Photos: Two Australian national parks offer lessons, surprises, delights
Kakadu and Litchfield, in Northern Territory, Australia, are home to rare animals and birds, ancient art, rockfaces and a community of Aborigines who hold on to the old, old ways
The Mary River wetlands in Australia’s Northern Territory, are located 150 km east of Darwin. There’s profusion of wildlife: whistling duck, pygmy goose, lotus lilies, kookaburras, and saltwater crocodiles in groups of twos and threes.(Picture courtesy: Sonia Nazareth)
2/7
You can glimpse the Jabiru or the black-necked stork along the wetlands as you go past.(Picture courtesy: Sonia Nazareth)
3/7
Kakadu National Park, about half an hour’s drive away is where stony plateaus meet waterfalls and red cliffs. Several aboriginal clans still call the park home, making it a living cultural landscape.(Picture courtesy: Sonia Nazareth)
The park is also home to one of the largest concentrations of ancient rock art in the world, including the 20,000-year-old paintings at Ubirr. This panel shows instructions in how to use weapons for protection.(Picture courtesy: Sonia Nazareth)
5/7
A two-hour drive away, in the Litchfield National Park, there are waterfalls and gorges. But the star attraction are the giant magnetic termite mounds, so named because their fronts all face north.(Picture courtesy: Sonia Nazareth)
10
Modus Vivendi (1000 people – 1000 Homes), 2000: In this self-portrait, a work of mixed media on canvas, Kallat appears as a swaggering, bespectacled juggler of heart and brain. The painting is an exploration of selfhood in the city of Mumbai, where he grew up and lives. The individual, lost in the multitudes, wanders in a state of perpetual disorientation, as reflected in the work. The radiating streaks of red, orange and green, reminiscent of thermal imagery, were achieved by texturing the canvas with layers of paint or canvas and then peeling off some parts to attain the desired visual effect.
5
Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.
7
Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.
10
Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.
6
At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.
