Thursday-A Perfectly Beautiful Morning

Today is the interschool sports day, hosted by Bloomfield River School at the sportsground on the Northern end of the villages. Four primary schools from Laura, Lakeland, Cooktown & Rossville, as well as Bloomfield will compete. In terms of how far some of these kids travelled just to compere, is impressive. The kids from Laura were up at 5:30am, because they’re 200km away. Lakeland is 140km. Rossville school is just over the mountains, about 35km away, and Cooktown is about 70km. There were already about fifty spectators there when I dropped the kids off at 8:30. I might head down about lunchtime for a steak burger, and say g’day to a few people.
It’s 9:30 in the morning & I’m back at home where it is still only about 16 degrees in the shade. It was 12C in the bus this morning. But, it is calm, the sun is shining, and the sunbirds and honeyeaters are very active. One female sunbird loves the mirrors on the minibus, but her mate gets a little aggro at the ‘other male’ in the mirror. They seem to like Florence and The Machine too. It’s getting warm enough to take my trakkie jacket off now. Jeans and jumper have been necessary because of the cold. I mean, 22C is cold enough for me now, let alone 18.
I heard the plane landing at Mt Louis airstrip, and remembered that I had to check if Norms niece came on the plane. I headed down but she had been picked up by another uncle, so I took the opportunity to snap a  few pics of the terminal.

The terminal, with Mt Louis in the background.

On the way back, I took a pic of a mountain I’d been meaning to show you. Mt Petre Botte, or ‘the two sisters’ in local lore, is the mountain that I associate with this part of the tropics. The top is crowned with two huge granite tors.

It’s the best pic I can get from here. The pic was taken just near the sportgrounds (left of pic).
The bama story, from Norms clan,is that two sisters were promised to two men, according to local custom,when they were babies. By the time they got to marrying age, the men they were promised to were in their seventies. So the two sisters ran away. They didn’t want to marry old men. They escaped to that hill. But a medicine man followed them and as punishment for not following custom, placed a spell on them, turning them into stone. The two sisters are forever frozen on the mountain.

I had to take another photo of the Bloomfield too. The ‘Miss Doreen’ has been moored for the past couple of weeks, resting.

Three crocs hang around this area. Two are about a metre or so (3 or 4 feet). The other is about 3 metres. It was floating along in the river Tuesday morning, and we saw all three getting sun yesterday arvo on the low tide. Bilgamul know when cold nights are coming. They bask all afternoon, collecting as much warmth as possible. This is the best photo I can get thru my phone:

This is a cropped view:

Yes Bob, there are lots of bitey things here. 🙂