Willis's Walkabouts Newsletter 57, December 2011

Kakadu Bushwalking Review Update

The response to the questionnaire was great.

Almost 800 people filled in at least a part of it. I just hope something useful will come of it. There were some serious problems with "sorry business" which caused some serious delays. The first draft report MAY come out in December. The final draft should be available for public comment in April.

Aboriginal culture is still alive and strong in Kakadu. Anyone who visits Kakadu needs to be aware of this and that the Aboriginal traditional owners still own and manage the park. By law, their cultural needs take precedence over most other matters.

'Sorry Business' is the time after the death of someone who is from the Community. As with many cultures and communities around the world, death in a community is respected in different ways. Indigenous Australia is made up of many groups, tribes and clans that share similar protocols for the period of mourning for a deceased Aboriginal person, referred to as 'Sorry Business'.

There may be some local and regional differences between Aboriginal communities for the period of mourning, although broadly speaking it is common courtesy and respectful to not mention the name of the deceased, to not show photographic images of a deceased person unless agreed to by the relevant family, and to vacate the place where a person has died. There is a mourning period where the deceased person’s name and image cannot be used. This period differs between communities ranging in length of time from a week, a year or indefinite. Some communities also offer a mourning name.

The two paragraphs above were taken from a website Aboriginal Cultural Protocol for Mourning. You can find additional information about 'sorry business' on the Australian Academy of Medicine and Surgery Sensitive Areas page.

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Willis's Walkabouts — What Is It?

The heading above may seem a strange one, but the comments on some of the post-trip questionnaires we received this year show that some people who book our trips don't understand the nature of what we offer. To the best of my knowledge there is no one else who offers what we do. Our clients must provide their own breakfasts and lunches on all trips. They must either provide their own gear or choose from our limited selection of hire gear. We don't tell people exactly what to bring; we give them as much information as possible and tell them to decide for themselves. I can't think of another tour operator who puts that much responsibility on their clients or who asks them to read as much. For the vast majority of our clients, it works.

How do I know it works? The overwhelming majority of our clients in the past ten years have been repeat customers or people who have come based on recommendations from friends who have done one of our trips. The vast majority of the post-trip questionnaires we get back say that people are happy with what they got. We can always do better so we use those replies to try and improve what we are doing.

Why does Willis's Walkabouts exist?

It exists so that Russell Willis can go bushwalking and meet interesting people. It exists so that I can offer a similar opportunity to my other guides. It exists so that we can share our love of the country and experience with others. It's not now, and never has been, very financially rewarding, but as long as I made enough to keep from going broke, that didn't matter. When you are thinking about which trip to do, always remember, every trip in the program is one which I enjoy doing myself. I wouldn't have it any other way.

As mentioned in the last newsletter, Wild magazine ran a two page article about me in the last issue. That issue is no longer available for sale, so you can read it here.

Willis's Walkabouts Is Small — Small and Unpredictable

Only 105 people took part in our Australian trips this year. Another 9 are going to South America. Numbers like that mean some things people would like to see are impossible.

• The business is too small to support a permanent office person. I can get someone in for about an hour a day on weekdays while I'm out bush, but no more. That means that the communication with potential and booked clients must suffer to some extent. Hopefully I've managed to do an acceptable job. At this point, I can't see an alternative other than my staying in the office. But, if I can't go walking, I might as well shut down.
• The few vehicles I have need to be usable on all the trips. Given the condition of some of the Kimberley tracks we use, that means I stick with troopcarriers or drop the trips that use the roughest tracks. The trips which use those tracks are some of the most interesting and adventurous we offer, so they will stay.
• There is no pattern as to which trips will get the bookings to run in any given year. If I offered fewer trips, there would still be no guarantee that I'd get the bookings I need to run them. I like to get out on the trips that go to interesting places that hardly anyone has heard of. I enjoy the Wet and the Build Up seasons. For 2012, the program will remain much the same, but trips will be cancelled sooner if overlapping ones get early bookings.
• Early bookings are essential. Since the work is so unpredictable, I need time to organise the guides, myself included. That's why I offer such good advance purchase discounts. Trips with no bookings have to be cancelled about three months out. Those with bookings but not enough to run usually need to be cancelled about two months out.

The reading is essential

Unfortunately, more and more people don't read it all. If they did, some of them would not book at all or would cancel within the seven day, 100% money back period.

• The Bushwalking Guide is so important that everyone has to sign to say they have read it.
• The General Information sheet explains how we rate the level of difficulty of each of our trips, our discounts, cancellation fees and more.
• The trip notes give detailed information about each trip.
• Because of the nature of our trips, the liability release on the final page of registration form contains a few things that are distinctly different to what you are likely to find on other releases. Two examples:
  1) I am aware that the Willis's Walkabouts guide(s) on the trip I have booked may or may not have done this particular trip before. With so many trips and all the longest serving guides other than myself having retired, this is not just possible, it is probable. Even I haven't done them all.
  2) I recognise that there is a possibility that the guide could become incapacitated leaving my group without a qualified leader. This isn't likely, but it has happened. Most groups contain experienced bushwalkers. In at least one case, when the guide could no longer continue, he allowed the group to continue without him rather than ruin their holiday.

Where to?

I wish I knew. Access is becoming more and more of a problem in some areas. I've already seen a few changes to where we can go next year. I expect more. There are so many things in flux that I really have no idea what the business will look like in 12 months time. I hope it will be much the same, but I honestly don't know.

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Darwin — One of the World's Ten Best

Darwin has been named as one of the best cities in the world to visit in 2012, ahead of all other Australian destinations. The Lonely Planet's new travel book on the best things to see and do next year lists Darwin as the 10th best city in the world to visit.

"It was once easy to dismiss Darwin as a frontier town full of brawling fishermen, dreamy hippies and redneck truckers. With a pumping nocturnal scene, magical markets and restaurants, and world-class wilderness areas just down the road, today Darwin is the triumph of Australia's Top End," the book says.

The two paragraphs above were taken from an Australian Geographic newsletter. The Lonely Planet website doesn't have much, if anything, more to say — they want you to buy the book.

Airfares are as cheap as they have ever been. Whether or not you are a bushwalker, Darwin has lots to offer and so do our parks, all the more so at this time of year when a hotel room costs far less than it does in the Dry. The Tourism Top End website has lots of information. For something a bit out of the ordinary, I recommend having a look at the locals link on the main Tourism Top End page.

I love the city which has been my home since 1974. Even if you aren't planning on doing one of our trips, I'd be happy to answer a few questions about the place or point you to where you might find the answers.

Frontline Australia

On the 19th of February 1942 an event occurred which changed Australia forever. Australia was bombed by enemy forces at Darwin. "The official government death toll was more than 240 with hundreds of other casualties. Many more died and were injured in subsequent attacks on Northern Australia over the following 21 months. It was a defining moment in Australia’s history, one which highlighted the tenacity of those living in Darwin and the Australian spirit."

The quote above is taken from the Frontline Australia website, a special site which has been set up to commemorate the 70^th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin. The commemoration will include a "re-enactment of the first bombing raid by the Australian Defence Forces on Sunday 19 February 2012 from 9.30am". That is the day after our Kakadu Light trip finishes and the day our Kakadu Highlights No. 2 trip begins. We will delay the departure of the latter by a few hours so participants can witness the bombing re-enactment.

I think February walks are good anytime. 2012 is extra special. For that reason, I am going to make a very special offer. I will run either Kakadu Light for as few as two people at no extra charge or Kakadu Highlights No. 2 for as few as three people at no extra charge. Not only that, I will extend the 15% three-month advance purchase discount to 20 December. If neither trip gets three bookings by 20 December, I'll have to sadly cancel them and offer to put on a weekend walk for the Darwin Bushwalking Club instead. February walks are too good for me to miss.
If both trips get bookings, I'll need five on the 2^nd one so I can afford to pay another guide.

There's more. From 17 February 2012, Darwin will have direct flights to and from Townsville.

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The Disappearing North

We are going to be walking very close to the arctic circle on the trip to Sweden and Norway next year. The arctic is the part of the planet where the climate is changing fastest. "Scientists say that over the last 10 years the average size of the polar ice sheet in September, the time of year when it is smallest, has been only about two-thirds the average during the previous two decades. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, a Norwegian group studying the Arctic, forecasts that within 30 or 40 years the entire Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in the summer. "

The Northwest Passage by sea across northern Canada and Alaska is the one that got the publicity. But the Northeast Passage is the one that's already become commercially viable. "In 2009, the first two international commercial cargo vessels traveled north of Russia between Europe and Asia. This year, 18 ships have made the now mostly ice-free crossing." You can get the full story in the NY Times article Warming Revives Dream of Sea Route in Russian Arctic. I found the graphic showing September ice cover very interesting.

My first trip to the edge of the arctic was way back in 1969. I've made several trips including three as Willis's Walkabouts since then. In some ways, it's becoming unrecognisable. Maybe it's time for something very different.

Anyone interested white Christmas in 2012 or 2013? I've long wondered what it would be like to be somewhere where the sun never came up or came up only briefly. There's a full moon on 28 December 2012 and on 17 December 2013. That would help you to see to get around, especially with snow on the ground. If you think you might be interested in a Christmas trip to Alaska and/or the Yukon in 2012 or 2013, please let me know.

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Bushfires

The photo at left is a time exposure of the night sky from one of the campsites on our September trip to Watarrka (Kings Canyon area) national Park in the Centre. That glow is at least 30 km away.

All but one of our campsites were in rocky areas where we'd have had no problem if a fire did come through. Fortunately we had no worries as fire crews managed to keep the fire from jumping the Kings Canyon road so it never got into the area where we were walking. The fires did, however, force us to change our return route to Alice Springs.

Bushfires in northern Australia are no where near as intense as they are down south. Nonetheless, they can cause major damage. If you have about 50 minutes to spare, I can recommend a recent video presentation by Grant Allan of Bushfires NT, Seeing Through The Smoke about the central Australian bushfires this year.

The North Australian Fire Information website has a wealth of information. Click on NT South to see what it was like over the course of this season. Click on NT North and you can see that active fire management has meant more early (May-July) cool burns and fewer destructive late (September-November) fires.

As a final note, while looking at the bushfire presentation above, I discovered another interesting video by Peter Latz about 20 Years of Buffle Grass If you are interested in the history and ecology of central Australia, that too is worth watching.

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Books for Christmas

On my recent trip to central Australia, I made a visit to the Old Timers' Museum where I discovered a small treasure trove of out of print books about the Top End. I couldn't resist and bought them all. I now have one to three copies of each of the following, $20 each including post to anywhere in Australia, all soft cover, all, in my opinion, great books.

• Kakadu National Park by Greg Miles, 1996; 80 pages, slightly larger than A4. Brief descriptions and many great photos of flora, fauna and landscapes.
• Wildlife of Kakadu by Greg Miles, revised edition, 1995, 96 pages, slightly larger than A4. Great photos and informative text.
• Kakadu Wildlife by Greg Miles, 2000. 245 mm tall by 172 mm wide, 122 pages, more great photos and informative text.
• Wildflowers of Kakadu by Kym Brennan, 1986. Long out of print, this is by far the best flower field guide ever published. 170 mm tall by 230 mm wide, 128 pages.
• Fauna of Kakadu and the Top End by Denise Goodfellow, 1993. Black & white, A4 size, 102 pages. Drawings rather than photos, very detailed descriptions; it has a wealth of information you are unlikely to find anywhere else in an easily digestible form.

Greg Miles was one of the first rangers in Kakadu, finally retiring in the early 2000s. Few people can match his level of knowledge of the park in all its seasons.

In addition to the books above, I have the two books produced by Geoscience Australia. They are the best overall references I have seen to these areas.

• Bungle Bungle Range: Purnululu National Park, East Kimberley, Western Australia: a guide to the rocks, landforms, plants,animals and human impact, 82 pages, slightly larger than A4, good information and lots of photos and diagrams. $24 including post in Australia.
• Kakadu & Nitmiluk: a guide to the rocks, landforms, plants, animals, Aboriginal culture, and human impact 110 pages, slightly larger than A4, $25 plus postage.
  This is the only one of the books which weighs more than 500 g so it costs far more to post. Best value is a 3 kg express post mailer at $12. If you are ordering several books, this becomes reasonable as I can include the others in the one package and deduct what it would have cost to post them.

For the right person, all of these would make great Christmas presents.

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Are We Being Ripped Off?

Of course we are. What we can do about it is another, more difficult question. This section is a combination of three very different things which I found interesting when I came across them.

Petrol Powered Automobiles

The technology to produce a viable electric vehicle has been around for some time now. This power point presentation shows how that technology has been deliberately suppressed. I'd heard some of this before, but this was the first time I'd seen it all in the one place. The more people who see this, the more likely it is that something positive will happen. Please have a look.

Text message costs

Phone companies make a lot of money from text messages. I recently came across a NY Times article about how Free texts pose threat to carriers. That got me thinking about texting in Australia. I've often heard things on the radio asking me to text in something, noting that it would cost 55 cents to do so. Someone is making a big profit out of that. When I looked up the average cost in Australia, I found a Sydney Morning Herald article suggesting that our text message costs averaged the highest in the world. It's a bit out of date, but when you look at what people in other countries are paying, you have to wonder.

Fish

Another NY Times article, Tests Reveal Mislabeling of Fish began, "Scientists aiming their gene sequencers at commercial seafood are discovering rampant labeling fraud in supermarket coolers and restaurant tables: cheap fish is often substituted for expensive fillets, and overfished species are passed off as fish whose numbers are plentiful."

That reminded me of an Australian scandal a few years ago when it was discovered that fish sold as 'barramundi' in most of Australia seldom was the real thing. (I might add that Asian farmed barramundi tastes very different to Australian barramundi.) Food Standards Australia did a survey which suggests that the problem isn't as bad here. That web page offers a link to the full survey results. For whatever reason, their link doesn't work. I did some digging and the one here does.

Health Care

If you can remember the amazing debates that occurred in the US before they passed the health insurance law last year, you might find it hard to believe that there was already a government health insurance program that covered everyone — everyone over the age of 65 that is. More amazingly, "The government estimates that Medicare and Medicaid expenses will leap from 6.4% of GDP this year to 10.7% in 2029." The US government doesn't have a very good record when it comes to such estimates. "In 1967, the year after Medicare commenced, the House Ways and Means Committee forecast its cost at $12 billion in 1990. It turned out to be $110 billion — nine times as much."

Some of those costs are based on what I consider to be somewhat perverted incentives built into the system. People in the final year of their lives are surprisingly likely to undergo surgery. Australia's public health system is far better than America's, but we have similar problems. Earlier this year, the Medical journal of Australia published an editorial Futility in end-of-life care. I wasn't able to find the current figure but we spend a very high percentage of our health care budget in the final year of people's lives. Much of that is concentrated in the final month or two. All that money is why we have such long waiting lists for some procedures that would vastly improve peoples' lives. to quote from the article, "Palliative care and aged care should not primarily be the province of the hospital and the acute health care system, and our continued acceptance of this and of the concentration of health care spending in the last months of life is no longer tenable."

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News About This Newsletter

Help Needed

Spell checks aren't perfect. What I include and how I word what I do put in this newsletter could be better. Anyone want to volunteer to be a proofreader and get a sneak preview on any special offers I might have?

Contents

Before I finish one newsletter, I'm already working on the next. I often find that I've got too many interesting things for a single newsletter. I'm also always looking for other interesting items I can add. I'm particularly interested in environmental issues, especially those which might affect bushwalking and in the technology which is shaping our lives. As I said in one of the sections above, Suggestions welcome.

Sending the newsletter

The program I use to send the newsletters is hosted on the same server that hosts our website. The newsletters are sent from walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au. This is the contact address on our website. If you would like to continue to receive these newsletters, please include this address in your "friends list" so that it isn't blocked.

For some reason, some servers block the newsletters no matter what you try and do. I send these in small groups from my normal email. It's not a simple problem. If anyone thinks they might have an idea how to overcome the problem, I'd love to hear from you.

Emails sent to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au are currently automatically forwarded to rrwillis at internode.on.net. If you want to send an email to that address, replace the word "at" with the symbol @. I am trying not to put that address any place where it can be harvested by spam bots.

We don't want to add to the mass of email spam. If you don't want our newsletter, please send us an email and let us know. We'll then delete your name from our newsletter list.

Our email address is walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au.

Note. The program we use to send this newsletter has an automatic delete at the bottom. Clicking that link will delete you from the mailing list on the server but it will not delete you from our main database. My newsletter mailing program will not allow the auto delete to send me an email notifying me that a deletion has been made. If you want to be removed from all further mailings, please send an email to walkabout@bushwalkingholidays.com.au

If you know someone you think would enjoy this newsletter, please forward it to them. The more people who get it, the more likely it is that I'll be able to run the trips which might interest you.

Finally, since this should be my last newsletter for the year, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, to you all!!
Russell Willis

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