This is Part One of what will most likely be a three-part post of an interview with the Darwin-based writer Marie Munkara in early October.
Marie’s first book, Every Secret Thing, was published in September 2009 by the University of Queensland Press.
WARNING
THESE PICTURES WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
Plastic cigarette lighters, bottle tops, fishing line, fishing lures, parts of shoes, plastic bags – just about anything we get rid of ends up here – in the guts of these baby albatrosses hatched and dead after a too-short life at Midway Atoll in the mid-Pacific.
Miku Ganambarr-Stubbs
This is Miku Ganambarr-Stubbs, who is one of those rare creatures that lives such an absolutely charmed life that she has you in constant wonder when the charm might run out and she’ll get bitten hard by reality – or in Miku’s case – a bloody great crocodile.
Mandawuy Yunupingu. Photo by John Elliott, National Portrait Gallery
Mandawuy Yunupingu has fought more than a few battles in his time – most of which he has won hands down.
But, if you believed the title and tone of an article written by Natasha Robinson in The Australian in December last year – Songline fades for Treaty man Mandawuy Yunupingu – you could be forgiven for thinking that Mandawuy had given up hope and that he was soon to “finish up”, as we say up here.
Nothing could be further from the truth – anyone who knows Mandawuy is aware that the last thing he could ever be would be a quitter.
I’m sitting on a verandah at Yirrkala in the north-east of the Northern Territory looking out at one of those smoky-red sunsets that only the Top End can throw up on a hot day in the middle of the build-up to the wet.
All around me is waiting the wet wealth and abundance that the monsoons will bring.
Rocky Bottom Creek at dawn
A bit of an experiment this.
A pesky, but nonetheless absolutely delightful Pied Butcherbird woke me at about 4 am the other morning while I was camped on the side of the aptly-named Rocky Bottom Creek about 450 kilometres into Arnhem Land along the Central Arnhem Road.
Me, being slack and nice and warm warm in my swag told the PBB to go away and rolled over to try for another hour or so of sleep.
Wake.
5am. Alarm. Sleep.
Awake 5.15.
Three dogs shake and scatter off bed, step around four on floor.
Four puppies in bathroom cloud around feet, escape as slash splashes – mayhem.
All dogs, bark, howl and puppies yelp – doors open.
Weebill. Photo by M Seyfort © Australian Museum
This great shot is of a Weebill (Smicrornis brevirostris), bird of the week here at TNM, at one of their little woven dome-shaped nests with a neat side entry.
In many ways they are the archetypal “LBB” (little brown bird) that causes no end of frustration for no end of the birders that seek them in their natural habitat of the open woodland and forests that once dominated the Australian landscape.
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