TIMOR-LESTE REPTILE & AMPHIBIAN SURVEY
PHASE IV: CROCODILE CONSIDERATIONS cont.

On our final run down into Dili, and the hot showers and cold beers of the TLH, we stopped at the Memorial de Dare Cafe and Museum which commemorates Australian and Timorese resistance to the Japanese during World War Two. The Australian Sparrow Force and their Timorese and Portuguese allies occupied thousands of Japanese troops who could not therefore be relocated to the hard-fought New Guinea and Solomons theatres of war.

World War Two is of particular interest to me and I have visited battlefields and memorials from Guam to Papua New Guinea.

Plaques and wreaths at the Memorial de Dare Cafe and Museum

We arrived back in Dili and settled back into the Timor Lodge Hotel for one night, meeting our friends Claudia Abate and Fatimazorah Noinou for dinner in the evening. They brought a cake for Hinrich, although his birthday was still several days away, and Kemal, the TLH manager, gave him a bottle of wine. It was a very pleasant evening.

Next morning we were to head for Ataúro Island for three nights of fieldwork, following up two enticing leads, one for a curious snake and the other a special lizard. We already have a new species of Bent-toed gecko (Cyrtodactylus sp.) from our 2010 visit to Ataúro.