Birding Aussers might like to join me in congratulating the NT¹s new Administrator, Justice Sally Thomas AM who is to be sworn in at the end of October.
Sally, though not strictly a birder, was instrumental in helping me finish my book Birds of Australia¹s Top End. I had become very ill, but with her encouragement manage to soldier on until it was finished. Although she does not like getting up early Sally would pick me up at 6.30 am every day so that I could go birding.
Sally also featured with me in a couple of documentaries. On one occasion we had to canoe through the mangroves, Sally asking me questions about crocodiles. As she stepped into my vessel she noticed a tomahawk lying on the floor. Asking what it was for I told her that if we were attacked she had to pick up the axe and hit the croc on the head. She asked why I couldn¹t do it. Obviously it was because crocodile is one of my dreamings and the most I could do, I told her was ³ask it politely to leave us alone². She informed me that she wouldn¹t be giving up her ³day job² to work on films with me fulltime!
Then there was the time I talked Sally and a friend, Graham, into venturing into the mangroves at midnight. I wanted to see if Chestnut Rails fed by the full moon. Sally, wearing my gumboots, got stuck in the mud and we had to pull her out. Graham wisely had left his nice Mercedes at my place. Sally¹s equally nice judge car was a bit muddy after our adventure.
Sally has a sense of perspective, depth and humour, somewhat lacking in many of our pollies, and I think we¹ll all be the better for it. Go Sally!
