Sweet sweat

Last to leave the office this afternoon, I stepped onto the verandah of our demountable building set in acres of manicured lawns and gardens and my heart almost stopped beating in fright. A huge and noisy lurch swept out of the corner of my vision and something a good 5 ft long, slate grey, and looking like a small dinosaur leapt off into a pile of dead leaves. The hugest goanna/monitor lizard you've ever seen, fat and feisty, he cast a fierce gaze over his shoulder at me as he charged away towards the shelter of the bordering rainforest.

You never know what you'll encounter outside my office. I've told you about the green frog that lives in the toilet but don't know whether I mentioned the whip-thin greenish snake that coiled out of the leg of my chair one day, or just this week when a hapless employee opened the door of the adjoining building only to encounter a 6ft brown snake coiled over the door handle. It does keep the adrenaline pumping.

The mango orchard is alive with magpie geese and rajah shell-ducks and our Aboriginal workmate spends every lunchtime contemplating how he could catch a goose and cook it up for his lunch. Yummy! he says with a huge smile and a pat on his considerable belly - mayan muck!~ which is Yolgnu-matha for very good.