TheBanyanTree: Foolishness

[PJMoney]

I had a picture in my mind of Kununurra that was all wrong.  

I thought it would be flash touristy, like Broome.  In fact it's much more
down market and caters mostly for grey nomads, backpackers, diamond miners
and farmers.  

I thought the water for the Ord River irrigation area came directly from
Lake Argyle and that the irrigation area would be south of the town.  The
water actually comes from Lake Kununurra and the irrigation area is north of
the town.  

I thought Lake Kununurra was a natural lake but it's not.  It's formed by a
diversion dam.

That's good considering that a couple of the caravan parks are sited right
on the waterfront and there are old folks, the odd child and a small
population of well-loved dogs to be found within easy slithering distance of
the water's edge.  The dam means that means the water is fresh and the
thousands of crocodiles in it are of the small, freshwater variety.  They'll
bite but they don't eat human beings.  Saltwater crocodiles, of course, do
eat us.  Unfortunately, despite the diversion dam, they also do get into the
system from time to time and must be removed.  In fact a 2-3 metre one had
been seen upriver a couple of days before we arrived and the locals were
already hard at work on locating the beastie's lair for trapping purposes.

I also got the time wrong. When we arrived in Kununurra it would have been
about 3pm in Darwin where, at this time of the year, the daylight hours
stretch pleasantly between 7am and 7pm.  Now Darwin sits on 130 51' east
longitude and Kununurra sits on 128 50' so, theoretically, it should be
about 10 minutes behind.  But Kununurra is in Western Australia and that
entire state is a single time zone.  (I would have guessed that the zone is
based on Perth's longitude because that's where most of the people live and,
really, you can't get much further west.  But Perth's longitude is 115 52'
which should put Perth an hour behind Darwin yet it is, by convention,
actually an hour a half behind and I have no idea why.)  

In any case, in Kununurra the time might, theoretically have been about
2.50pm but, practically, it was only 1.30pm.  Daylight stretched from a
cruel 5.30am to an uncivilised 5.30pm.  That could be fine because, of
course, one can adjust to preparing and eating dinner in the dark and rising
in broad daylight.  But dusk is dusk and the biting things that come out at
that time cannot be persuaded to come later.

So there we were; sitting in our nice, collapsible camp chairs as the sun
went down and having a fascinating conversation with a couple from some tiny
town far to the south while we waited for a more reasonable time to do
something about getting a meal.  Though I know all too well that I am a
moveable feast for all kinds of blood sucking insects I stupidly forgot all
about that until I felt a sting, slapped at my leg and looked down to see
something that, in the darkness, looked like a streak of black ink but I
knew must be blood.  Mosquito bite!  

I jumped up and said I must be going.  I thought I'd caught the problem
before too late and that one itchy bite would not be too high a price to pay
for a good conversation.  What I didn't know would become all too clear the
next day.

There are many people in this country who will tell you that sandflies don't
bite.  They'll tell you that sandflies urinate on you and it's the urine
that causes the wheal with its terrible, persistent itch.  Maybe they say
that because you don't always feel it when they bite.  But bite they do and
then, about 24 hours later, in the standard way that delayed immunological
reactions occur, the lump will appear.  After that it will grow, blister and
bruise, all the while itching so badly that scratching can provide almost
orgasmic pleasure, if only you could scratch.  But you mustn't scratch.  At
least you mustn't scratch the actual wheal.  It's too easy to take the top
off the fragile blisters and then you're set for infection and a tropical
ulcer.  So you scratch the skin around it and the pleasure is just as
intense.  

By sundown the following day I could count more than 50 horrendously itchy
lumps on my hands, arms and legs.  Some were so tightly packed together that
they couldn't be distinguished one from another.  Thank God that my husband
is good at packing for minor emergencies.  Thank God for modern medicine.
Thank God for Claratyne.

Janice