I’m seriously behind with the blog. Rick and I went WWOOFing for a couple of weeks at Milkwood and, with no internet, motivation dropped off for a while. Milkwood is a tropical fruit farm with mostly mangoes and a small number of papaya. The timing of our stay was both fortunate and unfortunate: we were too early for mango picking, which some call the season of mango madness, but this meant we did not get to indulge in fresh-picked mango. Aside from our work – weeding, tending the vegetable patch and tidying the mango orchard – some of the highlights were camping by our own billabong for the duration of our stay, sundowners with Danny (pictured above with esky and transport) and fresh papaya for breakfast each morning. The wetland was particularly delightful and a place of high activity. Despite the water level receding before our eyes, a host of birds were making the most of the late dry season water levels and easy tucker: pelicans glided in and appeared oversized on the diminishing wetland; a statuesque Jabiru, with a height designed for deeper water, stepped out majestically but with toenails barely water-covered; Royal Spoonbills frantically, possessively and metronomically swept their bills from side to side from dawn till dusk; and all interspersed with Burdekin ducks, the trifecta of Australia’s ibis species, green pygmy geese, grey and pied herons, egrets and ever-increasing numbers of Magpie Geese amassing for the mango season. There was no waste of daylight hours on the wetland: a relentless onslaught of scooping, spearing or sifting. Night time was a cacophony of sleep-depriving noise: the bonk bonk of the mass of unwelcome cane toads; the alarm calls of the easily-alarmed plovers, distant screeching of quarrelsome fruit bats and the rustle of small groups of wild pigs traipsing through the dried leaves. We may have avoided mango madness but we did not escape wetland weariness. Thanks to Danny and Joan for an interesting and enjoyable stay.