 |
Darwin former bank and newspaper office , where it was common to have a croaker tickle your clacker, which sadly went down the gurgler decades ago .
|
There can be nothing more glorious than the sound of monsoonal rain -after a hot , humid, sweaty build up - when it finally arrives and pounds down during the night . Above the soothing roar, neighbours can oft be heard cheering with relief , dogs bark hysterically, but they do anyway during the dry . Some exhibitionists even run about in the nude, dancing in the rain like Gene Kelly.
In Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory , renowned for a widespread condition known as Mango Madness, it experienced a trying time before the rains finally arrived this year , evidenced by the CLP government making the insane decision to lease the Port of Darwin , front door to what appears to indicate we are becoming a giant Australian Cuckoo Nest , to the Chinese for 99 years .[ This crazy decision has been followed by awarding the contract for the opening ceremony at the Commonwealth Games in Queensland to an American company.]
The heavy Top End rain this year caused Darwin's zillion green tree frogs to express their joy by deafening croaking . One prematurely baldy resident we know was driven "mad" by an army of frogs in a rock garden near his bedroom stentoriously calling GARY!GARY!GARY!GARY!GARY!GARY!GARY!GARY! GARY!...,like a continuous stereophonic tape played at top volume .
Putting his head under the pillow did not help-GARY!GARY!GARY!GARY! still came through loud and maddeningly clear. In his demented state, he thought he heard one raucous croaker with a variation - HARRY!HARRY!HARRY!...
The frogs nextdoor and throughout the district were singing to the same music in the downpour causing the man's bedroom to sound like a cross between a CIA water torture cell and an echo chamber . The carport reverberated and amplified the assault on his eardrums and sanity . Unable to stand the waterboarding anymore , he jumped out of bed , ran outside , grabbed frogs left , right and centre and hurled them into space over the fence . The newly launched astronauts respond by shrieking:" GARY!GARY!GARY!-whee!, I can fly !- HARRY!-Ring the RSPCA!"
FROG FLASHBACK : Back in the l950s , when this blogger was an inmate of the Northern Territory News leaking old tin bank premises, with wartime bullet holes in the roof , there was a large colony of resident frogs which lived in the toilet /shower room .They bellowed during rain . Some of them lived under the lip in the toilet bowl and protested loudly each time it was flushed. The drunken office cleaner also protested when he was locked in a wardrobe one night and a large python once slithered in through a rear window and was chased by a man armed with a speargun. You have not lived until you have experienced deadly King Brown snakes sliding into your toilet bowl to pick off frogs .
