The Apprentice has been in hospital since Tuesday evening. He has developed Type-1 Diabetes. At age six he now faces a future of twice-daily insulin shots and constant blood tests to monitor his Blood Glucose Levels. For the rest of his life. That's going to be a hell of a thing to get used to, for all of us.
At the moment the Diabetes Team at Royal Darwin Hospital are working at stabilising his BGLs, which have been fluctuating wildly, off the chart one minute, back to almost-normal the next. It'll probably take a week or so to work things out and the little guy won't be coming home until they are. Despite being much-maligned (even in one or two cartoons), the staff at RDH have been superb. It makes the stress of dealing with this sort of thing a whole lot easier to bear.
Some interesting things seen in the RDH carpark:
In the middle of the night the carpark is full of cats. They look hungry. I have been doing my best to avoid getting in their way.
Today, as I was heading back to the car, a man holding a frying pan asked me for directions to the dentist. I didn't know where the dentist was. I didn't asked about the frying pan.
I also saw a large man whose belly was hanging so far over his pants I could not tell if he was wearing any. It's a distressing thought.
Anyway, blogging may fluctuate wildly over the coming days as well but I'll do my best to keep you posted.
Once bitten
Kakadu National Park rangers have warned local fishermen it's only a matter of time before one of them gets taken by a croc. The 'fools' have been wading into the East Alligator River at the notorious Cahill's Crossing, where a man was taken by a five-metre beast in 1987.
Cartoon copyright © Northern Territory News. Please don't pinch it.
Phew!
After slogging through 20 years worth of cartoons over the last couple of months I'm finally in the process of putting the finishing touches to my 20th anniversary exhibition. It'll be held in Parliament House here in Darwin later in the year.
While it reflects on some of the more serious social and political upheavals in the Territory over the last two decades there are still plenty of crocodiles, dingoes, beer and cyclones on offer. I think it's a good mix and Territorians who've been around as long as I have should get a kick out of it. I hope.
A Case of Beer
Above: The usual suspects.
Ah, those flamin' poms do like taking the mickey out of us cobbers for a good laff, guv. The story of the NT nitwit motorist belting up his beer carton and not his kid was big news all around the world this week, and it particularly tickled the fancy of Ross Anderson of the Times Online...
Alice Springs District Court, Northern Territory, Australia, Judge Arnold Rawprawn presiding. The judge is addressing the defendant in the dock:
Judge: Right, mate, I've had a Captain Cook at this charge sheet and it says that you were dodging Skippy on the blacktop when the Blue Heelers pulled you over - and you had a case of beer in the back of your car secured with a seat belt, while a five-year-old child was sitting on the floor. Is this true?
Defendant: Yes, but...
Judge: Don't but me, mate. This is one of the most outrageous matters I've ever had before me.
Defendant: Yes, but...
Judge: This case stinks worse than a dead wallaby's armpit. It's a sad day for the Aussie justice system when a feller can be arrested for exercising his God-given right to protect his tinnies. Seems to me these coppers don't know Christmas from Bourke Street. They've got a kangaroo loose in the top paddock, am I making myself clear here?
Defendant: Crystal, your honour.
Judge: It's a question of priorities. When your mouth's as dry as a dead dingo's donger you don't want to crack open a coldie and have it spray all over you because the amber nectar's been agitated, do you?
Defendant: No, your honour.
Judge: Now, about this ankle-biter. Did he complain?
Defendant: No, your honour.
Judge: Good little feller. Did he drink any of the beer?
Defendant: No, your honour.
Judge: What is he? Some kind of pooftah? Actually, no, strike that. I was 7 when I had me first schooner, so he has a couple of years yet. How many tinnies were in the car?
Defendant: Thirty, your honour.
Judge: And how many of them are now in my chambers?
Defendant: Twelve, your honour.
Judge: Dinkum. Case dismissed.
Full Monty
It's always interesting to see which particular news stories (and cartoons) get readers of the NT News all fired up. Forget the unstoppable industrialisation of Darwin Harbour or the usual political intrigues, mention a cat and the letters page fur starts to fly.
A carpet python swallowing a kitten is front page news around here, especially when you have xrays of the cat inside the snake. Naturally, some readers were horrified and were quick to fire off cranky protests to the editor. Many more, though, defended the snake, pointing out that it's native to Australia while cats are not and it was obviously striking a justified blow for all the other wildlife that cats have eaten. That's heated debate, Territory style.
Cartoon copyright © Northern Territory News. Please don't pinch it.
Mango Madness no myth
Any Top Ender will tell you we all go a little troppo during the build-up to the wet season when, usually around October, soaring temperatures and oppressively high humidity start to become really annoying. Now local surgeons have backed that up with a new study into 'Mango Madness', finding that broken bones in particular go up by around 40% each build-up because we start belting into one another. The Territory has the highest rates of alcohol consumption and violence in Australia.
Gordon Ramsay!
I am trying to give up swearing. The apprentice finds it offensive and is forever telling me to bloody well knock it off. So I came up with a cunning plan. Instead of saying *%#& or $%#& I am now saying Gordon Ramsay! or variations thereof, such as "What the Ramsay are you doing!?" and "Good Gordon, put out that fire right now!"
It's pretty easy to get the hang of once you get going and is certainly a much more entertaining way to swear at children. And telemarketers.
Cartoon copyright © Northern Territory News. Please don't *%$#ing pinch it.
Happy Burpday
I once drank an entire Darwin Stubby by myself. It was at a work Christmas party in 1981, only a month or two after I first arrived here. If you want to be a Territorian, I was told, it simply had to be done. It was an initiation of sorts, like wrestling your first crocodile. You needed to eat pies with your stubby as well. Pies with peas. Good God.I needed a lift home after the work do, of course. I fell out of the car at the local shops and passed out under a palm tree, a very Darwin thing to do. My colleagues were most impressed and presented me with a certificate. Those were the days.
Anyway, Darwin's most famous export celebrated its 50th birthday yesterday. It's not made in the Territory anymore but still manages to sell by the thousands every year. Let's hope Kevin doesn't find out.
Blood beach
Darwin's Nightcliff beach has been named one of the world's top killer beaches and not just because you might get eaten by a crocodile there. The main threat is from deadly box jellyfish. Nightcliff is the only Aussie beach named in jaunted.com's 2008 list of killer beaches from around the world.
Cartoon copyright © Northern Territory News. Please don't pinch it.
Garden frenzy
Okay, so I've been flat out transforming our back garden into a lush, tropical wonderland. It's not as easy as it sounds, especially with those pesky dry season winds doing their best to kill everything in sight. Anyway, I've been building, shovelling, digging, levelling and planting. I'm going for the ordered chaos look. It's working out so far, although currently there is more chaos than order.
Eyebrows. Are they really necessary?
Well, yes, apparently. Eyebrows are primarly designed to keep moisture out of our eyes. Rain, sweat, things like that. You'd think that all the extraordinary leaps in hat and umbrella technology over the last couple of thousand years would've made eyebrows largely obsolete by now. But, no, we've still got 'em. As a cartoonist, of course, I'm a big fan of eyebrows. John Howard had them, you know.
Anyway, a word of warning about eyebrows. Don't fool with them. Ever.
My personal hair technician often insists on giving mine a trim. You know you are getting a bit long in the tooth when this happens. An unfortunate side effect of the eyebrow trim is that they often grow back bushier! The horror! There's no stopping the damned things now.
Save yourselves. Ignore the pleas of scissor-wielding maniac hair technicians. Leave your eyebrows alone before it's too late!!!!
Fat and lazy and happy
A recent health department survey suggests most Northern Territory men are overweight, lazy smokers...but very happy overweight, lazy smokers.
Cartoon copyright © Northern Territory News. Please don't pinch it.
UFO Territory
The Territory has always been a bit of a UFO hotspot. Strange, spooky lights are often observed around the place, and not just in nightclubs. I've seen some spooky things myself during my years here, including a six-foot tall white rabbit near the bottle shop at the intersection of Rothdale and MacMillans Roads.
Anyway, we're apparently experiencing our very own UFO 'flap' at the moment. Strange lights have been seen. We are being asked to watch the skies. Which ryhmes with scotch and dry. Which is a good excuse. Heh heh.
Dry season
The Top End's Dry Season officially kicked off on the first of May but it's already been around for a couple of weeks. This Tombstone Territory is from last Sunday. Click for a bigger version.
Cartoon copyright © Northern Territory News. Please don't pinch it.
Travels
Millaa Millaa Falls, Atherton Tablelands, Queensland
Okay, so the apprentice and I took off to Queensland's postcard perfect Atherton Tablelands for a week, in the middle of which my Dad turned 70. My mum worked out this was the first time in 22 years the family had all been in the one spot at the one time. Sheesh! Hasn't that just flown by!
The Tablelands, though, hasn't changed as much as we have. The town of Atherton itself, where I once worked for the local paper, is a little busier but it's still surrounded by lush volcanic hills dotted with cows and pockets of dense tropical rainforest. Mind you, one of the scourges of the modern age - the fenced off subdivision - is slowly but surely taking over. This has done nothing to stop the local wildlife knocking on your back door to ask for sandwiches:
This is Speedy, a wallaby of some description. He's a wild beastie who regularly visits my parent's house. Sometimes he brings the whole family with him. He likes bread.
This is Mark, the local bird guy. Mark puts on a show for the tourists just down the road. He likes owls, among other things, and is very entertaining.
You never know what you might stumble across as you fight your way through the jungle to the nearest souvenir shop. This downed aircraft once featured in a very bad Aussie Indiana Jones rip-off called Sky Pirates, starring John Hargreaves. The plane now rests in the mountain village of Kuranda where intrepid tourists often become trapped in overpriced market stalls.
They still have wooden trains in Queensland. This one, the Kuranda Scenic Railway, travels down to Cairns through some of the most rugged and beautiful mountain terrain you're ever likely to see. It goes through tunnels too.
Yes, it's a picture of a lettuce. It is the largest, most luscious lettuce I have ever seen. About the size of a small cow, this lettuce so impressed me I took more photos of it than my dad's birthday party. It certainly craps all over the tiny, lawnbowl-sized bundles of leafy rubbish we get in Darwin, that's for sure.
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