G'day, G'day.

So... no, this is nowhere near northern Europe. Its the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory of Australia, actually, and we recently got home from a three week trip there. Yes, its the second major trip in less than a year, and no, I haven't finished going through the pictures and video from the last trip, but certain events conspired to send us there. A few months back the rather large, but recently struggling animation studio we work for happened to purchase a smaller, but much more popular studio, then proceeded to put those guys in charge of the larger studio. This meant, as it always does when someone new is in charge, that major story revisions would be taking place for any films developed under the old regime, and sure enough, we found ourselves in "downtime" with a very limited window in which to take a vacation. Since it is also true that major story revisions usually mean major crunch time later on down the road, it was implied that if we wished to take a vacation in the next year, this was our chance. So off we went, on what has to be the most hastily thrown together trip we have done. This was our third trip to Australia, and this time around we decided to focus on the Northern Territory: flying into Darwin, renting a car, and driving eventually all the way to Ayers Rock, and flying home from Alice Springs. It was a wonderful trip, relaxing and stress free, despite the usual up-before-dawn sort of pace we like to keep. A good thing too, since Darrin was immediately thrown into mandatory 55 hour weeks the moment we returned.





We arrived in Darwin in the afternoon, after a change of planes in Brisbane, and walked around an area called East Point. The backside of Darwin is visible in the distance behind me, and our hotel was on that beach there. We were there during the Austral winter, but in that part of the country, the seasons are referred to as "the Wet" and "the Dry" because of the tropical monsoonal weather patterns. We were there during the early Dry, with "cold" temperatures and lower humidity... lows in the mid 60's at night, highs in the mid 80's, and sunny, sunny, sunny. Heavenly.




At dusk we walked down the beach from our hotel, and cruising in and out of the palms were black flying foxes. These are hawk-sized fruit bats, and a ubiquitous sight in tropical Australia, though I never get tired of seeing them. This is a video frame grab taken when it was basically dark, so forgive the crummy quality. They are charming, noisy creatures; clumsy in the trees but beautiful in flight.