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24 March 2005
G’day all,
It’s the Thursday before Good Friday here & I’m looking forward to a holiday tomorrow. Eight of us are heading over to Kakadu tomorra for 2 nights & then we’ll head down the track to Katherine for another night.
It’s been really exciting having our first visitors from Melbourne (& Brisbane) arrive this week. The frogs have given them a great welcome.
So Life in the Top End has been fairly amazing since the last tales. We drove out to Marrara footy ground one stormy night in February to see Collingwood play (badly). That was a terrific occasion up here, with full page wrap-arounds in the paper and lots of hoop-la. And then West Coast thrashed the Woods and that was that.
CJ & I scooted down to Katherine to check it out in early March. At that time the place was sweltering & the tour operators were bemoaning a river that was both too high (to allow safe canoeing) and too low (to allow use of a jet boat on the gorge). We foolishly set off for an 8km walk along the rocky gorge country on a sunny afternoon that had a maximum temperature of 45 degrees. The walk was kinda good, kinda oppressive, but getting out among the gorge was good fun. Went swimming at Edith Falls the next day & had a great Top End weekend (escarpment, gushing waterfall, pandanus palms).
And that next week, we at work all looked a bit apprehensively at the weather charts as a tropical cyclone formed in the Gulf, crossed over to the coral sea, intensified and then started heading back towards the Queensland coast on the Thursday. Those in the know were predicting that she (Ingrid) would weaken over Cape York, intensify again in the warm waters of the Gulf and then bounce along the Top End coast and threaten Darwin.
And what do you know? That’s exactly what happened. So Darwin was on FULL CYCLONE ALERT for a couple of days there.
Extremely stern warning messages were broadcast every hour on ABC radio and TV, advising people to formulate an evacuation plan. We gathered our valuable papers, packed emergency supplies of water and food and brought all loose things indoors (bikes, table & chairs). It was an exciting and nerve racking time.
The supermarkets were chockers on the Sunday with people buying up supplies and likewise the petrol stations. It was like the town was preparing for The End Of The World. The weather really cooled off and the sky was eerily still and quiet. And then the wind cranked up. All over town people had taped up their windows and bunkered down for a night without sleep.
Cath & I were prepared to drive to a cyclone shelter and we didn’t sleep all that well on the Sunday night. I rose to check the Bureau of Meteorology warning service a few times during the night to make sure Ingrid hadn’t dropped south from her expected course. Luckily (for us), she carried on her expected course and carved up the Tiwi Islands instead of Darwin. About a week afterwards she was still dumping extreme amounts of rain over the Top End. I’d say the Katherine River would be quite a bit higher by now.
The week following the cyclone was the best week of weather we’ve had, with cool days and cool nights and a great sprinkling of rain. And Cath & I each sat job interviews with the idea of lining up something even better than what we’ve each got now. Pretty confident.
Since the cyclone we’ve had a weekend in Melbourne & now a big crew is staying with us in Darwin. We slept 7 in the 2-bedroom flat last night. Apparently the odd road around Kakadu is closed following Ingrid, but we’re heading off there tomorrow anyway.
Hope you enjoy a break & I’ll catch you later.
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