Trapped!

Like most of the tropics Gunbalanya has two distinct seasons - "the wet" and "the dry" (Three if you include "the build-up").

The difference is amazing. Gunbalanya gets 1.4m (4'8") of rain a year, and over 1m of that falls in the months from December to March.

The photo below is taken from behind my classroom looking over towards Injalak, the hill with all the rock paintings I have talked about in an earlier post.

During the wet the roads become impassable. The shot below is actually one of the good sections of road.

If you try and drive east of Gunbalanya, further into Arnhem land towards the community of Maningrida you only get about 2km before the road is cut. The picture below is not a river, it's the main road.If you head west towards Darwin the road is fairly dry for about 10kms.

But about 3km from the river crossing you come to a billabong called Red Lily, named for the water lillies that grow there, and during the wet it triples in size, cutting the road completely.