RACING season arrives in Darwin with a raucous roar. You can smell anticipation in the musky tropical air. It's a wild crowd: women in big hats and tiny dresses, rowdy gents guzzling beer by the gallon, and packs of tikes, oohing and aahing over the contestants.
Suddenly, one toddler points to the centre course. It's nearly starting time. All at once, the mob surges forward with mad, uncontrollable excitement.
Crab racing has returned to Darwin.
After months of relentless rain, residents of the capital of Australia's Northern Territory give a wild welcome to the end of the Wet, in May. Festivities include the World Barefoot Mud Crab Tying Championships on July 31. But nothing, neither crab wrestling nor jumping crocodiles, not even the August races in boats made entirely of beer cans, can quite compare with Darwin's kookie crab races.
Showtime arrives just after sunset in the lobby of the Atrium Hotel. Announcer Scott Day has shed the hideous floral shirt worn during his daytime duties as hotel marketing manager. Decked out in white lab coat topped with a blinding pink sports cap, he stirs the crowd into a pre-crab frenzy, helped by happy hour prices.
Betting forms circulate through the crowd. The names - Sweet Lips, Lemon White, Cider Spider - offer no easy picks. Nobody bothers clawing through tip sheets. 'Just write down any old number,' suggests one veteran punter.
Day is like an auctioneer, joking and jawing at a high-octane pitch. 'Crank it up,' he shouts, and the music moves to a climax. Then, Day turns a bucket upside-down in the centre of a stage marked with a huge circle.