Motorists driving the NT’s roads should be warned that there are two notorious gangs out and about on the highways this week.

One is well-paid, armed to the teeth with lethal weaponry, travelling en-masse in thirty or more high-powered vehicles and backed by all the power and force of the state.

The other is the Hells Angels motorcycle club on its annual run to the Top End.

This is a guest post from a mate of mine who I’ll refer to as the “Keep River Kite.”

For those of you that don’t know the Keep River straddles the Northern Territory/West Australian border. I reckon the name fits …

Between Wednesday 20 February and Sunday 24 February of this year police at Katherine in the Northern Territory conducted an operation dubbed “Operation Thumper”.

The aim of the Thumper, according to Superintendent Michael White, was to “quell anti-social behaviour in our town”.

From time to time you stumble across stories that deserve a wider audience, not that this little blog would carry much weight in the sub-continent from where this story comes.

Earlier today a post on the Bangalore Birds internet group sparked my interest in the life and work of Madhaviah Krishnan, an Indian journalist who for a remarkable 46 years wrote a column for The Statesman of Calcutta called ‘Country Notebook.‘

I’ve had a look at a few of his columns and they compare more than favourably to that other long-lived exemplar of nature writing, The Guardian’s Country Diary, which has run – albeit with many different writers – for at least 100 years.

But singlehandedly penning a column for 46 years wasn’t the only string in M. Krishnan’s bow.

I like planes and I like light.

And I really like the light that planes make at night.

Here are a few pictures taken from both ends of the Darwin International Airport over the past year or so. Darwin Airport is particularly good for night-time shoots like this because, despite it being surrounded by the city and suburbs, it is relatively isolated from any light pollution from those sources.

Most of these pictures are of domestic flights landing or taking off. But there are a few military planes – which I caught up with when they came through Darwin for Exercise Pitch Black in August last year. You can see some other – daylight – pics of those planes here.

I hope you like them. And no, I won’t tell you how I took these pics. That is for me to know and you to find out.

You can see Part One of my conversation with Amadeo Rea at the Denver Botanic Gardens in Colorado in April last year here.

Amadeo Rea is a taxonomic ornithologist and ethnobiologist whose work is focused on the greater Southwest of the USA. His life’s work deals with the taxonomy and distribution of birds, avian paleontology, and zooarchaeology. His 1983 work, Once a River: Bird Life and Habitat Changes on the Middle Gila, documents avifaunal changes in River Pima country.

Bob Gosford: Tell me about how birds and other animals bring people power through the agency of the Namkam.

Amadeo Rea: Yes, namkam is an important Piman concept. A namkam is a meeter – someone who meets some power animal, a spirit helper some other cultures would call it. I don’t know what the Australian Aboriginal people call it. Its an animal or sometimes a plant (Peyote in particular) that will come to that person in daydreams or real dreams and bring that person spiritual power in the form of songs, dreams, perhaps running skills (racing was very big with the desert people) or gaming or war skills.
But principally the power involved diagnosing illnesses and usually involved songs. So your dream-helper might give you, the namkam, a series of songs that you could use to heal some particular kind of sickness. If Coyote came to you in a dream, you might receive songs to heal Coyote sickness. The shaman diagnoses you “Oh, you have Coyote sickness and you have to find someone who knows the Coyote songs.”

“Chinaman … Found dead with spear through throat.“

That is the chilling entry in the Katherine Police Station’s historic Deaths Register.

I’d last seen a facsimile copy of that revealing store of Northern Territory history some years ago when I visited the wonderful Katherine Museum with my dear departed friend Andrew McMillan.

The rest of this entry reads:

1900 … Mounted Constable Stott rode River and bought in Moolooran of Jungman people. He was sentenced to be hung. Bought back to Crescent Lagoon in chains. Stott sent his trackers 50 miles about to gather a crowd. Gave handouts and then explained to the crowd white man’s law and hanging. The crowd enjoyed the hanging and asked for more. Government stopped hangings in the homelands soon after.

It is a warm evening in late May 2012 and I sit on the wooden benches of the ancient Nimes arena, joining in the celebration of 60 years of the local Feria de Pentecote.

By happy accident rather than design I lucked upon an event not seen in France before and only rarely seen in Spain.*

I’d been at a conference at Montpelier for a week and had a day off before heading back to Paris. The manager of my hotel suggested I catch the train to Nimes for the feria, warning only that I should beware of strong drink and drunken company.

“But you will enjoy the toros,” she said as I walked out the door.

There were two bullfights – corrida – that day so I bought tickets to both.

The midday corrida followed the usual order of proceedings – six bulls shared between three matadors. That was my first corrida and an extraordinary enough event that I wrote about here and here.

In the evening matador Javier Castaño would fight six Miura bulls seul – solo.

One man and six bulls?

By rights, Terry “Freckles” Mills will want to get out of NT politics as soon as possible. Last Friday, one day after the Northern Territory Country Liberal Party dumped him from the NT’s top job his successor Adam Giles fronted for an interview on local ABC TV.

Giles described the Mills government as:

… a Government in crisis, we had pain everywhere, we were hurting Territorians.

This is a guest post by a long-term insider in the criminal justice system in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. I’ve been asked not to use their name for professional reasons. They thought it a useful time to throw their two bob’s worth into the current debates concerning the criminal justice system – particularly the debate about school attendance and truancy – and how the justice system – and common sense – can better serve and protect the community, in particular the disadvantaged people up in the Territory and WA.

Yesterday’s Fairfax press carried a snippet headed “Abbott backs fines to cut Aboriginal truancy“. Tony Abbott says that under a Coalition Government parents would face on-the-spot fines for “failing” to send their kids to school.

This brainstorm had the backing of Warren Mundine who reckoned that a new “toughness” towards getting Aboriginal children to school was needed. I know Aussie politics is in the doldrums right now and ill-conceived policies like this are tossed off routinely to demonstrate some sort of “action” on the “Aboriginal issue” but I was genuinely taken aback by this rubbish.

In recent years there has been no shortage of evidence – in the Northern Territory and Western Australia in particular – to show how little good comes from punitive measures. Abbott coughing up this garbage, supported by Warren Mundine – who should and does know better – drove me to desperation, and to the keyboard.

The Northern Myth has it from solid Labor sources that Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been tapped on the shoulder today and will leave office next Wednesday, March 20.

While the timing at first appears curious – why wait five days? – a quick glance at the Parliamentary sitting calendar shows that this would give her replacement – tipped to be Kevin Rudd – just one day of Parliament before the long break through to budget sittings in mid-May.