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Someone in Acting CM Lambley’s position should be well aware that it is erroneous and possibly prejudicial to cry ‘murder’ when there has been no such conviction by a court. Murder is a very specific offence, and it does the NT Government no credit to have Ms Lambley respond in hysterical ignorance.

UPDATED – Now with added Gerry Wood! That’s not all! Just next to this rubbish dump there is an open sewerage pond where the raw sewage is pumped out straight of the houses. It is just very rough and ready – a hole in the ground surrounded by a chain-mesh fence. Pure raw sewage. The tip is about 2 or 3 minutes drive from the community. Kids walk back and forth. Dogs can get into the sewage ponds and then they go back to the community. It is a disgrace.

Female Superb Fairy-wrens Malurus cyaneus initiate extragroup fertilizations by forays to the territory of preferred males, just before sunrise, 2–4 days before egg laying. Over a prolonged breeding season, males advertise their availability to foraying females by singing during the dawn chorus.

I gave up attending conferences without presenting at them a long time ago and this year I’m giving two presentations tomorrow in a session dedicated to ethnoornithology and titled “Birds in historical, cultural & archaeological context” where we will “examine birds and human culture in a variety of contexts, including birds, humans and fire, birds and archaeology and what happens when birds, birders and sacred and ancient grounds meet.”

A few weeks ago I noticed a cluster of these bright red and green Jewel bugs on one of the branches of the Witchetty bush and over the past month or so I’ve seen several sets of eggs laid, the tiny bugs emerge and then grow through several moultings before spreading around the yard and beyond.

The males call loudly – very loudly. If you visit a waterhole with many River Red Gums the noise can be almost unbearable. The adults live for about 2 weeks. The males can be distinguished from the female by their distinctive vocal sacs on either side of their abdomen.

Michael Coggan: It can be a real problem – particularly coming from a western culture and not having seen Aboriginal communities before. When journalists go to a community for a day – and as a journalist that is usually what you do – fly-in, fly-out, or drive-in, drive-out. We usually have no idea of the cultural and long-term context of what is going on in the communities that we travel to. Unless you have got very good contacts in those communities. Thankfully often we do, but it is very easy for reporters that don’t spend a lot of time on the ground to come in and say “Oh, it is all just a mess – we need to report on this, there will be a political & media focus on this and then it will be fixed.”

Fires trash these mini-plant communities – bushfires are the main threat to snails here – it directly cooks the animals and destroys their food. In the long run I’d like get around to trying to identify some of the main crust plants they eat but that might be impossible. I’m told there hasn’t been a lichenologist through central Australia in living memory so I suspect few species here are named.

Young people, feeling hopeless, began to tell each other to follow their ancestors and kill themselves like Purrukapali. But the real story said something else. The true story was about creation, how our first man died to create the Curlew, from the spirit of our first woman, his wife, and how the moon was created from the spirit of Purrukapali’s treacherous brother. This was the real story. How can we sort it out?” he asks. “How can we change the ending of the story?”