I began my healthy adventures in 1972 traveling all over the world by bike. Today I am 69 years old and still going strong. It is never to late to live a healthy active life and be your own healthy adventurer.
Here in Pine Creek was the junction. Before I left the Stuart Highway, I had been traveling on since Port Augusta, I came upon the largest termite hill I had seen thus far. To call it “termite column” would be more descriptive. They had become rather plentiful since I entered the Northern Territories. All along they had been red like the earth and averaged 1 m in height reminding me of tombstones in a graveyard. Here they were gray and huge. This one here I estimated to be 4 m high and 2 m in diameter. So why were they different here? I came upon a plaque that explained that there are 2,000 known species of termites of which 200 are found in Australia and 90 alone in the Northern Territories. Some of them venture deep into the soil where there is an abundance of minerals, which they bring up to construct their columns. This explains the gray color in an otherwise red world. As these mounts decay they fertilize the soil.
I faced headwinds as I now biked easterly towards Kakadu National Park. Kakadu is a word from one of the indigenous languages for the known pretty and noisy birds. Little changed in the scenery of the ongoing bush land. While there were intermittent fences before, there where none now. In the afternoon it began to rain again. There was an advantage to that; it stopped the nasty headwind.
To be continued….
