50 Countries!

Macau is the 50th country I have visited! I've written a travel post - go look.

Travel blog

I know this is my NON travel blog, but I'm on dialup internet, and this loads quicker! I'll fix up travelpost later.

I left Brisbane 10 days ago, and I've been in Darwin, Kakadu National park (the famous remote, crocodile infested north of australia), and now I'm staying at my parent's place in Galliwinku, the township and remote aboriginal community on Elcho Island off the north of the northern territory. It's another world, really. We went four-wheel driving yesterday. Can't go swimming cos of the crocodiles, of course, but the beaches are nice to walk along, and we only got bogged once. Didn't see another soul all afternoon. And this morning the barge came in - it only comes every fortnight - which means that my parents' supermarket order arrived and we had to go down to unload it. It also means the local shop has fruit and vegetables, until they run out in a day or two.
This afternoon I'm going to visit my parents at the clinic, and then walk along a beach (watching for crocodiles... keeping the psychotic poodle from being eaten by crocodiles...), and I think we're having my adopted 'sister' to dinner. She's 60-something, but adopted my parents as her parents. I don't know why, but it works in the local culture, it seems! Probably something to do with respect, I guess. We were supposed to have a gay couple for dinner, but they couldn't come. I met one of them yesterday anyway, and will go to the local art centre where the other works tomorrow. Apparently some dutch people have arrived and may or may not buy all the art from the art centre, so they couldn't come to dinner, as they were entertaining them.
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I had to run at that point - Mum arrived and said "quick! come to a clapping!", which I discovered was when they followed the ambulance down to the airport to load a body into the plane to be taken to the morgue, probably in Gove, the nearest city on the mainland. Lots of ululating and rolling in the dirt, and clapping and didgeridoo playing. And then this evening we had the woman who has adopted my parents as her parents, which means she's my sister. I learnt that I am Duwa (though I'm still working out what that means) and that my totems are snake, shark, turtle and dolphin.

So tomorrow I leave here, fly to Darwin, where I have about 12 hours before I have to check in for my flight to Singapore. I'll be in London by the 3rd, and at Downe House two days later. At the moment it seems about as far from here as you can possibly get! We have a couple of days there before the Queenswood people (including me) go to the other school campus. It will be good to see everyone at downe house first. I hope I'm still running the IT program I half developed last year. I haven't really heard. If I'm not, I'd rather be back at downe house with the smaller kids!

Days left....

Only 12 days left until the non-travel-blog gets put on hold, and travelpost starts getting more use.
Only 7 days left until I can stop complaining about assignments on the serious blog.