"(GENTLE MUSIC)" "(THEME MUSIC)" "(ENGINE STARTS)" "Darwin's a terrific town." "I love it a lot." "Got a lot of mates up there too." "But at this time of the year, with the wet season about to break all over the place, the only real place to go to appreciate it fully is out in the bush." "Because out in the bush, you can feel it, you can see it changing the whole countryside." "It's a trip I'm really looking forward to." "We're gonna move through the wetlands of Arnhem Land right down through the Gulf of Carpentaria then finally come back up the Cape York Peninsula." "Along the way, we're gonna get a good idea of just what the wet's doing to the countryside." "The trouble is the wet's a strange creature." "You can't predict just when and where it's gonna strike." "When it does arrive, the afternoon thunderstorms are scattered all over the countryside." "Some areas will get a downfall." "Other areas, well, they just miss out." "Creeks that are dry for most of the year suddenly begin to fill and the rivers then go on to flood the catchment areas." "(CAR DOOR OPENS)" "You have no idea how hot it can get down here on these flood plains simply because there's no breeze around the place." "I want to get to somewhere that's a bit cooler than this and camp for the night." "Maybe today, if we're a bit lucky, might even be able to get a bit of rain to cool off with." "I hope so, anyway." "Ahh." "Waterways like this really encourage you to wanna jump in and have a bit of a splash around for a bit." "But, of course, you can't do it up here." "Because even though it's pure, fresh water, very cool and all the rest of it, there's crocodiles in there." "That one down there, something's happened to him." "He's been dead for a few days by the smell of it." "He's on the nose a bit." "Might have had a fight with another crocodile and got his head crushed." "Dunno." "But he's a pretty good example of what lives in this type of country around here." "Of course, they live off the barramundi and the magpie geese and all those creatures that come round this habitat." "It's a good reason for making your camp in high ground." "I reckon I'll camp up there tonight, up on the rocks." "(THUNDER RUMBLES)" "I tell you what, this rain's been hanging around, coming and going all day, but it looks pretty set in now." "See this little lily here?" "Aboriginal people used to get the underground bulb and the roots and boil it up and mash it up and then eat it." "But the really amazing thing about this fella is that it's one of the plants that Aboriginal people use as a contraceptive." "Just what they did, I wouldn't have a clue." "Maybe I'll get told one day." "Look what he's got." "Beaut little flower on him." "Terrific." "(THUNDER RUMBLES)" "This is the wet season, alright." "Out there we've got all that wetland country which comes back and backs up to where I am here, which is right on the edge of the Arnhem Land escarpment country." "And that rocky stuff behind me, that goes up for 200 or 300 feet." "About 2,000 million years ago, all of this area was part of the ocean floor." "These days, because it's all up in the air and catching all this rainfall and dragging it all together and channelling out, it all gets captured out there in that wetland low-lying country." "And that, at this time of year, brings in all the wildlife... the birds and the geese and the ducks... the whole lot." "Terrific place." "All of a sudden, the dry, brown landscape is transformed into a great expanse of water that stretches for miles and miles and it covers all the low-lying country." "A whole new seasonal cycle begins." "Vegetation that hasn't been seen for a whole year suddenly emerges." "And even for the wildlife, the wet season is a great time to enjoy." "(WATER FLOWS NEARBY, THUNDER RUMBLES)" "Tell you what, it might be a bit of a hard bed, but at least it's a dry one." "'Cause Aboriginal people have been using shelters just like this one here for thousands and thousands of years." "They're pretty good." "The wet season, of course, is not all beer and skittles, and driving around the countryside can be a real pain." "Because there's so much water around, that means the mosquitoes are in plague proportions, which is why I've got this mosquito net here." "Also up here, looking at these things here, these droppings, the kangaroos and the wallabies come to rest." "A bit of a story going around Darwin a few years ago." "There was a mosquito so large that it landed in Darwin airport." "They put 100 gallons into it before they realised it was a mosquito." "Well, I don't believe that myself." "Some of the people up here are inclined to exaggerate a bit." "I've been knocking round the place an awful long time and I've never seen a mosquito that big." "90 gallons, yeah, but not 100." "Of course, you know that the three basic elements of survival are food, water and shelter." "And at this time of year, up here in the north, we've got tons of water, as you can see, but a lot of it's dirty and you wouldn't want to be drinking it." "So what you've got to find is some really clear, clean water." "And I know just the spot..." "a top little joint just up the road here." "(SOUND OF RUSHING WATER)" "Isn't this amazing?" "This water is coming straight out of that rock there." "There's no rivers or streams feeding it and it's coming up out of the earth." "And because of all the wet season, the pressure on the watertable underground is pushing it out through that tunnel up there." "Of course, because it comes through the earth, it's the cleanest and the freshest and the most filtered water you can get." "Look at that." "Clear as a bell." "Here we go." "This fellow here is just like a bush lolly." "All the kids love it." "Not just the kids." "I reckon it's pretty good too." "Its common name is the white berry fruit." "He only comes out during the wet season and stays around the place for a few weeks." "And you've got to be very, very quick to get onto him because the birds love him as well." "Here he is." "Quite beaut." "Really sweet." "Top number." "Here in the Gulf country, the wet hasn't yet arrived." "It's hanging around the place, but it's not here in full swing yet." "Maybe it'll take another month or so before it gets here." "When the rains finally do come, all of these Gulf rivers round here will be quite impossible to get through." "The depth and the force of this water would not only drown the vehicle, but it'd probably wash it away as well." "See that stuff over there?" "That stuff sticking out of the water just like a big mob of weeds?" "That's one of the very first bush tuckers that I ever catalogued." "It's a thing called Scurby Weed." "I'll get the car off the causeway here, we'll have a look at him." "Scurby Weed is one of the most reliable food sources you can find." "It grows around a lot of the waterways and regardless of what time of year, you can generally find it." "To cook it up, all you've got to do is boil it in the billy for a few minutes." "Tastes like a bit of stringy sort of spinach or something like that." "Not too bad." "It's got a real vegetable taste to it." "And that's exactly what you'd use it for..." "a vegetable additive for your main meal." "In fact, this was one of the things that was shown to me by a white fella, not an Aboriginal." "An old tin scratcher from around that Cooktown area." "And he used to use it all the time up there in the rainforest country." "It really is not too bad." "I've just about driven all the way around the Gulf country at this stage." "I reckon I'm pretty lucky because this Gulf country is so flat, all you need is a bit of rainfall from the wet and you can find yourself trapped in there maybe for a few weeks or even a few months in some cases." "I think from memory the flatness of the ground around here is around about 1 in 50,000..." "Hang on." "We'll just go back here." "Have a look at this." "This is a thing called Typonodon pendulatus." "I call him tennis ball fruit." "There's a big mob of them." "They're all in fruit at the moment." "(VEHICLE STOPS)" "Here's a ripe one right here." "There we go." "The trouble with these things, you can see the grub holes on the outside." "You've got to get to them before the grubs take over and before the birds jump in." "Just peeling back like that." "You've got that beaut orange-coloured flesh inside." "There's some of the grub holes there." "And inside there you've got these big seeds." "I'll try and lever one out." "There they go." "Like that." "You can either swallow them or spit them out or do what you like." "Make your own mind up on that." "It's got a really beaut sweet sort of taste." "A bit dry, but it's really nice." "A bit like bananas, sort of thing." "Not a bad tucker, though." "Tell you what, looking over there, you can see something else that might be interesting too." "We'll go over there and have a look." "This thing here I reckon really epitomises the wet season because that's the only time of year you really get to see him." "When the rains fall, he punches up out of the ground, climbs up over the dead branches and the trees like this and round about this time starts producing the fruit." "It's one of our native grapes, a thing called Cayratia trifolia." "Look at the big bunch of stuff up here." "Yeah." "Look at that." "They're quite a sweet little number, these fellas." "Sweet at the beginning, then they've got a slight little burn in the back of your throat." "But they're pretty good." "Mix them up with these fellows here and we'll have fruit salad tonight." "Before I forget, the reason why they call it trifolia is because the leaf has got three leaves on it, the bracket of three." "One, two, three." "Occasionally the botanists do the right thing by us and they botanically name something because of the way it appears." "Trifolia here and pendulatus over there." "Not bad." "Well, this is the Cape York environment." "And it's quite, quite different to the Northern Territory and that wetland country over there." "Here it's all flat." "There's no escarpments." "There's no high ground." "And what you've got is all this woodland country you can see out here." "There's been a bit of a wet around here so far because all the grass has turned green and is looking all fresh and beaut." "Here on the western side of Cape York Peninsula," "I've driven up north to exactly the same latitude as the Arnhem Land flood plains." "Over here, the water gets channelled to the coast and where you find the wetland country." "On one side you've got the Gulf waters and inland, long skinny strips of wetland flanked by the forest country." "Obviously there's been some heavy rain round the place, but not what you'd call a proper wet season." "Mind you, even with a small amount, the bush tracks around here can soon become a bit of a problem." "Ahh." "It had to happen eventually, I suppose." "You can't really drive around the wet season with a vehicle like this towing a trailer like that and expect not to get bogged eventually." "Fortunately, we've got a couple of trees to hook on to with a winch and we'll be able to pull ourselves out." "But it's still a messy job." "I don't like it much." "It's important to get a good, solid winch point even if it means running the cable almost right out." "Here in this case, the closest tree would have fallen straight over simply because the ground is so waterlogged." "Didn't think I'd make it there for a minute." "Fair way." "This one's much better." "Much stronger." "(ENGINE STARTS)" "These vast lagoons are breeding grounds for many birds, but in particular, the black and white magpie geese." "However, to get a closer look, I'm gonna need some sort of a boat." "Tell you what, I've never built a canoe before but I think I'll give it a go." "I've got a bit of an idea how to do it." "I read in a book one time that it used to take about six Aboriginals 2 or 3 hours to knock one of these things up, that was using stone axes." "I reckon using this thing, I might be lucky to get away with it in 3 or 4 days the way I'm going." "To make a skin bark canoe, you only have to remove half the bark from the tree." "This allows the tree to continue to live." "I've got to work quickly to sort out the basic shape because the sun will dry this bark out in a matter of hours." "With a pocket knife, I'm gonna cut the bow off here to give it a sharp point." "I'll drill some holes through here like that, stitch it up with a bit of green string I've got there and put some spreaders in it." "Then I'll have to do the same job down the back there so I'll have a point at both ends." "I've got to put those spreaders in now because the whole thing is inclined to bend in two and therefore it'll get a crack all the way along the bottom." "Well, it didn't take six days, but I'll tell you what, it took most of today." "These braces here hold the sides together with those struts pushing them apart." "It's got a funny sort of keel on it." "But we'll see if it works." "That's the big test." "Take it down the water." "Any leaks that pop up can be fixed using a bit of mud." "Well, that's the theory, anyway!" "At least it'll give me a bit of time to check out the geese." "Skin bark canoes were used by Aboriginals both in Arnhem Land and here in Cape York to move around the wetland country." "They provided a safe and practical means of transport." "Without a proper wet season, all the geese and the crocodiles and much of the wildlife simply won't breed." "What I'm looking for here are the geese pairing off and some sort of sign that they're beginning to nest." "I tell you what, I've had a good look around here and the geese are here and they're congregating but they're not nesting." "And at this time of year they should be because it's now right into the late part of February and this is the time of year when the geese nest." "Because they're all Pisces." "They're all born in February, March, around then." "But I reckon they're not nesting because there's not enough water here." "We've got a good wet season over in Arnhem Land, but over here in Cape York, not much of one at all." "And that's one of the oddities about the wet in the north... you get it one place but not over the other." "These geese are waiting for the water level to build up and then they'll build their nests which float on top of the water and that protects them from the pigs and the dingoes and things like that." "Well, maybe next year." "We might get a wet next year."