What do you need to have a good bit of fun on a Monday evening after a tough day at the knowledge factory? A hammer, a slowly setting August sun, a good bottle of wine, a long-time friend, and a medium sized mud crab purchased from the Parap Market.
All those ingredients were collected up tonight. My friend from one of the Gulf of Carpentaria communities was in town for a professional development course. What better way to celebrate our little time together than to pack a picnic and head off to Fannie Bay to watch the deep red sun disappear behind the Timor Sea.
I don’t know how you are supposed to separate crab meat from the shell, but my method was passable, if inelegant. With trusty hammer in hand, the crab placed on the concrete slab below the Council picnic table, we broke the shell like that – whack! But I tell you what, you need to whip away the crab once you’ve done what needs to be done – those ants are right onto your dinner otherwise. You should have seen how quickly those little beast raced after any scraps of meat with indecent haste. The same with the miniscule biting insects that munched on us tonight – we ate the crab while the wee biting things ate us. There’s a lot of consumption going on up here in the Territory.
Another day in Paradise.
