At first glimpse, most of our native pigeons and doves are unspectacular. They are not especially colourful or large, nor do they entertain us with beautiful songs. Indeed, the songs of many of the pigeons and doves border on the mournful. There is, however, a wonderful range of native pigeons and doves spread across the country.
INTRODUCTION
Visiting a Wandjina site is, without doubt, the most dramatic experience in rock art. The Wandjina is an ancient, powerful, mysterious and deeply spiritual symbol.
We all know plenty of waterbirds, don’t we? Ducks, swans, seagulls………and those other ones. In fact, the term waterbird is incredibly broad and somewhat misleading; after all, every bird needs water to survive.
Over the years, we have heard many (white) Australians comment that they love travelling to Europe because there is so much more history there. We have probably been guilty of that ourselves.
But the reality is that Australia is home to the oldest living culture in the world, and some of its rock art is so ancient it pre-dates the last ice-age, and possibly the one before that.
We were excited to learn that, hot on the heals of the Anzac Day long weekend, we were to have another long weekend here in the Northern Territory. Who said this was an uncivilised place? What were we to do with three days off? The answer was obvious – we’d “go bush”.
Now, deciding what to do was the easy part, where to go not so simple. Alice Springs is the largest settlement for around 1500km in any direction, and Alice has a population of less than 30000. So you get the idea – there is plenty of bush out here.
Western Australia is deservedly famous for its wildflowers. One of the first things you notice upon travelling through WA is the soil, if you could call it that. Most of WA is sandy and dry, and at first glance appears unlikely to support much in the way of plant life. Yet travel through the state during the springtime and you will be astounded at the range of wildlfowers on display, especially if there have been good winter rains. We wondered whether the range of flowers was in some part due to the high mineral content of the sandy ground.
