Termite Palaces

Call me crazy...yeh I know you do...especially after my nightmare tree phase, but I find the natural scuptures of these little creatures fascinating.  Geoff is SO OVER termite mounds in my pictures but I just can't help it.  As you continue through future blog entries you will see that they occur in many of my pictures.
But fo now I would just like to share with you my Termite Terminology so that you can identify them in later pictures.


1.Cathedral Mounds

 Whoops! Toby T escaped out of the car and now his bum is all dirty from sitting in the white dust surrounding the mound! What a grub!

 Doesn't matter where you travel - Cathedral mounds are the same.

2. Magnetic or North-South mounds, so named because the face of them always face north and south so that one side is always in shade.

 I think this picture shows the phenomenon to the best advantage.

3. Blobbies (very scientific, I know)

These are mainly found just before you get into Katherine, at least the best one's were. We were travelling too fast to get any pics of these but they come in an amazing array of shapes, they don't get much beyond thigh height and they often look like little men, animals such as dogs and rabbits and their colours change depending on the soil around them.

I did manage to get a picture of one blobby...notice the colour, it was caught in a bush fire and this added to the colour of the mound.      

4. Pointies (another name it took me awhile to come up with)

5. Ploppies ( I decided to give them a name rather than just call them lazy blobbies)

 This is the picture that changed my mind...the termites obviously had a design in mind when they created this masterpiece.

But the most amazing, staggering thing of all, when heading west toward the WA border there wher literally thousands, upon thousands of termite mounds. Check it out....

  WOW!