|
|
22 February 2005
G’day all,
This is a quick hello. Life continues to be both challenging and grand up here.
They don’t have Big M in Darwin but you’ve never seen so many people walking around drinking Iced-Coffee milk. We missed out on winning a car (enter by sending in tokens from the sides of iced coffee milk cartons; we collected lots of tokens) and now I think I’m addicted to the stuff.
The climate varies each year in the Top End, they say. Some years, years of the Big Wet, mind-bogglingly torrential rains fall without relent for weeks at a time. In other years, the wet season goes AWOL and is replaced with a pale imitation (the Little Wet?). In years of the Little Wet, storms that break the insufferable humidity are few and far between and are celebrated with some gusto on arrival. As time marches on, it seems that we’re experiencing a year of the Little Wet. The rains simply haven’t come to town (yet).
Since the last Top End Tales, CJ & I spent 10 days in Victoria/ Melbourne, attending weddings and catching up with quite a few people. It was strange to visit Melbourne for a holiday. People up here were saying: "Oh Melbourne – you’re going to love it. It stays light until late at night down there, the tennis is on..." Never really considered it a holiday destination, but they were right.
Soon after we returned to Darwin CJ & I were nearly washed away by the largest storm of the season. The car was parked in an open car park about 30 metres dash away, through the tropical rain, and by the time we made it inside, our clothes were so wet we might as well have jumped in a bath fully clothed. The roads were all flooded that night, too. I guess living with this season’s rain is like fighting Aussie Joe Bugner – it doesn’t hit often, but when it does hit, it hits HARD.
We’ve mainly been taking it easy, though. Catching up with Darwin mates is a developing idea; we’ve enjoyed some Sunday arvo beers at Simon’s place, a great dinner with some people in Nightcliff and a Saturday morning fishing/ champagne breakfast extravaganza on the cliff tops of Nightcliff with CJ’s work crew (where we each landed our first NT fish).
I’ve started a creative writing course. Bit of fun. And played some tennis with a few guys from work. Been to Parliament House and met my first minister (Minister for Environment & Heritage) which was nice in this election year. The NT election needs to be called before October. The Greens are co-ordinating an effort up here, which really translates to about 5 people doing a lot of work. So far I’ve dodged it but CJ is starting to roll her sleeves up.
We’ve been cruising around some tracks over the past 2 weekends, checking out some wetlands and finding that despite the lack of rain in Darwin itself, other parts of the Top End have been getting a soaking sufficient to force road closures. Been to Fogg Dam Conservation reserve (hot, lots of mozzies, great walk thru wetlands and monsoon paperbark forest) and Douglas/Daly Hot springs (road closed, will let you know some time after April).
Checked out the Semi Finals of the Darwin Raw Comedy stand-up competition on Saturday night. Suffice to say that if I was a winner from one of the other states, destined to meet my NT rival in competition during the Comedy Festival in Melbourne, I would be quietly confident.
This week CJ started a new job; researching the Health & Wellbeing of Territory Women; a 6-month position. And we’ve picked up tickets to see Collingwood play West Coast on Saturday night (b.y.o. chair!!). Carna Woods.
So the lifestyle remains great – no traffic, goannas on the road – and we’re looking forward to the coming Dry season and some more Top End Adventures. Hope all is well for you & yours.
Ciao, top end tom & kakadu cath.