G’day all from the top end,
This is the winter that never was. The sun shines fiercely on. The sky remains a brilliant blue. And another day of 30+degrC unfolds. Images of snow scattered Victoria feel as distant as Switzerland as the urge builds again for an iced cold one. Bicycle transport is a breeze. Evening walks by Fannie Bay enchanting. The light of the setting sun, slipping orange and gold behind the East Point palms, is a daily wonder.
The smoke haze of May and June has dissipated as the management fires of the early Dry season have ended for another year. And still the sun shines on. Emus sprint across the savanna country. Green tree frogs are re-appearing on our front porch and re-appearing in our toilet bowl. Their return is a happy one; it signals the closing of the seasonal loop. Soon the Build-Up will be upon us once more.
Shops and streets and car parks and restaurants are still packed with dry season tourists, though. The Darwin Festival is taking place for the next couple of weeks and the town is culturally a-buzz. This follows on from the Darwin Show and the Darwin Cup Carnival; it has been a frenetic time in the Top End and the tourists are out in force.
The winter that never was. In Casuarina shopping centre, the chain stores stock the same items as their southern franchise mates. Last weekend we noticed one jeans shop selling ug boots. Ug boots?! For one, it’s highly doubtful that anyone in the top end would feel the need to purchase woollen footwear; and two, it’s worrying that anyone in the south would feel the need to wear them either. I can’t believe that they are fashionable down south. Can it be true? Are hula hoops back? Yo-yos?
At times like that, Darwin feels very much removed from the rest of Australia, and blessedly so. Asian influences up here are, of course, huge, and it’s a beautiful thing to wander the markets on a Saturday morning, satay smoke and incense swirling in the breeze, didgeridoo barks in the air, slurping down a lime juice and living the tropical dry. And still the sun shines on.
Kakadu showed its changing colours once more, when we headed over with Catherine’s parents a few weeks back. Water levels and undergrowth and fires and bird species and humidity and tourist numbers have all fluctuated and been spectacular to see & feel. I’m very happy with a series of photos taken on each visit at points within the Park, to show changes in water level and vegetation.
Catherine & I are, however, preparing once more for life in the south. We pop down to Victoria for the last week of August, to move furniture into our new house in Coburg. After that we’ll be in the Top End for four more weeks before making the shift south in the first week of October.
Little Litchfield has kicked and bumped and hip& shouldered his/ her way to 28 weeks. It still feels odd to me to feel little Litchfield’s movement under Cath’s skin; I can’t imagine what it must feel like for Cath. We’re expecting his/ her arrival around 4 November.
So to those in the cold parts, we hope you had a happy winter & to anyone who bought ug boots, we hope they kept your feet warm.
ciao for now from the fine dry sunny Top End,
top end tom & Kakadu cath & the (future) artist known for now as little Litchfield.
photos at http://worldsafaridave.50megs.com
