"Harold's Horror" - actually, mine

Today I'm doing something a bit different (I wish that word were spelled 'diggerent' - it would save me such a lot of backspacing) - proofreading the manuscript of a book for someone. He's a published New Age-y type writer, but in this book he's trying a diggerent approach, conveying his philosophy through a story.

Unfortunately - or actually, probably not - so far (Ch 6) he seems to have got so caught up in his Boy's Own Adventure set in the Amazonian jungle that the getting-in-touch-with-your-feelings aspect is scarcely mentioned. He's having much more fun with betrayal by the faithful Indian guide, having to kill an injured mule, a dramatic river crossing and the interpretation of the ancient treasure map. It's horrendous twaddle, and the only way I can get through it is to laugh at it and be really firm with myself about only fixing the spelling (Smith and Western revolver, due drops) and punctuation, and not to edit the writing ("You 'betcha'," Jonathan uttered) - he hired me as a proofreader only, after all.

At least I have some connection with the Amazon side of it, having spent three nights up the Tambopata in Peru. It was a bit unnerving, wildlife-wise, but felt wonderfully intrepid, even though it was well-trodden tourist territory. (The girls I met in a Lima cafe who'd just got back from three weeks with a shaman in the real jungle, taking a powerful hallucinogenic drug for spiritual enlightenment were the real adventurers, but that's another story - one that I wish I were proofreading instead of this bilge.) (The following is my bilge.)

>>> The business end of the snake was already inside a hole in the bank but enough of it was still sliding across the path, shiny black in the torchlight, to make me to wonder why I had thought a few days in Peruvian Amazonia would be a good idea. I hadn’t yet even reached the jungle lodge where, I had been told, my room had only three walls: the fourth left open to enable what the brochure enthusiastically termed ‘interaction’ between me and the environment. Two fat striped flying insects had started interacting with me within moments of my stepping onto the tarmac at Puerto Maldonado airport, something unseen had leapt out of the water and touched my hand as it rested on the gunwales of the longboat that had taken us three hours up the wide brown Tambopata River, I had just stepped over a tree root being used as an overpass by a stream of giant ants, and now there was a snake. “Welcome to Refugio Amazonas,” said Luis without irony...

[Pub. The Listener 11/6/11]

Unkindest cut (or bite) of all

My goodness, it's hot today: 33 degrees out in our shady, breezy porch, so no wonder I'm dripping after spending 10 minutes hanging out washing in the full blast of the sun. The cats are very crabby, but refusing to take off their fur coats. They could do with the pandas' water-cooled rocks to flop out on.

Wherever I've been in Australia, I've sweated (you're welcome!): in Melbourne's fan-oven blast, Adelaide's desiccating heat, Darwin's energy-sapping humidity... but worst of all was northern Queensland, on a 4wd minibus safari down from the tip of Cape York to Cairns, bumping along the Telegraph Track, going through tiny settlements where the houses were shuttered against the sun, and even tinier roadhouse hamlets surrounded by cathedral ant hills, orange and sculpted. Along the coast the beaches are golden and beautiful, lapped by brilliantly turquoise water that's almost too warm to be refreshing - apparently. I wouldn't know, because you're not allowed to swim. It's so cruel: so inviting, but so dangerous. Crocodiles, mainly, big hungry salties. And lethal jellyfish. Oh, and sharks too, but no-one bothers to mention them much because the salties are so much more of a danger. You're not even meant to clean fish on the beach in case one hurtles out of the water at you. It's astonishing how fast they can move, despite being around 5 metres long and weighing 1000kg.

Fortunately for our sanity, there are some places you can swim, inland. The young boy on our trip made up a rhyme: 'Where there's rocks, there's no crocs' - where there's flowing water and no suitable nesting sites, the crocodiles stay away. Which meant pure happiness for us at Fruitbat Falls.

Better off red

I have to write an off-road Northern Territory story so I've been nosing through stuff from a trip I did through the Red Centre four years ago. That was fun, especially since NT Tourism was working with Lexus on this one, and we had six brand-new LX470s to drive - nine cup-holders each, need I say more?

It was tragic, actually: the guy who took these photos, Sam Tinson, was one of those eager snappers who wants to cover every angle, so he spent most of the time with his sunroof open, lying on the roof of his vehicle taking photos of the rest of the convoy as we bounced along in a cloud of fine dust. His car was full of the staining red stuff within the hour, while even ours, with the windows tight shut (air-con full on, naturally), were infiltrated - the leather upholstery and walnut veneers were never the same again.

We drove from Alice Springs along the Mereenie Loop past Palm Valley and Kings Canyon to Uluru (Ayers Rock for the unreconstructed), staying in fancy lodges or camping under the stars. Guess which I remember better?

>>> At night it’s a different story, however, and the prospect that a heat-seeking reptile might choose to share my swag as I slept under the stars had enlivened many moments of quiet reflection on the road to Palm Valley, in the West MacDonnell Ranges south-west of Alice Springs. This is the kind of thing that gives Kiwis both an added dimension of excitement when camping in Australia, and a reputation as complete wusses amongst the natives. Too polite to hoot scornfully at my fears, the camp director assured me that the low wooden platforms scattered around the site were not only multi-functional – bed, table, bench – but also carefully designed in height and overhang to be an insurmountable challenge to any snake. "Depends on the size of the snake," Matt from Melbourne chipped in helpfully. "Have you seen a really big snake rear up?" And he turned dismissively from the knee-high platform to consider the dimensions of the dining table, where the wine glasses at each setting on the linen cloth caught the flickering light from the campfire...

[Unpub.]

Give that panda something to cuddle

How could you look at a face like this and not go "Awww"? (As well as, in my case, "Yay! Another cover shot!")

This is Wang Wang (yes, an unfortunate name, especially given the Aussies' fondness for the scatalogical, but it should be pronounced Wong Wong - it means Net Net, which tells us nothing, other than that the Oriental reputation for inscrutability, un-PC as it may be, is still valid in modern China). He's five, a year older than Funi, whose name means 'Lucky Girl', which makes more sense, even if it's not that accurate. They live in Adelaide Zoo.

I mean yes, she's come to the Lucky Country to be fussed over for 10 years, but expectations are high that she will have a cub, even though once she's reached sexual maturity in about 18 months, she'll be on heat for only four days in a year - and, listen to this guys, Wang Wang will only be interested in that sort of thing on two days a year. Which may well not coincide with Funi's.

And, this being Australia where they do like to win, the head keeper Steve isn't just looking forward to her having a cub, he's wanting twins. So. No pressure, Funi.

No wonder she likes to lurk at the back of her day room, sitting on her water fountain. If I were her, I'd want to soak more than just my feet.

Victor Harbor rocks

An hour and a half from Adelaide is Victor Harbor, another classic SA seaside town with Norfolk pine-lined beach, little stone cottages and a pier - except on this case it's a bridge out to Granite Island with a double-decker tram pulled by Clydesdales clopping along, which is
lovely if not very quick. Out on the island there's a little penguin colony (they've stopped calling them fairy penguins here, it makes the Aussies feel uncomfortable) and lots of great rocks - huge round boulders shaded with orange lichen and many of them sculpted into
unusual shapes. Clear blue sea foaming white, bleached wiry grasses, backlit bunny tail grass, bright pink naked ladies (the flower) - all very photogenic. And so was the 5-hour Heysen Trail walk along the clifftops I did yesterday - not too strenuous, and the views? Speckie, as they say here.

Panda on my shoulder

Brilliant! Even if I was so busy with notes and photos that I missed out on my emu chipolatas and quandong pastries (at least I could look the emu in the face afterwards).

Morning is the time to come to see the pandas, pride of Adelaide Zoo - Wang Wang was on the move outside, climbing, bathing in his pond, chasing a magpie - and posing. He's a real show pony. Funi was shyer, but did a somersault playing with her oil-infused cardboard box. We had almost three hours with the pandas, and it flew by.

So much fun! Everyone was grinning non-stop. Again, brilliant!

Stone cold

Sorry, no photo yet, too carried away by being nose to nose with two real-life pandas to remember to whip out the iPhone.

Funi and Wang Wang are just gorgeous: fluffy and amenable with sweet eyes and cute habits, like perching on top of their water butts (on their butts), and being so keen to be fed chunks of panda cake through their bars that they have absolutely no reaction to having their temperatures taken ditto, RECTALLY!

I was privileged to go behind the scenes to see all this in their fancy $8 million centre at the zoo, where their inside rooms are airconditioned to 22 degrees and out in their enclosures they have internally water-cooled rocks to lie on. No expense spared.

And tomorrow we all have breakfast together!