30/7/11 Fossil hunting at Gunn Point

Today we got up early, dressed tidily and drove to church, but no one was there. A notice on the gate invited people to attend  the Northern Australian  Conference camp meeting some distance away.  We drove back to our camp, changed into casual clothes, made a picnic lunch and headed up to Gunn Point, about 60 km north of Darwin to hunt for 6,000 year old lobster fossils. On the way the roadside vegetation was getting its annual burn off and hundreds of kites were soaring above the smoke waiting to catch insects and maybe lizards which were trying to escape the flames.

At Gunn Point we did find some "good" fossils.  We also collected some shells.  When I picked up shells in which hermit crabs were living and held them up in the air, the hermit crabs jumped ship.  (I wonder if that is an escape mechanism if they are caught and carried skywards by birds.)  Anyhow all the hermit crabs, except for one, preferred to start house hunting rather than stay with me. That one crab stayed undetected, deep in a shell until we got back to Darwin when it came out and scooted around the floor of the camper.  It was so determined to keep the shell it had chosen and not pop put like the others had done that we let it keep its home and drove down to the local beach to set it free.