A Darwin Letters Extra
If you haven’t read The Darwin Letters yet, what are you doing here? The Darwin Letters start here.
Introduction
Once Trenna arrived in Darwin it became apparent quite quickly that she wanted to write to family and friends to tell them of how different it was to Perth, and to tell of the adventures we had undertaken.
These days you would use Socials to get the word out, but of course in 1994 that wasn’t an option. At first she thought she could use our PC to write and print a newsletter to post to people to tell the stories.
I think in the end she thought that if she sent a newsletter she would probably have to send a letter with it, so she might as well just write letters (and cut and paste large chunks between them). That is what she ended up doing.
However, one day in November 1994 I came home from work, it was the build up to the wet so I was hot and sweaty because I had walked the 50 metres and two flights of stairs from the airconditioned car to the airconditioned apartment.
Trenna greeted me with a delightful kiss, and once I had stripped off almost all my clothes she showed me a list she had come up with. It was a list of possible newsletter names. I thought they were pretty good then, and when I came across the list the other day (in June 2023) I still thought they were good.
Here is the list. Towards the bottom of the post I will provide some explanations – not to tell you the joke, but to provide you with the pieces of information you may be missing if you aren’t Trenna or me.
The List of Titles
The Topical Tropical
The Balcony Panorama 1
The Darwin Observer
The New Terror-torian 2
The Sweaty Rag
TOP week END 3
The Nightcliff LOOK OUT 4
Top End ‘Propper Gander’
The Arafura Tidings 5
The Wet Rag
The ‘Therm-monitor
The Observation Post
The New Vista 6
The Riveted Spectator
The Top End ‘Summer-ry’
The Torrid Times
The Darwin Address
The Arafura Horizon
The Lightning Express 7
The Casuarina Sentence 8
The Second Story 9
A Few Explanatory Notes
- A prominent feature of the apartment we rented in Darwin was the balcony. It had 270 degree views over the Arafura Sea – very impressive views.
- There were a LOT of things that were scary in Darwin
- For the information of those not from Australia, the area around Darwin is frequently referred to as “The Top End” [of Australia]
- Our apartment was located in the suburb of Nightcliff
- The ocean outside our apartment was the Arafura Sea
- Before we went to Darwin (and after we returned) we lived in VISTA Street. And of course, the view from the balcony was a new vista for us to take in
- The “Build Up”, which was the season during which Trenna wrote up this list, is characterised by truly spectacular, nightly electrical storms. Most of them seemed to be centred over the sea, directly out the front of our balcony
- I like this one. In Darwin we were living on Casuarina Drive, but you also need to know that Western Australia’s maximum security gaol in called “Casuarina Prison”
- Our apartment was on the second story of the building
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