Termite Mounds

4,225 km (2,625 miles) from home here in Launceston, Tasmania, is Litchfield NP in the Northern Territory of Australia. A long way from home for sure, it took many days to travel there a few years ago.

Magnetic and Cathedral Termite Mounds near Litchfield National Park in the Northern Territory.  The mounds are up to 2 meters tall and can live up to a hundred years. 

Magnetic termites build them.  

Each mound has a single Queen who lays all the eggs alongside a massive workforce of blind, soft-skinned worker termite and defensive soldier termites that protect the nest using sticky secretions.

Natural predators are ants, if they get inside where the termites are and not stopped, they will kill the termites. 

The Wedge shape mounds have a thin edge of the blade-like mounds that point directly north and south, while the broad flat sides face east and west.  They are built this way by the termites to keep their home cool.

Their name, Magnetic Termite comes from the uncanny, compass-like orientation of their massive mounds.

Magnetic Termite act as grazing herbivores, feeding on surface vegetation, leaves, and dry grass in the tropical savannas of Northern Australia.

On the way to Tenterfield, NSW

Some of the towns names the ancestor brought out and named small settlements back in the day and a couple we drove through.  They are Boliva, Bonny Doon, Dundee, Stonehenge, Ben Lomond all within the Tenterfield area.

For those that remember the singer Peter Allen born 1944, died 1992 was born in Tenterfield and wrote the song Tenterfield Traveller as a tribute to his grandfather, George Woolnoough, who worked as a saddler in the country town of Tenterfield in New South Wales.  

Peter was married to Liza Minnelli in 1967 (Judy Garland's daughter) divorced 1974. Peter never married again.  Gregory Connell and Peter met in 1973 and Gregory died in 1984, Peter never had another partner.

Nice view of the landscape and a typical farm gate below.

This road used to be the highway years ago.  We pulled off the highway and drove up this old road to take a look.  Below a rest area along the way.

The area around Tenterfield, NSW has the red marks around it.