My Harry Potter moment at the Hanging Temple

Lewis, Naomi and Edie Visit Alice Springs

Feeding the Black-footed Rock Wallabies at Heavitree Gap.

Enjoying the view at Ormiston Gorge in the Western MacDonnell Ranges.

Chillin' with the Black-footed Rock Wallabies

At Heavitree Gap, Alice Springs.

An historic moment

200,000 km down and still going strong.

It's confirmed...

I have a brain.

New Web Link

A new quick link to this blog is currently in action.  For easier navigation please see http://www.ryanmclean.org.  A new website is currently being developed for this site so... and I've always wanted to say this.  Watch this space!

Photos from Mum, Dad, Laura, Paul and Max's Visit to Alice Springs

Max hiding behind the television

Max and me standing outside the nocturnal house at the Alice Springs Desert Park 

Laura and Max watching the bird show at the Desert Park

Me at Simpsons Gap

Family at Simpsons Gap

Max running on a train at the Old Ghan Museum

Max playing on a tractor at the Old Ghan Museum

Climbing Mt Gillen

This afternoon I went up Mt Gillen. Didn't get to the top but got most of the way. Up the rock face and to the tip. We didn't walk along to the cairn as it was getting dark. Even so the 4.3km was a nice round trip. I haven't ever come down in the dark before. The moon was a little late in rising so it didn't help much on the way down. I'm glad I had my head torch.

The view from the first look out.

The view going up the hill.

View of the first valley as the sun goes down.

Posing for a photo as the sun goes down.

Spraying and frogging

Before heading off to Tennant Creek tomorrow I thought I'd post these taken by one of the immunisation nurses from the last trip.

Me posing for a photo while spraying a house.

Packing up the car after a long, hot day.

A frog that was found in one of the drains. This guy received a face-full of spray. I washed him off kept an eye on him for a few hours afterwards. Later on that evening, as he seemed to be fine, I let him go.

Trippin' in Tennant

Once again it is another entry about me going up to Tennant Creek. I've been going up quite a bit lately and next week will be heading up again. It's getting easier and moping up the few properties that weren't done due to people not being home means most afternoons, at the hottest part of the afternoon, has a large component of it in the air conditioning of the car.

From house to house we went spraying, tipping and sweating through the yards of the houses. The neat, the messy, the clean, the putrid. We went through them all with a smile. Sometimes people were happy to see us, other times they were not. While we could only speculate on the reasons, (usually drug related as people didn't really seem to worry about any mess) and that was why we weren't allowed to enter.

This last trip up was different from the others. Only because on the way up and back I had to drive through flood waters. It was a stormy week in Central Australia and there were several large downpours over the week. When I was driving up the dark clouds were ahead of me. The blur in the sky told me that there was rain. I had now idea how much. One storm on the way up lasted maybe half an hour. That's half an hour of torrential rain, not being able to see out of the windscreen as the rain was falling so hard. On several occasions the rain lifted slightly but for most of the time I was driving blind. It became particularly hazardous when the floodways started to flow. I passed through several some relatively shallow, some not so. The deepest was probably around 40 cm deep (found out by the depth signs on the side of the road). I made it through but several car could not, and were pulled up on the side of the road waiting for the waters to subside.

Me driving into the storm

On the way back I left Tennant Creek early. The road was closed at Aileron (400km from Tennant or 100km from Alice Springs). It would take 5 hours to get there so I just hoped that the waters would have gone down by the time I got there. Despite the rain falling pretty much all the way back to Alice Springs, the water at Aileron was only around 10-20cm deep as I passed through. It certainly made for a more interesting drive.

Murdering Mozzies

I’ve just come back from a week in Tennant Creek torturing and murdering poor defenseless creatures. It’s just a normal week for me. The Dengue Mozzie (Aedes aegypti) has returned to Tennant Creek and therefore an eradication program is now in place. For this program the Medical Entomology branch is required to check and spray every house in the town. Environmental Health volunteered my services to help out. I don’t mind going up to Tennant Creek apart from the effect that has on my karma!

While up at Tennant Creek this time I did something that I’ve never done before. I went for a swim in Mary Anne Dam. The dam is situated just outside of town and is a peaceful spot on a hot afternoon. The dam is surrounded with trees and has barbeque facilities. We went down there after a hot day wandering the streets of Tennant Creek and it was nice and relaxing sitting there. Well worth doing if you're up there.