The Darjeeling Zoo: Red Pandas Are Totally Weird

A standard Darjeeling view. There are good reasons to come here.

Whoa, tourist stuff in Darjeeling? Yeah, there's tourist stuff. You can get bored walking up and down hills after a while, especially if you're walking up and down hills in a crush of people and are realizing (too late) that there is nowhere to pee anywhere in the city, and there's like six or seven restaurants open at any-given-time that actually have things on the menu that are written on the menu (the Indian affliction). This is when Thou Shalt Tourist. So Tourist I did.

I went up to the Darjeeling Zoo and the Tenzing Norgay Climbing School, which are conveniently located in the same very-vertically oriented park a bit out of downtown. Catch a taxi down there; negotiate hard on the price.


Maybe this awesome sign has contributed to the low rate of animal harassment at the Darjeeling zoo. Note the lion.

Now: zoos in Asia. Horrifying conceptually, especially if you've been to one and have seen what passes for "animal husbandry" in many parts of the world. (What, we can't eat it, plow with it, or make clothes out of it? Why do we have this thing again?)

The Darjeeling Zoo is, thankfully, a notable exception and seems to be doing a pretty good job with keeping the animals both alive and reasonably happy looking. Big exhibits with plenty of foliage and greenery, toys are provided, there's handy explanatory signs, no one is throwing things at the animals or torturing them in lieu of anything better to do - I didn't feel like an asshole for paying to get in here. Also, the ticket includes admission to the climbing school and comes to around five dollars so you're looking at an economical day out.



Himalayan wildlife is reasonably interesting, and even has an adorable and charismatic Mascot Species, Your Cuddly Friend the Red Panda. (Red pandas are, if you believe the tourist literature, everywhere in Sikkim. Except for when you want to see them, but I'm told they're secretive).

They are cute little monsters who are, interestingly enough, not particularly closely related to anything else - they're usually stuck into their very own family of Ailuridae, a subgroup of Musteloidea, which includes skunks, racoons, and weasels. But they're not 100 percent on that one.

They also used to range all the way from China to Britain. Impressive for something so seemingly cute, fuzzy, and introverted. Unsurprisingly, the Darjeeling Zoo has a lot of them in a breeding program, who will either be found sleeping or pacing while waiting to be fed. Such is the way of zoos.

"Atcha, it won't move!" an old man kept on repeating to me while we both stood in front of the red panda cage, in a voice dripping with disdain and disappointment and misery. "Why won't he MOVE?"

"He's tired," I said. "Really tired?"

"I have this great camera," the old man said. "And the panda, he will not move. Why won't he move?" He sounded as if this was the great disappointment of his life. He had bought a nice camera, dragged himself out to the zoo, and now the panda wouldn't move. Maybe he was considering killing himself over this. Maybe it was the straw that had broken the camels back, the final disappointment in a long and generally disappointing life. I felt genuinely worried for the old man, for a moment.

"Atchaaa!" he said, and moved on to the cages next door, which contained exotic pheasants.

"Why won't the birds MOVE?" I heard him complain, five minutes later.



A pair of shockingly cute leopard cats, a domestic cat sized wildcat that lurks throughout South and East Asia. They can be found just about everywhere in Asia if you look hard enough (they don't want you to find them).

They're cross-bred with domestic cats to produce the lovely Bengal cat breed, which makes sense, since just look at those little carnivorous felid faces. Awww, damn, I want one.



A pack of Asian wolves, not doing a hell of a lot, as is probably their wont. They're lovely animals. A wolf is pretty much a wolf wherever you are in the world, with minor structural differences - and wolves are scarce indeed in India - so I won't harp on them too much. But everyone loves wolves! Except for Idaho cattle ranchers and people who live in poorly lit and remote villages in Uttar Pradesh. Then you have a problem.



My general opinion on bears is that they are dickheads. This is confirmed by a family friend who has been known to declaim loudly that bears are assholes to anyone who will listen. However, I'm rather fond of sloth bears, which are smallish, reasonably in-offensive, and really don't seem to care about much beyond foraging for food and taking extended naps. I mean, they subsist primarily on insects. Of course, they will nail people on occasion - I like this particular account of sloth bear attack....

According to Robert Armitage Sterndale, in his Mammalia of India (1884, p. 62):

[The sloth bear] is also more inclined to attack man unprovoked than almost any other animal, and casualties inflicted by it are unfortunately very common, the victim being often terribly disfigured even if not killed, as the bear strikes at the head and face. Blanford was inclined to consider bears more dangerous than tigers...


Another: "Captain Williamson in his Oriental Field Sports wrote of how sloth bears rarely killed their human victims outright, but would suck and chew on their limbs till they were reduced to bloody pulps."


Well, that's charming!

The Darjeeling Zoo has a lot of other animals beside these specimens, of course, except I was unable to get even half-decent photos of any of them. This was mostly due to operator error. There are also tigers, snow leopards, panthers of both the black and generic variety, more civets then you could imagine existed (The Himalayas possess a totally inordinate number of civets), and a whole lot of pheasants in increasingly surrealist colors and designs. Evolution has done very strange and perverse things to Himalayan pheasants.

There's also monkeys, but I hate monkeys and spend as little time looking at them as possible. Furthermore, you are likely to be assaulted by or at least menaced by a very large monkey with big sharp teeth and a pissy attitude at some point in your Indian Adventure, so why would I pay to see them? Pshaw.

I would add that, being a single blonde female and therefore a massive megaslut in the minds of many (I won't venture to say the MAJORITY of, but..) Indian males, I spent a lot of time being observed and photographed at the zoo.

Actually, I'd be observing or photographing an animal, and six or seven teenage boys would be observing and photographing me. While giggling a lot.

Apparently the multi-faceted wonders of zoology take a back seat to ogling sweaty foreign woman when you're an Indian guy of a certain age, I guess.

I wish I could have attached a DO NOT TEASE THE FAINE sign to my ass at that point, but it might not have worked the way I would have liked it to.

Freaky Giant Shark! Tasmanian Tigers! Drag Queens! To Singapore!

GREAT BIG DEAD THINGS

Lyn had decided to throw a dinner party for me prior to my departure to Singapore. Mexican food is the cuisine most shamelessly and egregiously butchered in Asia, so we decided to introduce our Australian friends to the wonders of chili, cornbread, taco dip and guacamole. We are kind, kind souls. I got the chili burbling merrily away, shed a single tear at the thought of what passes for "Mexican" food in Asia, and departed with Mike for downtown. The Western Australian Museum awaited.

I'm a total museum nut. Wherever there is one, I'm there. Double plus points are added if the museum is old and has a large collection of stuffed, mounted, or otherwise preserved Dead Critters. The Perth Museum, to my immense personal satisfaction, happens to contain all these happy things and more. It is one of the most enjoyable natural history museums I've seen - they manage to do a lot of interesting things with a not so-huge space. As a North American, it's especially fascinating to see a European or American style museum done up with Australia's pertinent wildlife, historical artifacts, and art. The large and aggressively colonial building also has an air about it that simply screams "IMPORTANT ACTS OF NATURALISM OCCUR HERE," which pleases me inordinately. You simply shouldn't miss it if you're in Perth.


I started with the Room of Bones. As previously mentioned, my lovely cousin Laura is a paleontologist in training, with a particular focus on, well, dead stuff. The girl has a serious and life long affection for bones. I also see the inherent charm and pleasing aspects of Dead Stuff, so was inordinately thrilled with this exhibit. How often do you get to see marsupial bones? And stuffed, mounted marsupials with staring little button eyes, begging you from beyond the grave to please please please don't exterminate my species I will be very sad? Not often, that's what. (And too bad about your species, little furry marsupial thing. Terribly sorry).



I had never seen a Koala skeleton before, and I am willing to place bets that you haven't either (unless you're Australian, which is cheating). It is extremely funny looking and a bit unnerving. Just like koalas.

God, screw koalas.



The museum had a superb butterfly exhibit, which I stared at in complete kaleidoscopic awe for a good long while.



I am usually politely ambivalent to butterflies, but an entire wall of the things - and Australia does some funny looking specimens - was completely striking.



I could photograph these all day.



This is a Tasmanian Tiger, which I am entirely certain none of you have ever seen before. This is because, of course, they are almost certainly extinct. The Thylacine was once Australia's biggest surviving marsupial predator, and, prior to the arrival of humanity about 60,000 years ago, ranged all over the continent. Aboriginal people and their dingos eventually pushed them back onto the island of Tasmania, where they lived in relative prosperity and comfort (for a carnivorous marsupial).

This all went straight to hell when European settlers arrived in the late 1800's and early 1900's. The Thylacine was regarded as a nuisance predator and a menace to sheep (and made for a lovely rug), and was wiped out with remarkable speed and efficiency by modern weaponry. Some were kept and bred successfully in zoos, but the species's downfall occurred rapidly and in a time not particularly moved by conservationist concerns: they were extinct by 1936.




In the 1930s, video footage was taken of the last Thylacine, which provides us with an eery and almost unbearably poignant window into the past. The final one died in the Hobart Zoo in 1936. Among the animal's interesting adapations was a backwards facing pouch (like the wombat) and a remarkably widely opening jaw, as can be seen in the video. They also possessed the ability to perform a bipedal "hop" in the manner of the kangaroo, and could stand on two legs for a long period of time. They often communicated in reasonably dog-like barks or yips, and possessed a much more mild and retiring attitude then its bad-ass cousin, the Tasmanian Devil.


Some vague hope remains that the Thylacine may still be slinking around remote bits of Tasmania. It's not entirely impossible - if there's anywhere where things can go undiscovered for a terrifically long time, it's Australia - but it's definitely unlikely. Sightings are registered on a quite regular basis, and are written up at this vastly interesting website. I myself am trying hard to keep the dream alive.



I read that comparative anatomy professors enjoy tossing in a thylacine skull with a dog skull in exams, just to catch people. There are minor differences. Laura could probably tell. I sure as hell could not.



The Perth Museum possesses, to my extreme nerdy delight, a mummified Thylacine body. It was found in a cave on the mainland in WA and is thus over 3,000 (4,700 is probable) years old - that's the date when the species was pushed back to Tasmania by introduced dogs. It's a fascinating thing to look at. That is perhaps the greatest appeal of Australia to me and to other zoology inclined minds. Nowhere else provides so many fantastic windows into the past.



HOLY CRAP IT'S A CARNOTAURUS. This was a fantastic display, especially because it made extremely loud roaring and stomping sounds, scaring the ever loving crap out of any nearby children. Note the highly realistic ribbon of drool.



The Murchison Meteorite. Does not derive, sadly, from Western Australia's Smallest Meteroite Crater, which we almost decided to drive out to see, but then suddenly regained our sanity. Meteorites please me, especially the notion that they ever so occasionally whang innocent old ladies upside the head.



Here, have a sign. It'll interpret shit.



There was a great display of traditional Aboriginal foods. Here's a tasty repast. Wichetty grubs, local fruits, and some delicious, juicy Quokka. Actually, I am willing to bet that quokka tastes awesome. Adorable fluffy things almost always do.



IT'S STROMATOLITES! BACK AND BETTER THEN EVER! Well, not doing much at all really.



Yes, it's another Eurypterid. They make my heart go pitter-pat. I think I would probably marry a guy who just presented me with a slab with one of these puppies in it instead of a ring.

Might be hard to wear, though.



The museum has a fantastic Aboriginal gallery, which pays due (and longly awaited) attention to the horrifying treatment Australia's natives recieved at the hands of European interlopers. It's also a great introduction to the incredible continuity of culture the Aborigines enjoy (or, uh, enjoyed). The Aborigines have been in Australia for upwards of 60,000 years and can boast the oldest continuous culture on earth. Some speculate that their religion, art, and beliefs is indicative of what all of our ancestors believed at the very beginning of things. Pleasant to think about, innit it?

I was particularly drawn to these "cave" Wandjina paintings, which illustrate ancestral beings of the Western Kimberley. The eyes are eery. These images now crop up occasionally in graffiti all over Australia. Avid conspiracy theorists (like our friend from Cervantes) may note they look a lot like the "Grey" aliens that so dearly love to probe retired desert dwellers. Far out, man.



Here, have a sign.



The crown jewel of the museum is definitely what I casually refer to as the Freaky Giant Shark. Which is an entirely accurate moniker for the thing. It is in fact a Megamouth shark specimen preserved in some sort of formaldyhyde compound. For reasons presumably known only to the museum, it has thoughtfully been plonked down in a tank outside.



There aren't any signs pointing this out.. To actually see it you must be 1. the type of person who is exceedingly committed to seeing a freaky giant shark and will do research and ask around, or 2. the type of person who will wander with a cup of coffee through the grounds, poke your head into a small outbuiliding, look down, and go, "Christ, look at that giant freaky shark!". It was a very satisfying experience, I must say. The Megamouth is one of only a few specimens preserved for human viewing, and it's a rare freaky giant shark indeed. There's a leaky looking crack in the glass that covers it, but this does not seem to concern anyone much. They'll be sorry when the shark comes back to life and devours half the city, won't they be?



These deeply offputting critters were only discovered in 1976, and have occasionally shown up on beaches since. They also show up occasionally in Asian fisherman's nets, leading to comical situations wherein scientists desperately attempt to photograph or preserve the specimen, while aforementioned fishermen calmly hack the flesh up and sell it for the stock pot. (Presumably megamouth tastes at least decent.) They're completely harmless to humans, surviving entirely on plankton and jellyfish. They are also among the planet's laziest feeders, preferring to float along in the deep ocean with their mouth open, hoping stuff will swim in. I wish I could do that.



After the museum, Mike and I decided to make like a Megamouth and acquire some food, preferably in as lazy a fashion as possible. We finally settled on a sushi place and tucked into some sashimi. The restaurant's outside eating area just so happened to be a front row seat to the Australian Sex Party rally occurring in the downtown square. The rally was helpfully supplied with a lip-syncing drag queen in a flamenco dress and a profusion of people in bondage pants, mohawks, and other "punk" clothing items that are just a few years past uncool in the USA. Bless their hearts.

Aussie elections are going on right now, you see, and they are entirely too complex for me to even attempt to explain (nor, I suspect, would anyone care). Apparently everyone is compelled by law to vote, and also gets TWO votes - first choice, second choice. This allows room for things like the Sex Party. The rally particularly addressed the issue of same sex marriage, which seems to be up for the voters this go round. I do hope it passes. Us dysfunctional Californians finally did it after much sturm und drang, after all. Aussies better step up. The rally did perfectly illustrate what is so pleasant about Perth. It is safe, clean, attractive, and functional, and it is also perfectly willing to host Sex Party rallys, drag queen shows, and all matter of tomfoolery in its public civic areas. How decent. How lovely. It's almost enough to make you want to spit.

I headed back to the apartment for a nap, figuring that it would do to get all the sleep I possibly could prior to touching down in Singapore. Furthermore, I wanted to be on my game for the dinner party. I had lots of guacamole to make.

Lyn's lovely friends came over soon enough, and we dished out guacamole, chili, and incredibly delicious New Zealand wine. My flight left at 12:00 midnight, so I attempted to fortify myself with spicy food. I can think of few nicer ways to say goodbye to an entire continent then with copious amounts of tasty food and wine. There were even mini ice cream cones. My God.



Lyn makes a startlingly good (and bad for you) corn pudding.

We toddled off to the airport (to use an Aussieism Lyn has ferociously adopted) and sat around in the airport for a while, marveling over the remarkable price of Australian books. I finally said a tearful (not really) goodbye to Lyn, shouldered my bag and accompanying whaleshark/pillow, and headed off to Singapore. After being forced to go through security three different times due to offending gel products (which I had packed according to American standards, although THIS IS NOT AMERICA the ever so pleased security guard informed me), I got on the plane. Which no one was on. Economy first class it was, with an entire row to myself. Slept the sleep of death.

Australian Road Trip! The Pinnacles, Cervantes, Stromatolites, ADVENTURE

I always thought of Australia as America's reversed counterpart. We share so much: British heritage, love of bland deep fried food, oppression of native peoples, a deep stock-raising tradition, a curious affection for ridiculous hats. But I think that Australians and Americans share their deepest cultural affinity in the matter of space. Both Australia and the USA are new countries, new countries that had an inordinate amount of space, space that could be settled, tamed, and made profitable by immigrants with the right mixture of gumption and foolhardiness. America had its manifest destiny and Australia had the same: the image of a dry, sparse, and, uh, inadequately inhabited land that might be made verdant, beautiful, and vaguely British, just enough to keep you comfortable. We have cowboy movies, Aussies have Jackeroo movies. And Australians love to road trip just as much as we Americans do, have elevated the road-trip to a bona-fide icon.

Of course, an Australian road trip is often a more serious pursuit then its American counterpart. Even in darkest Nebraska, drivers can usually find water, semi-edible food, and a place to sleep blissfully free of wildlife that will kill you. This is absolutely not the case in Australia's Red Center, in the very middle of the real-deal Outback. Out there, you bring along your water, you bring along your food, and you watch out very carefully for the world's most dangerous and aggressive snakes. Let's not even get into the crocodiles. You don't take fun-loving dips in waterholes in Australia's northern regions, unless you are keen on being eaten. There are various entertaining accounts of such attacks, if you're interested. (EVERYONE IS).

My Aunt Lyn decided, on this particular Australian road trip, to take me through northern Western Australia. Due to the down under nature of Australia (shocker!) going north means you're heading into the warmth, and away from the surprising chill of Perth in winter time. Furthermore, the North has that wild untouched antediluvian wilderness thing going on, and that's something me and most of my family members find impossible to resist. Opportunities for unabashed and abundant science geekery aplenty, in other words. To get a sense of the extent of this, stromatolite viewing was one of the major highlights of our itinerary. We'd spend the first night in the little town of Cervantes, about four hours or north of Perth on the Batavia Coast, then spend the next two nights in Kalbarri, about five hours north of there. En route, we'd go to the eery Pinnacles desert, pass through the port town of Geraldtown, ogle a pink lake, and finally end up at Kalbarri National Park, one of the major scenic wonders of WA. Not a bad deal all around.



We started reasonably early on Tuesday morning, and bundled all of our stuff into the car, including a very optimistic full picnicking set. The weather in Perth was cloudy and cool, and we made good time out of the city - Lyn was happy she managed not to get lost, like the last time she attempted this whole "going north" business. I appluad her. There was nothing really resembling traffic. What Perhians consider deadly and totally unbelievable traffic, most Americans consider "Sunday afternoon." Wusses.

The road outside Perth passes through the Swan River Valley and quickly descends into that grey, bushy, and slightly weird landscape affectionately referred to as "scrub." It's a landscape that's host to most of the iconic Aussies beasties, including grey kangaroos, kookaburras (in wet places), wallabys, emus, and even the occasional dingo. If you can tell dingos from standard issue dogs, you're a hell of a lot cleverer then me. There is also a whole lot of nothing, a totally inordinate amount of nothing - definitely approaching or exceeding Nebraska levels of nada, which is impressive about two hours out of a huge metropolitan area. Road signs helpfully inform you how far it is to the next patch of something approximating civilization, and warn you in pleading tones to FOR GOD'S SAKE GET WATER AND GAS YOU'LL REGRET IT IF YOU DON'T. Dingos eating babies, attacks by emus, you can imagine the possible ramifications.

We stopped for lunch at a totally authentic Australian roadhouse, which meant that it was 1. elderly and constructed mostly of tin siding, 2. had bathrooms marked for "Sheilas", 3. had an outside exhibit of depressive looking parrots, and 4. had a menu that revolved entirely around fried meat pies and beer. Lyn decided to take an extreme risk and ordered a roast beef sandwich, which looked as it had actually been vomited upon by the proprietor and tasted like all of Australia's erstwhile culinary sins condensed into a single packet of evil. Should have chosen the fried thing with a side of fried with fried crumblies on top.

I stuck with pumpkin soup, which was perfectly acceptable. Australian pumpkin soup is always perfectly acceptable. That and Violet Crumble will never, ever, let you down.

We forged onwards into the Cervantes area. Dead kangaroos began to appear by the side of the road. Apparently the carnage only increases the further north you go. Are northern kangaroos inherently more suicidal? Do truck drivers use them for target practice as a way of desperately alleviating the incredible boredom of driving through millions of miles of scrub scrub scrub. Fuck if I know. My paleontologist, dead-things obsessed cousin would be absolutely thrilled and would drag them all home to her den for cleaning, articulation, and adoration. I'm sorry we can't ship you a really nice carcass, Laura.



Just prior to Cervantes, we turned off to Lake Thetis, to indulge a very particular and long term nerd fantasy of mine. The salty and unimpressive looking Lake Thetis happens to harbor an, um, vibrant community of stromatolites and thrombolites, which are the planet's most elderly "living fossils." Stromatolites have soldiered on virtually unchanged since the very dawn of life, and exist only in a few rare and remote places. Western Australia features the largest concentration of them on the planet, and they occur in remarkable numbers in Hamelin Pool in the Shark Bay region, further up the coast. Our Stromatolite Friends are created by the conglomeration of cyanobacteria. Stromatolites are formed as this bacteria deposits deposit calcium on the lake bed, which glues cement into the rock-like structures we view today. "Blister mats" of cyanobacteria also form around the lake's rim, and these nascent stromatolites are very delicate. Don't poke them. Dark regions on a stromatolite indicate where bacteria is alive and laying down sediment. Thrombolites differ from stromatolites in that they clot sediment instead of layering it. This is extremely useful information at cocktail parties, let me tell you.



Stromatolites don't do a hell of a lot. In fact, they resemble cow patties to a truly remarkable extent. The thrill in viewing stromatolites really lies in the symbolism of the thing. Organisms that looked exactly like them were around right after the "primordial soup" stage of life on this planet. The fact that we can view them, unchanged and living today, is truly remarkable, and is extremely pleasing on a quite deep seated level. The stromatolite and thromatolites at Lake Thetis are around 3,000 years old, which is not superlatively elderly by stromatolite standards, but is deeply impressive for everything else living. The lake was cut off from the very nearby Indian Ocean a while back in time and has merrily created its own chemical environment, one that makes stromatolites very happy indeed. There are plenty of them: a boardwalk has been conveniently set up for your viewing pleasure, and this handily facilitates deeply introspective walking-and-thinking about the Origins of Life.

I would not recommend a special stromatolite trip to the action inclined.

Finally, we got to Cervantes. Cervantes is about as small as small towns get, which translates into a couple of roads, a few wind-worn and perfunctory houses, a single general store, and the inevitable pub. Also, a golf course and an RV (excuse me, caravan park. There is always a golf course and a caravan park in Australia. The country is presumably populated almost entirely by golf loving caravan dwellers who enjoy fried pies with gravy and horrible techno music. Bless their little cotton socks, every one of them. Cervantes was founded in the 1960's as a crawfishing settlement and was apparently even rougher now then it was back then, consisting mostly of shacks populated by sunburned and smelly men and a single general store with a focus on beer. It's come up in the world now since, of course. Will totally turn into a tourist mecca once the big mine comes in, or once the crawfishing industry becomes ultra glamorous via some magical alteration of the universe as we know it.

Our guesthouse was run by a chilled out looking man with a beard and glasses, who regarded our appearance with vague interest. Lyn had in fact chosen the guesthouse because of his website: at the bottom of his perfectly normal looking personal site, there was a small disclaimer. The disclaimer explained that the owner had experienced a considerable number of extaterrestial viewings and experiences in the region, and that guests who might be unnerved by such phenomena might find it wisest to stay elsewhere.

We asked him about a good place to get a local spiny lobster, which I was eager to try. "I used to love them," he said, with a bit of a reisgned sigh, "back before I started my raw diet. But try this place." He handed us a voucher for a low price on a special seafood dinner, put on by the Country Club.

The room was extremely pleasant and had a nice view of the sea and the scrub-lands that led up to it. There were a profusion of paranormal themed magazines in the room, discussing such topics as the mafia's secret takeover of Australia, uranium enrichment on the moon, and the usual assortment of anal-probing experiences and Things My Dead Mum Told Me. I discovered that New Zealand produces its very own, very thick conspiracy theory and paranormal themed magazine, which is impressive for a remarkably tiny country. Lyn posits that Kiwis just go funny out there in their incredibly beautiful and incredibly isolated country: this may indeed be the case.



Then, it was time for the Pinnacles. Ah, the Pinnacles. Haven't heard of them? Color me unsurprised. These geological oddities happen to be out in the bona-fide Middle of Nowhere, which probably has saved them from being coated with graffiti. The limestone formations occur in staggering numbers in this small, sandy expanse, and range in size from big guys as tall as myself to little squirts about as high as my ankle. No one is entirely sure how the Pinnacles happened, and there are three primary theories on the matter. Allow me to a bit of a hussy and quote Wikipedia:



" 1. The Pinnacles were formed from lime leaching from the aeolian sand (wind-blown sand) and by rain cementing the lower levels of the dune into a soft limestone. Vegetation forms an acidic layer of soil and humus. A hard cap of calcrete develops above the softer limestone. Cracks in the calcrete are exploited by plant roots. The softer limestone continues to dissolve and quartz sand fills the channels that form. Vegetation dies and winds blow away the sand covering the eroded limestone, thus revealing the Pinnacles.


(yes they look like dongs let's just get that out of the way)

2. The Pinnacles were formed through the preservation of casts of trees buried in coastal aeolianites where roots became groundwater conduits, resulting in precipitation of indurated (hard) calcrete. Subsequent wind erosion of the aeolianite would then expose the calcrete pillars.[1]

3. On the basis of the mechanism of formation of smaller “root casts” occurring in other parts of the world, it has been proposed that plants played an active role in the creation of the Pinnacles, rather than the rather passive role detailed in 1 and 2 above. The proposal is that as transpiration draws water through the soil to the roots, nutrients and other dissolved minerals flow toward the root. This process is termed "mass-flow" and can result in the accumulation of nutrients at the surface of the root, if the nutrients arrive in quantities greater than needed for plant growth. In coastal aeolian sands which have large amounts of Ca (derived from marine shells) the movement of water to the roots would drive the flow of Ca to the root surface. This Ca accumulates at high concentrations around the roots and over time is converted into a calcrete. When the roots die, the space occupied by the root is subsequently also filled with a carbonate material derived from the Ca in the former tissue of the roots and possibly also from water leaching through the structures. Although evidence has been provided for this mechanism in the formation of root casts in South Africa, evidence is still required for its role in the formation of the Pinnacles.[2]"

Now that that's all entirely clear!


Oh, those crazy tourists.

The Pinnacles are officially part of Nambung National Park, and a surprisingly excellent interpretative museum has been set up at the site. You're allowed to take your car out among the Pinnacles - I don't know what happens if you hit one - so we did that after we took a long and contemplative walk around the center. It's a truly bizarre landscape, and I imagine goes quite quickly from whimsical to downright eery at night. I understand why UFO enthusiasts might choose to settle down here: it is entirely easy to imagine alien beings feeling perfectly at home around here.



The Aboriginal people of the area naturally have an origin myth about the formations. Supposedly, young men were repeatedly warned not to go out to the sandy expanse outside the village and did so anyway. They were sucked into the sand and promptly calcified, and their fingers make up the Pinnacles. Must have been big fingers. But regardless. I can see why the locals would be less then chuffed about staying here at night. They doubtless all turn into looming figures when the lights go low.



The area surrounding the Pinnacles was first recorded by European in 1658, but there is, oddly enough, little mention of the Pinnacles themselves. The formations seem to appear and reappear in explorer's accounts from that time onward, leading some to speculate that they have been covered and revealed by the shifting sands multiple times in history.



A detail of a rock, primarily taken for the geology types. I have no idea what I'm looking at but I dearly hope you find it totally thrilling.



There's a lot of wildlife in the PInnacles, despite the remarkably unfriendly appearance of its surroundings. We spotted grey kangaroos, brown kestrels, and incredibly large and unnerving wild emus. We spotted this particular emu silhouetted dramatically on a hill on the way out of the park, and were pleased to discover he had the kids with him - a bunch of little emulets stalking about. Male emus watch after the young, presumably allowing the female to wildcat around. I am not entirely sure how an emu parties but it probably involves a lot of deep-throated thrumming. And blue stuff. Emu babes go wild for blue stuff (as I discovered while wearing my blue coat at the wildlife park).



We headed out to the beach with a bottle of wine to engage in the requisite Sipping Wine and Watching the Sun Go Down activity. The beach was incredibly lovely, if a bit chilly. This was also the first time I'd really been on a bona-fide beach in quite a long time, and it turned out I had entirely forgotten how sand works, ie, that if one buries your wine glass in aforementioned sand then removes it really quickly and forcefully, it gets all over you. I had also forgotten the whole "don't track sand onto the beach towel, you damned idiot" clause. There were, as always, a couple of healthy looking European tourists taking a doubtlessly fiber rich dinner in their RV in the parking lot above us, but otherwise? Not a soul around. Rural Australia is bloody fantastic for the antisocial.



This is self explanatory I think.

The restaurant turned out to be the local community center, and was in fact housed in a room that could be easily and snappily converted into a basketball stadium and bingo parlor at short notice. Everyone else in the place was eligible for AARP and wearing baseball hats, and had that sun beaten and exceedingly skin cancery look that old timer Australians always have. (There are skin cancer clinics in completely unnerving quantities all over Perth. As an Aboriginal guy said in a video at the art museum, "Why did the English people stay? They just get skin cancer all the goddamn time! All over the place!" Well, yes. Australia and its paler residents are indeed hotbeds of vibrant melanoma. God help them). Lyn and I were both just a teeny tiny bit inebriated (just like everyone else in the surrounding area insofar as I could tell), but I refrained from having another class of wine, though Lyn partook.



The seafood platter, to our surprise, was really well executed. The primordial-insect looking spiny lobster was sauteed with butter and spices and had a lovely, delicate flavor, which was brought out by the veg. Lyn has a tragic allergy to shellfish that turn pink when cooked so I had it all to myself, and I derived considerable carnivorous pleasure from going eye-to-eye with my supper.




Look at the picture. The poor little sucker is beseeching me. Too late, friend. Too late. The fried roe-on scallops were nice little bites, and although the fish was a spot overcooked, the batter was crispy and had a good, rich flavor. The salad bar was completely randomly set-up but was quite good as well: beet salad, Greek salad with real actual feta cheese, corn and pepper salad, and Caesar salad with inexplicable but completely addictive deep fried croutons. No one else in the room had in fact ordered anything other then the Special Seafood Platter. We messily devoured it and repaired to our room. No aliens visited me in the night with probes and malicious intent.


I was a bit disappointed.

The Perth Zoo and Awesome Laksa

Australia has weird animals. This may seem blindingly obvious, but their weirdness is really quite interesting on a biological level. Australia's long term isolation and the curious dominance of marsupials means that its critters move, behave, and look very different from most of their foreign counterparts. Australian animals entertainingly and creatively fit the niches that animals like deer, pumas, squirrels, and foxes fill in other regions, swapping out different traits and means of locomotion for others as they see fit. As an amateur evolutionary biologist, I totally plotz when I get to see Australian animals in the flesh.

Australian zoos are especially fabulous because they can (obviously) acquire creatures that just aren't exported to American collections. Tasmanian devils, numbats, bilbys, potoroos, frogmouths and other oddities are common enough in Aussie collections and extreme rarities elsewhere. Naturally, visiting the Perth Zoo was high on my priority list, and it luckily didn't disappoint. It's a small but extremely well cared for and laid-out collection, with impressive landscaping and plenty of room for the inmates to roam. The nocturnal exhibit is especially good - a great chance to view a lot of Australia's native mammals in their natural, darkness loving state. And haven't you always secretly wanted to see a bilby? Come on, don't lie to me. I can see it in your eyes.


The Jabiru, Australia's iconic wading bird. This one was having an exchange of opinions with the small kingfisher nearby, which got all fluffed up, stabbed at the bigger bird, and made pissed off AWK AWK sounds. The whole thing pleased me more then I can say.



Blue tongues are fairly ubiquitous in Australia, and are regarded with some affection by most locals. They're affable, fat little guys who often sneak into homes through dog doors and steal the family pet's food. They also lay waste to garden snails and other backyard pests, rendering them very popular as backyard pets. They don't do a hell of a lot. As in, nothing whatsoever. Their toungues really are electric blue, in case you ever got the urge to french kiss one.



Frilled lizards are fantastic creatures, and I didn't really know just how much so until I saw one in the flesh. The keeper was flipping the little blighter crickets, which the lizard ran about partially on two legs in a hilarious shambling motion to get at. He half-heartedly put up his frill when poked gently but obviously was not feeling threatened enough. They're incredibly endearing and surprisingly intelligent looking animals - sort of like scaly little bulldogs.




This is a fairy penguin, WA's native penguin. They're very common at Penguin Island, near Rockingham, and can be fed and ogled by tourists who take the ferry over. I'm fairly indifferent to penguins but these are scruffy and cute little buggers. They float on the surface of the water and only rarely dive, so don't expect astonishing underwater acrobatics from them. They mostly stand around on land and look discontent during the day, which is nothing if not cute.



This is a Bush Stone Curlew, and it is nesting, and it is profoundly apprehensive. I always wondered why birds in zoos don't become totally accustomed to having people staring at them all the time. This could be related to the fact that they're birds.


Here's more on the mighty Bush Stone Curlew. The picture of one freezing into a bizarre position because HOLY CRAP DANGER is very, very amusing.





Grey kangaroos sunbathe in a fashion remarkably similar to our own. Down to shifting around and grunting when the sun moves. I feel you, man. I feel you. At the zoo, the kangaroos are allowed to wander around and follow their hearts vis a vis interacting with tourists. Since you can't feed them here, they ignore you completely. Kangaroos are capitalists too.

I looked for the adorable and striped numbat in the impressively leafy numbat exhibit, but couldn't find it (shocker). The numbat is one of West Australia's native marsupial predators and is also among its most endangered, having been pushed out of its habitat by invading species, primarily foxes and cats. The Zoo participates in the enormous Western Shield program, an ambitious attempt to protect native species and eradicate interlopers throughout the west coast. They conduct fun events like annual toad drives, wherin you can stomp on (horrifyingly large) cane toads in the name of conservation. I want to do this very badly. In fact, it seems like about a third of the exhibits at the Perth Zoo have a sign discussing the evil and duplicitous ways of cane toads, in case you didn't get the point at the other 35. This is actually not excess, though - a little research on the cane toad reveals these South American aliens really ARE that bad.



This is obviously a crocodile. However, crocodiles are goddamn terrifying. It is hard to express how true this is, especially if you've never seen one of these primitive horrors in the flesh. It sort of makes you question religion. And maybe the nature of creation. Maybe the universe is actually a hostile and cruel place that is actively out to get us and devour us and make our lives deeply unpleasant, maybe end them quickly and horrifyingly in a splash of blood, gore, and violence.

After the zoo, I ambled over to the waterfront at South Perth, which boasts a large number of extremely expensive cafes full of people with the benefit of expense accounts. Not being among their numbers, I trekked around and found Munch Delight, a lovely Singapore-Malyasia cafe in a small shopping center. Superb. Even more pleasingly, it was very reasonably priced, akin to finding a magical Unicorn in Perth's panoply of ridiculously expensive restaurants.



A big bowl of seafood laksa, and very well executed indeed. I loved the rich, extremely pungent flavor of the seafood in tandem with the chili and the coconut milk. It's definitely strong stuff so should be avoided by those who don't free base fish sauce (like me). A winner.



I also horked down a plate of sauteed greens with garlic sauce, which is simple, sorta healthy, and among my favorite things to eat in the world. These were super rich, generously served, and had a lovely topping of crisp garlic. Aces.