MAGNTic attraction

It's inevitable that Darwinites refer to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) as the magnet. I've been there a number of times over the years: the museum is marvellous and the art exhibitions change regularly. (Plus it has an excellent café.)

Let's address the most famous croc-in-residence first. Yep, Sweetheart is the 5.1m saltie who heads up this blog. Ol' Sweetheart was a male croc who became infamous in the early 1970s for attacking fishos in dinghies. Apparently the noise of outboard motors sounded like other male salties invading his territory, so it's understandable that he was a bit irritable. Anyhoo, the authorities decided that he needed to be relocated from the Sweets Lookout billabong where he resided. In the course of this relocation, the poor old chap got caught in a submerged log and drowned.

So the Sweets Lookout billabong monster became Sweetheart, preserved for posterity in the MAGNT. For those interested, his stomach contents revealed a pefectly acceptable croc diet of pig bones and bristles, two long-necked turtles and parts of a large barramundi.

Sweetheart is not the only croc in the museum. Plus, what would any museum be without dinosaurs?

The prehistoric croc in the first photo was fossilised together with what he'd eaten. His stomach contents included leg bones from a giant emu, the partial skull of a marsupial rhino, ankle bones of a giant flightless goose, and assorted body parts from other crocodiles. Eat your heart out, Sweetheart. The second and third photos show the marsupial rhino and the giant flightless goose, which sadly are no longer with us. Don't you think the giant flightless goose has a dodo-ish quality to it? That beak!

From the giant to the much, much smaller. Turns out that oysters come in all shapes and sizes. The white hammer oyster and the golden thorny oyster caught my eye. In the same display case is the edible shipworm. This might be useful knowledge if you're ever shipwrecked on a desert island and are looking for something to eat. Just saying.

One gallery is devoted to Cyclone Tracy, the Category 4 cyclone that scored a direct hit on Darwin in 1974. It struck on Christmas Eve and lingered until Boxing Day. Tracy killed 71 people and destroyed 80% of all houses, as well as all water, sewerage and electricity connections; effectively, the city of Darwin ceased to exist.

One room replicates the furnishing style of the time, with a Christmas tree in the corner and 1970s music played over the stylish walnut radio cabinet. Before ... and after, the devastation. At the height of summer! There are stories about human and animal bodies decaying under the wreckage, food rotting in fridges — high days and holidays for mosquitoes, typhoid and cholera.

Museum collections were a casualty too. Tracy destroyed the buildings in which they were housed, including the Town Hall, so museum staff had to scurry around to rescue what they could find. People were asked to donate empty jam jars for the natural history collections, so that preserved specimens could be saved. See that little fish in the jar on the top right? It was 're-jarred' just in the nick of time.

At the height of the cyclone, a priest recorded the sounds outside. One can listen to the two-minute recording in a small, completely dark room in the museum. Here's a 20 second snippet; can you hear the 240 km winds and corrugated iron panels being tossed around the city?

Something to think about as we head into cyclone season now!