g’day from the top end,
the dry is over. The build-up is back.
Seasons dominate life here in the way that day-to-day fluctuations dominate life in the south. There is no need to catch the weather forecast in Darwin. Variation only occurs at a seasonal scale and the seasons have turned again. Humidity is rising. Overnight minimum temperatures are around 25. There’s no relief. Mind you, living through uninterrupted cloudless blue skies became a little jarring to the senses after about five months, so the end of the Dry season is surprisingly welcome.
We caught the first storm shower of the build-up season out at Litchfield, which we farewelled with Joey & her mates from Melbourne with an extended dip at Florence Falls. Now, there’s a place where you could spend all day. But tourist numbers have dropped markedly in the past few weeks. Last Sunday we even had an uninterrupted view down the whole length of Mindil Beach market; contrasting with the crush of humanity that gathers there during the Dry Season.
Darwin locals never miss a chance to celebrate their “way of life” as a point of difference with southerners. After living here for a year, I agree that life in the Top End is quite relaxed, but I think living in this climate is outrageous. You can be the most relaxed banana in the bunch, but if you’re unable to walk outside without losing a bucket of sweat, you’re a pretty useless banana. Incidentally, the 12 months just gone was the hottest 12 month period in the last 60 years the Top End. Cath is up to 33 weeks pregnancy now, and we have a couple of childbirth education classes behind us.
Before the build-up gets too out-of-hand though, Catherine & I are out of here; jumping on a big silver bird to the south in the first week of October, and returning to the Land of the Big V. So this is the last of the Top End Tales.
This journey to the top of Australia has been a blessing, a challenge, difficult, and wonderful. I’ll be forever grateful that we took the plunge. We have been welcomed by workmates & locals & enjoyed many amazing adventures in the tough old tropical north. At times it is difficult to conceive that the Top End is on the same land mass as Melbourne, Sydney and Wangaratta, so different is the culture, vibe and atmosphere.
So it’s farewell to pandanus palms lining every river bank, farewell to whistling kites circling overhead, farewell to the Parap market with its laksa and crepe stalls, farewell to power blackouts and spectacular lightning storms, farewell to nightly late evening swims, farewell to rivers of sweat running down ones forearms, farewell to stifling, suffocating humidity, farewell to torrential, flooding wet season rains, farewell to East Point reserve and the views of Fannie Bay, farewell to the NT News, farewell to Ubirr, Jabiru, Nourlangie, Cooinda, Yellow Water, South Alligator, Gunlom, Barramundi, farewell to Kakadu (may the cane toads spare you too much destruction), farewell to Territory’s Own iced coffee milk, farewell to the unspeakably magnificent sunsets, farewell to bushfire smoke, farewell to convoys of caravans and grey nomads, farewell to the goannas and geckos in the garden, farewell to the green tree frogs of our porch and toilet bowl, farewell ceiling fans, farewell Deckchair cinema, farewell metal power poles, farewell to the threat of imminent death by cyclone, farewell crocodiles, farewell box jellies, farewell grilled barramundi on a bed of mashed potato with lime butter sauce.
We’ll be living in Coburg from 4 October. Hope everything is well for you & your family.
