gorge

Very rough nearly 3 hr drive there, stopped twice for photos and included a Bush wee,King Leopold Ranges magnificent. Once arrived it is a km walk downhill over rocks and pebbles, very rough and includes a slight water crossing. When you get there a number of smallish pools or upper pools greet you and a big view down to the bottom of the gorge where there is the lower pool and a waterfall. The upper pools are cold but the lower ones are freezing! After all that work to get here all I wanted was a swim! Pragmatism won and I decided to stay at the lower pools, one person went straight back after the walk and the rest went on to the lower pool. The lower pools are freezing, the access into the water is mossy and slippery which is fine getting in but I noted they had some problems getting out. They now need to walk 20mins to get back to me and then we walk the km out. We both got a swim. I have had a lovely time dipping into the water then walking and now under the shade where my back pack is I am sitting on a rock seat I made for myself with available suitable rocks so I don’t have to sit in the sand writing this waiting for them to get back.

More scrambling over rocks and swimming! Very rough roads at time in after dark at Manning River site. Tents fixed but showers and toilets as usual distance away and hot water turned off 8pm along with lights! They turn the generator off! Will see how I go getting to the toilet my usual 4 times. Another 5.30am up breakfast at 6 and walking to Manning falls which included swimming a river and climbing over more rocks! Will see how far I go! Then another walk and swim after lunch!

Wednesday 11th

Freezing this morning and the usual 0530 wake up. Decided not to go to Manning Falls. Not keen on the cross river swim in the cold plus a rocky walk for. Km to arrive at the steep decent to the falls and swim pool and I can’t do those steep rocky descents so would have done all the hard work and no swim! . Also seen gorges and swim holes and another (easier to get to one that doesn’t require rock climbing skills 🤣) this afternoon.

The area of the Manning river here at this campsite is just a few hundred yards walk and is stunning. Wonderful to have a gentle swim and explore and even has sandy white beach! Spent a wonderful morning in the water chatting to people crossing the river to start the Walk to the Manning falls. Probably the most relaxing start to a day yet. We have been going from early to sundown every day and apparently will do for the whole trip! Whole trip is physical activity heavy and along with setting up and taking down camps, helping with meals, firewood and any other jobs. We are up before 0530 every day and finish and to bed between 2000-2100. We have had a fire pit last 2 nights and last night had roast lamb and Veges cooked in The camp oven on the fire. After dinner we usually sit around the fire for a while and get tomorrow update. We also sit around the fire in the period while dinner is cooking and have a drink. Yes we were able to order alcohol at Broome(we paid for it) and it was loaded into the truck in big eskies which we keep iced during the trip! Restriction is that drinks need to be in tin or plastic as the vibration would break glass in the sky and has been known to cause tins to break! We also went to Adcock Gorge (ok but not exciting but a truly terrible road to get into it!) and Galvins Gorge which is spectacular and I got photos of that!

Thursday 12th

Longest drive of the trip from Manning River (Mt Barnett) to el Questro over about 8hrs all bone rattling on the Gibb!

We have done a lot of driving on the Gibb river road and rough in places with some bitumen some graded and some not. The closer you get to El Questro end the rougher it got. It is bone rattling especially after a couple of hour! On the way to El Questro we stopped including at Ellenbrae Station whose claim to fame is its scones and cream! The part of the Gibb going this way was surprisingly winding in parts and the whole area is mountainous so you are going up and then down. EllenBrae is Real oasis and also does a small campsite. Apparently all the stations make their money on the tourism but are Obliged according to the lease arrangements with the state to run at least 2,000 head of cattle all the time. They all do it but just let the cattle run free with pretty much no fences or care unless the cattle prices go up (every few years) then they get them herded by helicopter and employ the bull grabbers(or some such name) who drive fast with a contraption on the vehicle which somehow grabs the bull. Sounds dangerous! The station manager and his wife are friends of Doc’s so they gave us a bit of an over view of life on the isolated stations. We had some drama when we went to leave to discover we had a flat! Doc was laying in the dust getting it done and the wood he had under the lifter thing kept sinking into the soft earth so he had to borrow more from his mate. Then when the spare was being lowered it didn’t come right down and some judicious application of WD 40 was needed. All round quite an effort but at least it was in relative civilisation with shade for us and a toilet! Again we were very fortunate. We then kept on rattling along the Gibb including a side trip the actual Gibb River, photos at Durack River and crossing and photos at the Pentecost. Earlier we had been able to see some recent rock paintings. Also unfortunately we saw quite a few dead cane toads☹️. Also went to Telstra Hill overlooking the Pentecost River. Then I to El Questro which is a pretty slick operation. The company has tents set up here and camp kitchen and the ablutions are very good and prolific relative to other sites and has hot water and power plus our first phone reception for 3 days! I up graded to a bigger tent with power (read lead with power board fed into the tent and into which are plugged a fan and a bedside light! ) It was 38 and stinking hot in the tent but the fan helped as the evening wore on. Real beds as well and a treat after camp beds and sleeping bags. We went out this morning to Zebedee springs which is a hot water spring of 3 pools, rocky and in tropical setting and easy walk in for a change😂. Spent hour or so there and it was idyllic. The off to Emma Gorge which also has Resort facility’s including a pool, restaurant shop and excellent facilities. I decided not to do the hour walk to yet another waterfall and pool when Doc said it is an ankle breaker of a walk. We have clambered over more than our fair share of rocks on the tour to the extent we are becoming part mountain goat🤣🤣. Anyway I opted for a big mug capacino and a wander through the lush gardens, shop and then laying by the pool waiting for the walkers. It was another 38 day and they were hot and exhausted! Felt I had made the right choice. We have since come back to our ElQuestro which is still hot so sitting by the river pool in the shade doing this blog since after lunch. Coolest place to be at present. 5pm we need to order our dinner as it is the cooks night off, so just pay for yourself pub food, then shower, pack for an early start again to leave for Kununurra and on to Lake Argyle which is our next overnight and to bed. Tomorrow will be a busy start as we are leaving so it is a full camp pack up not just for the day so up about 5am to achieve that! Dinner at the pub and pack. The donkey that lives here and roams free was right outside my tent about 11pm!the pub here has live music every night but thankfully stops at 8.30pm.

Days 68 to 74

Just to orient ourselves, Day 68 was Monday, 3 July!  (And I am posting this on Sunday, 9 July.)

It started with me taking the car in for its 70,000Km service and walking back the 200 metres to the van for breakfast.  We did a load of washing in preparation for moving on again on Tuesday (at last – starting to get a little stir-crazy after 9 days propped in Katherine with not a lot of things to do apart from working around the van).  I went birding and photographing along the river in the afternoon and the first thing I saw was a small red-bellied black snake crossing the path a metre ahead of me.  I took a pic of it, but it was hiding its head in the grass so it just looks like a shiny black rope.  We saw a somewhat larger one on Thursday when we were driving so I tossed out the anchor, but it (the snake, not the anchor) also seemed more anxious to slither away than getting its photo taken.

We had had a looooong phone call with Deanne on Sunday, mainly chatting about our overseas travel plans for 2018 – 3 weeks around Ireland in a campervan, a 10-day eco-cruise in the Scottish Isles, 3 weeks campervanning in Scotland, by train to London and on to Istanbul (retracing the Orient Express), then some time in Turkey, a little driving, but mainly training to Beijing (with some stopovers), a mini-tour of China and home again – but everything after Scotland is still subject to negotiation.  Deanne and Rob may be in Asia about the same time as us and we hope to cross paths if that happens.  It got us quite excited!

It is now almost a week later and I haven’t written anything in all that time – just too busy relaxing I think.  It is not always easy finding a block of time to update my blog and it is too hard to do it a couple of sentences at a time.

We are now in Kununurra – and that means that in the last 3 months, we have caravanned in all Australian States and the Northern Territory.  That is certainly a first for us.  Even when travelling for work, I probably never visited all the States in 3 months and only ever went to the NT on business once or maybe twice.  It wasn’t on my Bucket List, but I am happy to tick it nonetheless.

The week has zipped past. Tuesday, we hit the road again and it was a great feeling.  Everything seemed brighter and sharper away from Katherine’s ‘Big Smoke’ – the senses seemed more acute and the colours were brighter and the sounds clearer. Love this country!  It was the hottest day we have had since leaving home (mid-30s, and the sun burns fiercely when directly overhead so far north) and they have all seemed much the same since then.

We were hassled out of the caravan park in the morning.  They had someone parked at the gate early in the morning waiting for our site and the manager sat on his motor-bike almost beside our van to geeing us along while we were packing up.  Even though we were off the site by about 10:10am (normal checkout is 10am but many parks won’t let new bookings in until after 2pm), it was a little confronting to have him sitting there for half an hour hurrying us up.  

At last, Katherine was behind us and we were on our way to Timber Creek, stopping at the Victoria River Roadhouse at lunchtime.  We drove down to the river and walked around the rocks, but it was very hot so we didn’t linger long. Interestingly, we got quite a good view of a grey falcon when driving down to the river and on the way back, it perched and posed beautifully for us in a tree close to the side of the road for us – Sean Dooley, eat your heart out!  (For those who don’t know, Sean is a well-known birder, but he has never seen a grey falcon – so frequently asserts that there is no such bird.  This was our 7th confirmed sighting, 6 of them really good views!!)

We started a walk at Joe Creek in the Judbarra National Park and saw some spectacular rocky cliffs, but it was simply too hot to do the uphill stretch so we retraced our steps back to the car.  Strangely, it seemed at least twice as far back to the car as when heading out – maybe we were dehydrated or something, but it was hard work – but worth it for the spectacle.

An interesting aspect of the day’s drive was the absence of ‘dressed’ anthills. We have seen three varieties of anthills in our travels: more-or-less conical ones, often no more than a metre high (but some are quite high); the ‘magnetic’ ones that align north-south to control the heat in parts of the nest; and some larger dome-shaped blobs, as if a kid had thrown them together by chucking handfuls of mud at them, all lumpy and unsymmetrical.  The main ones, and there must be many millions of them, are the first type and all the way up the Stuart Highway and east into Queensland, there are thousands that have been dressed up in shirts, hats, bras, coats, you name it.  Some even have pants draped across them (difficult to get the legs in as you may have guessed). Every conceivable outfit and variation seems to be represented – hi-vis vests, hard-hats, crash helmets, uniforms of all sorts, fatigues, bikinis, with sashes, pipes, broom handles for arms, it goes on – and on and on – thousands of them in all states of disrepair. But I saw only one dressed anthill (with just a bra and panties so maybe she was almost undressed) all the way from Katherine to Kununurra.

We arrived at the Timber Creek Caravan Park, just in time to see the croc-feeding they do three times a week.  Boooooring…… they dangled some scraps of meat in front of a couple of small freshwater crocs that seemed to have little interest in it, but one had a bit of a go just to keep the crowd happy.   What was more interesting was the kite feeding.  They tossed small pieces of meat up and the black kites and whistlers dived and lunged to catch them on the wing – before they hit the ground where a hungry dog was enthusiastically lapping up the leftovers.  The kids got into the act and enjoyed it and I got a few pics – and gave a little lesson to some of them about how to recognise the various kites.  A really interesting thing happened as everyone was heading back to their vans.  A barking owl appeared from nowhere and attacked two kites that were perched where it wanted to sit.  It won – easily – and then sat and posed for me to take several photos.  Remember what I said about how hard it is to see and identify nocturnal birds – that was our third in about a week!

The caravan park was inhabited a large colony of bats with their distinctive odour (and their incessant rowdy bickering) permeating the air throughout the day – but mercifully not at night when they all took off to feed in someone else’s backyard.  At night, it was the road-trains that parked immediately outside the park with their motors and freezer units blaring away all night.  Most inconsiderate for the tourists trying to get some sleep after a tiring day reading and knitting and chatting and maybe fishing……!  We are in a somewhat similar situation at Kununurra, surrounded by screaming bats all day, but fortunately no trucks at night.

We booked a cruise on the Victoria River (NT’s largest and even in the Dry, it is huge).  We explored the area during the heat of the day, including a drive to a few river access points and up along the escarpment to some great scenic lookouts and one over the town.  Then we boarded an old bus to take us out to where the boat was waiting.  We cruised 70km downstream, checking out the crocs and their hundreds of wallabies prey – and some birds – and had a finger-food dinner on a pontoon in the middle of the river before returning just after dark. It was a good cruise and wonderfully cool on the water, but I felt the cruise-captain could have taken a little more time creeping up on some of the wildlife instead of roaring in on it and scaring them away before we got close enough for really good photos.  On return to camp, we were still a little peckish to bought some greasies from the pub before watching another DVD.

The next day, we set ourselves a challenge and we are so glad we did.  We have numerous 4WD and adventure travelling DVDs with us and we watched one about the Binns Track that runs for over 1000 km over some pretty extreme terrain.  We weren’t about to do that, but we did the first 150km of it, including our own bit of extreme terrain.  We drove out and down the Bullita Access Track and had lunch at the old Bullita Homestead – a quaint and very interesting old place, amazingly small for what was a working station for over a hundred years, nestled on a beautiful river with a mammoth boab outside.  We saw hundreds of boabs that day, from mere saplings to 3000-year-old monsters.  The trunks come in an amazing variety of shapes: round, square, bifurcated, trifurcated, quadfurcated, conical, inverted conical, smooth, gnarled, branched, symmetrical and asymmetrical – a most unusual tree and the older ones are quite awe-inspiring.  I just love them.  They call them the upside-down tree because when they have no leaves (now – in the Dry), their branches look like roots running in all directions and at all angles.

We also called in to Limestone Gorge.  It is a limestone gorge (yes, really) that is quite a few kilometres long and the end is accessed by driving down a ‘track’ that is simply large rough river boulders. It is a very dramatic gorge, mainly in blacks and greys with a bit of yellowish-cream in recently broken and unweathered places, but we just took some pics and headed back to the real objective of the day – the Tuwakam Track.  It is only 20km long and joins the Bullita road with the Buchanan ‘Highway’, but the guide says to allow 3 hours in good conditions – strictly high clearance 4WDs only. It was a lot of fun and we really only took a bit over 2 hours.  Some parts were reasonably good going – I got up to about 20 kph a couple of times – but a lot of it was ungraded rock and I was frequently walking the car over boulders twice the size of watermelons for 100 metres at a time.  We crossed a few creeks and creek-beds and some of the entry and exit angles were daunting. Several times, I thought the car would simply not climb such steep exits, but in 4WD low and with a heavy foot, it just ploughed ahead wherever I pointed it.  It truly is an amazing vehicle.  We saw a few wild donkeys and a snake along the track, but at the time, my focus was more on the track than the wildlife.  We met up with a young couple with two little kids doing the Track too – she is a travel writer and writes about travelling in extreme places with kids.  We chatted with them for quite a while when we reached the Buchanan – and they headed back to Timber Creek, but we still wanted to go further to Jasper Gorge.  That was about 30km further south on the Buchanan and it was VERY different from the Limestone Gorge of the morning. Similar structure with huge rocks and dramatic cliffs, but all in darker, richer reds, maroons and oranges.  We walked around exploring for a while, but we had 150km or so, mainly on rough roads, to get back in time for dinner so we set off into the dusk.  There was another couple setting up to camp overnight at the Gorge and we thought they would enjoy a nice quiet night on their own under the stars – but we saw quite a lot of cars, including a few hoons, heading down to join them as we headed north again.  It was a great day, a real adventure for us, certainly more extreme than anything we have attempted before and we came through without a scratch.  The round trip was exactly 300km, well over 200 on dirt roads and despite the Tuwakam Track only being 20km, it was a standout adventure for both of us.  Certainly a confidence booster for next time, whatever, wherever and whenever that may be.

Next day, we moved on west again and had planned to stay in the Keep River National Park, touted as a good birdwatching place. We stopped at the Ranger station, ate our lunch and looked at the display there, and I cruised the lagoon at the back, photographing birds and water-lilies – it was quite lovely, but very hot. I also noticed that our caravan was leaking – one of our water tanks was dribbling water.  We will have to get it fixed, but it looks like a cracked hose in a very difficult place to reach so I think I will get someone else to do the hard part.  One tyre has scrubbed out very badly and we have a couple of other small things to get fixed so hopefully, we can find someone with time to do these things while we are in Kununurra.

We drove through the rest of the National Park looking for a place to camp, but unfortunately, both camp-grounds were fully occupied.  The Park was a bit disappointing, not at all what we expected (in our ignorance), hot and dusty with long walks to get to any of the places we wanted to see so with a leaky water tank, we deemed it better to head across the border and stay at Kununurra instead.

We arrived here late afternoon on Friday only to find our first-choice van park full.  So was our second choice so we let our fingers do the walking and we eventually managed to get the last site available in a Big Four Discovery Park. Big 4s are my least favourite parks – over $50 a night, jam-packed against everyone else and with more draconian regimentation than anywhere else. They are usually manicured to within an inch of destruction - so don’t dare walk on the grass or do anything much else.  As luck would have it, this one doesn’t seem so bad and it certainly hasn’t seen a manicurist for some time.  The design is less than optimal, but we are on a good site, a little separated from our neighbours – even if it was almost impossible to reverse into the allocated space.  We are not much more than 50 metres from the lake and the facilities are close-by too so we don’t have much to complain about.  We have booked some great adventures for during the week so managed to extend our stay until Friday – I just hope we can get our maintenance jobs done before then, because we are heading for the Gibb River Road after that – one of the most iconic trips in outback Aussie travelling folklore.

Yesterday (Saturday) we needed some down-time so we took it very easy, hiding out under the air conditioner for most of the day.  We did a couple of small maintenance jobs and a bit of cleaning – and the ‘weekly shopping’ at Coles in the late arvo, but not much else.  I did a big review of our birding log – currently 230 for the trip and 41 newies for us – and caught up with several days’ email from when we had no service at all.

Today, we have done the washing and updated our blogs a bit, but very soon, we have to get up to Reception because we are going on a Sunset cruise on Lake Kununurra – with a BBQ dinner at dusk.  Incidentally, keeping up with time is a bit difficult.  We crossed the border and picked up 90 minutes, but going from the extreme west of one time zone to the extreme east of another means that the difference in ‘solar time’ is more like 3 hours – we are awake by about 5.30, but it is dark again by just after 5 in the afternoon – seems very weird, especially with such short twilights in these latitudes.

I will post this now before our cruise and add some relevant pics in the next day or two.

Little did I know that writing a travel blog is actually hard work. Taking pictures, notes, formatting pics, uploading, downloading, typing… hard to have any actual traveling left at the end of the day, I tell ya! So with the car in the workshop and close to another 20 pineapples down the drain, I have some time on my hands to update the blog and share a few pictures (if you’re not Australian, you have to do some googling on the pineapple part).

Track up to Mt Hart

So, the GIBB RIVER ROAD. What a crazy patch of land. To be honest with you (I’m always honest, honest), I expected it to be a lot worse. After having done a few 4WD tracks in the Victorian high country, one particular crazy trip on the Parmango Road in 2015 near Esperance and the Dampier Peninsula I expected “the Gibb” to be tougher.

Hula Sharon did not survive the drive, just like the handbrake and one rotor

Not to say I wasn’t positively surprised, the corrugations were still a pain and the seats in the Troopy are prone to cause some long-term damage to your body when spending too much time in them I suspect.

Aaaaanyway, here are some pictures with a few stories, I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed the experience in these first few days (more to follow!).

  Hundreds of termite mounds along the way

Big trough for stock just before Derby

Boab tree just before Derby with a sad story of serving as prison for indigenous people back in the days

Roads looking good for us

Woke up on the first morning and had a horse staring at the troopy

Boab trees found in the Kimberley region

Firewood is important! Try collecting it OUTSIDE of national parks

Red DUST everywhere

Dust and dust and dust

It’s not unusual to see cattle right on the road (and not moving for you either..)

We had no reception, so we tried the drone as cell phone tower – IT WORKED!!

Corrugated, dusty roads for miles and miles

Tunnel Creek entrance

Tunnel Creek – Exit

Tunnel Creek – View when looking up

Tunnel Creek midway point (collapsed)

This was only the first two days, into the Gibb River Road and Tunnel Creek. Here are another two days and then I’ll save the rest for a later post.

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Windjana Gorge entrance from the top

Freshwater croc sunbathing

Windjana Gorge

Windjana Gorge used to be an old old reef

Crocs can swim faster than you do

Damper made in camp oven is THE BEST!

Entrance to Windjana Gorge

Be croc smart!

Sooo many freshies

Little grub thingy

Freshwater crocs, only 3 metre away

Freshwater crocs, only 5 metres away

Freshwater crocodile and I

There’s many beautiful small things on the Gibb River Road!

Crocs look weird when walking!

Green buttock ants (I call them that, science probably doesn’t)

Millions sitting under a leaf, waiting for dinner > us.

Little crawling caterpillar

This legend! Was doing a charity run with 30 others along the Gibb on POSTIE BIKES!!

Windjana Gorge

The Gibb River Road

We had no reception, so we tried the drone as cell phone tower – IT WORKED!!

This rock looks like Queen Elizabeth apparently

Corrugated, dusty roads for miles and miles

I loooooove water crossings!

Strangler fig wrapped around old boab tree

Strangler fig wrapped around old boab tree

A good looking road to Mt Hart

This was Windjana Gorge, absolutely beautiful! And a short trip to Mount Hart. We didn’t stay there, just drove in, had a look around, quick dip and kept driving on, so much more to see!

Gibb River Road kick off. Troopy Adventure Time, Crocodiles and Windjana Gorge in Week 20 Little did I know that writing a travel blog is actually hard work. Taking pictures, notes, formatting pics, uploading, downloading, typing...

End of Summer Update

Howdy gang, this blog has been quiet because I’ve been touring around an out-of-province guest (who left a review to say Edmonton is Great, by the way, and I did not pay her to say that :^) ) and I’m afraid my Alberta energies haven’t been fully restored yet. To correct this, apparently I will be hermiting in the mountains for a few days away from the interwebs. I’ll be back in town next week.

Thanks for your asks, I have been working on one or two and hopefully will return refreshed and revived after someone dunks me in a hot spring once or twice.

Enjoy the rest of your August! :)

Updates

Hi gang, just dropping in to let you know where I’m at with the blog for the rest of the year.

I’m going to be booking a trip to stay with family over Christmas in BC so I will be travelling in a couple weeks - I should have a tablet to use and art supplies in storage over there as well as a backlog of about 35 asks give or take to work on, so we will see how that goes.

I’ve had to return my library books but I did get through a fair bit of them - unfortunately they didn’t add very much to the municipalities I really needed more info on. Good exercise nonetheless. I certainly have enough material to make a very basic introduction to the history, I just need to think about how exactly I’d like to do that.

Oh and hello new followers! If you are an expat from Twitter, just a friendly reminder to change your icon from default and put some actual human person content on your blog or I will most likely end up blocking you. I get a lot of spam including bots, but on this blog particularly I get businesses/advertisers that are based in Edmonton or Calgary that see that I post about Alberta, so I tend to use that block button quite liberally. This is a blog about silly comics and not a business, news source, community hub or anything like that and i strongly Resent being advertised to. (Contrary to the name, this is also not a hockey blog and I don’t follow hockey nearly as much as is socially acceptable in this place, my apologies)

just an update - i THINK i have a jasper design i like but im going to keep practicing before i unleash them on the public p: just trying to imagine how i’d like to introduce them before i start piling concept art up on the blog.

also it’s just about time for my annual september survey so i’m going to think hard about the questions i need answered, if any. I feel like I kind of fell short of some of my goals for this year (particularly in terms of historical and meta plots) but I did take a break to work on another more research intensive project (which you can check out @athensandspartaadventures if you are interested in ancient greece).

I also have to remember that i lost the files for the main storyline that I was working on and was quite put out by that - I Should try to resurrect the old laptop long enough to retrieve what I can, but I may need more external HD space in order to achieve that.

trying out some new digital art things (again) so enjoy this doodle of Ed in front of the old Bay on Jasper Ave

part of my mission to put more edmonton propaganda on here >:3c huhu

i feel like i need a name for this mini series of me using ed to express exasperation at the State of Things but here’s another one of those. i dont know if my need to document this kind of thing is just a natural side effect of living in Capital Regions tm or what but I think trying to present a counter narrative from the inside is an important part of the blog even if I don’t want the worst most corrupt parts of it stealing the show.

anyway jk was sweating bullets over having to decide between sticking it to trudeau for the ~economy~ or enshrining an anglophile holiday instead of trc day i bet that’s why we announced it a day after every other goddamn province

also i like how hes like AT PERSONAL EXPENSE IM WAITING 14+ HOURS FOR HER MAJESTY and will be WORKING IN LINE as if his salary comes from private money- wait a second........

so i have some Vibes from travelling to Banff and Jasper over the years that I feel like need justification and BOY are the municipal and tourism sites validating a lot of those vibes, one of which is that Banff feels like it was engineered as a resort town from the ground up and Jasper feels like a place people actually live in.

Banff sites: if you want to live here, good luck! you will suffer horribly, you will make sacrifices, and your entire life must be dedicated to serving the whims of tourists so long as it does not interfere with conservation

Jasper: ya i just sort of accidentally ended up here and why not try it? if you forget to leave it’s whatever. bring your dog please.

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Big City Brunch Update

Good eeeevening!

Windex and I have set the first two brunch answers to post next Tuesday and Thursday at 10AM Mountain Time. Depending on our schedules and how much time we need to tweak our answers, we might increase the frequency :) Look forward to it! :D

Also note: I won’t be providing translations to Windex’s answers (at least, not until I’m able to translate this into a bilingual blog lol). We realize this is a choice that limits the accessibility of this blog for non-Francophones, but it is also a statement about the accessibility of French in Canada in general. Windex will be elaborating more on this in one of her answers - if you have other questions about it feel free to message her at @randomoranges!