If you’ve missed it, this series starts here.
Friday, 9 August 1996
20/288 Casuarina Drive
Nightcliff 0810
G’day Mum and Dad,
W
ell, how are you getting along down there? We hope you’re both fighting fit. We’re fine.
Thankyou for your letter of 21/7 Mum. It sounds like you’re getting some interesting items through your shop. Mum, keep your beady eyes off our breadmaker, we intend enjoying it’s yummy results for many years to come.
Of course Dad if you haven’t bought one by the time we return to Perth, you can borrow ours to see if you like using it. This time it’s our turn to be impressed by the TV News reports of the torrid weather you have been enduring down there in the “windy city”.
Our weather by comparison has been sublime. Mind you there have been several occasions of late (this very moment included) that have seen not only me donning my tracky pants or winnie, but Greg actually swapping his usual singlet for a T-shirt, and us both having to cover ourselves with TWO sheets during the night!
I do miss Perth winter nights snuggled up by our fire, but I don’t like wind, so I hope by the time you get this letter, the heavy gusts will have well and truly blown themselves out.
It’s peak tourist season here at the moment, which means there’s heaps of camper vans on the roads, and if we’re to believe the press – illegally camped on the foreshore reserves and carparks.
Darwin is heavily promoted as a great tourist destination, but when the tourists come, the infrastructure just can’t cope with the influx. The local council authorities have struck back with vengeance by erecting large NO CAMPING signs all over the place – friendly mob – and we keep on hearing about how keenly Darwin wants to host The Commonwealth Games – yeah right!
Lorraine, has experienced first hand the frustration encountered by the overall lack of facilities. She’s had a terrible time trying to book accommodation for Colin Perry and his partner Julie in Kakadu, and she can’t for love nor money hire a 4WD from any dealership in town.
After seeing TV reports of tourists traipsing the streets in a fruitless search for suitable accommodation, the airlines are now refusing to carry passengers who haven’t pre booked their accommodation.
It even warranted flying in “The Greek Poet” directly from Melbourne – Wow!
Now, in order to make this letter more than a one page job, I’ve had to give a substantial amount of thought to it’s content. You see, the first four months of the year were far more exciting than these past four.
For one, we haven’t ventured too far beyond the outskirts of Darwin, and for another, many of our weekends have been consumed with addressing the lengthy essential criteria demands that are now part and parcel of job applications.
Even though Greg’s contract at NTU will still have three years to run, our desire is to return to Perth around the end of this year. We’ve just about seen or done all we want to up this neck of the woods for the time being.
It’s true, to date we haven’t quite managed to get along to the annual mud-crab wrestling challenge, or to the regaled beer can regatta, but I reckon we could just about live without witnessing either of these major NT events.
We have however recently added to our “Been There, Done That” list by attending a few of the major events of the season. And it’s our recollections of these events that will fill the next few pages.
Firstly, the Greek Glenti is an annual festival to celebrate all things Greek.
It was held a handful of Sunday’s ago on the lawns of the esplanade in Darwin city. We missed last year’s so thought we ought to pop along and check it out. It’s considered to be a huge event on Darwin’s social calendar.
It even warranted flying in “The Greek Poet” directly from Melbourne – Wow! – so off we went…
We easily managed to find a parking bay just a couple of hundred metres from the main sphere of activity. As we emerged from our car we were blasted by the sounds of very loud and furious bouzouki music.
Well, we thought – this place is rocking – so headed towards the music which abruptly stopped – it was time for the poet.
The layout of the festivities was roughly – at the focal end, a large stage, with a couple of marquees stretching down each side, an open sunny lawn area in the middle, and a half circle of catering tents at the back.
Tucked away to one side behind the stage was “side show alley” which amounted to three stalls – clowns, fairy-floss, and plastic toys on sticks, a bouncing castle, and one remarkably small merry-go-round.
We headed to the central arena to listen to the poet. He was sprouting forth verse about growing up in St Kilda – his style was pitched very much at his contemporaries.
We looked around to whom he was addressing. In the marquees sat well established families of the best of Darwin’s Greek community all vigorously talking, laughing, eating or playing with kids, around our feet on the sunny lawn area sprawled a small group of athletic bodied, semi-clad international travellers pre-occupied with improving the depth of their already bronzed tans, and to the back of us, industrious young men tending smoking BBQs in the catering tents.
He finished that poem – barely noticed. Undaunted, he continued his repertoire.
We gave into the smell of the BBQs and bought some yiros for a late lunch. We sat cross-legged on the lawn, amid well-dressed young Greeks, under a large tree at the back of the catering tents, and ate very carefully in a futile effort to avoid being covered in the yoghurt dressing that seeped through the bottom of the paper packaging.
Between mouthfuls we speculated on just why the young Greek boys would keep scooping out – what looked like armfuls of dripping wet rope – from large water-filled buckets, and deftly hurl them onto the sizzling BBQs.
Greg eventually came good – it wasn’t rope at all, it was octopus, very large octopus. Now, what to do? We’d listened to the poet – well more than most people had, we’d done a lap of the festivities, we’d eaten. We were hard-strapped to find a reason to stay any longer – so that was it, we were all done at this year’s Glenti in just over 20 minutes.
Monday’s news reported on how unscrupulous and well organised thieves – despite heavy security, had managed to break into the homes of many of the most well-to-do Greek families in town, and steal thousands of dollars worth of gold, cash, and jewellery. I guess these thieves, like their victims, had also been keenly awaiting the ’96 Glenti.
EXPO was the next organised function we attended. It was held on the last weekend of June in the grounds of Darwin High School. This year was going to be “bigger than ever” boasted the promoters.
We went along with a fairly high degree of scepticism. We had heard this spin before so were not expecting to be overly impressed with either the size of the event, or the standard of displays.
However, we were pleasantly surprised. Not only was there a wide range of Darwin businesses and Government departments and bureaus represented, but also many from the other states, as well as Asian countries and specific regions of those countries.
The Asian exhibits were housed together under the covered “Wet” season basketball courts. Some of these countries had erected impressively imposing, intricately carved, wooden facades that certainly succeeded in catching your attention.
There were stalls in the gymnasium, and the carparks, and the covered walkways, and a huge tent had been erected on the oval to house even more displays.
We estimated that the tent was about the size of our Kensington block, or at least 400 square metres. What was even more impressive were the large plastic air-conditioning ducts that snaked their way around the top of the tent, keeping the large interior enjoyably cool.
We ambled our way through alleys of stalls around the various locations throughout the school, picking up brochures, watching demonstrations, fossicking through knick-knacks, and being serenaded all-the-while by a Polynesian school girl choir.
There were all manner of displays from Bali style furniture to go-karts, from hand carved ornaments to trucks, from batik clothing to travel bureaus, from insulation to herbal remedies, from University info to solar cars, from kitchen utensils to shadecloth sails.
We were very interested to watch a machine produce a quality poster size copy of an ordinary sized photograph right there on the spot. The poster cost a couple of hundred bucks, and the machine could be had for a mere $50,000. We picked up a few local stats from the Bureau of Statistics stall, here are a few:-
∙ Darwin’s average annual humidity at 9.00am is 73%.
∙ Darwin’s average annual temperature is 31.9ºc max and 23.2ºc min.
∙ Darwin’s average annual rainfall is 1,651 mm.
∙ Darwin male salaries are around $220 per week more than females.
∙ Total NT population is (est.) 173,878
∙ Total NT registered motor vehicles 92,000 (that’s at least 1 car for every 2 Territorians)
As we were making our way back to our car to leave, we were momentarily way-layed by an amusing incident.
Ever since the armoured tank division was relocated from Melbourne to Darwin, the army has tried to maintain a high and friendly profile, by rolling up to any community event or promotion (such as Expo) that is willing to have them.
They roll-up as a small outfit in a very large tank. We’ve become quite familiar with their presence now. Both the soldiers and tank are similarly dressed in the same camouflage colours, each sheltered under forests of leafy eucalypt branches.
Kids get a kick out of clambering all over this monstrous machine.
However, I bet whoever authorised the tank’s presence at Expo were kicking themselves when they saw the destruction this thing had done without firing a shot.
We watched on as it noisily fired up its engines to leave. It had to make a right turn, and as it undertook this rather awkward manoeuvre it very effectively had the same impact on the once green lawn it had been parked on that you would expect a large rotary hoe to have – it made an absolute mess.
Open-mouthed by-standers were showered in sand and dust as they looked on aghast, as it persisted on it’s way down the drive, leaving in its wake instant crazy-paving, where once had lain smooth bitumen.
Our next big outing occurred on a public holiday two Fridays back to celebrate The Royal Darwin Show. We went along in the evening, and although it may appear that I’m about to indulge in my own version of “Show bagging”, we did actually enjoy our night out.
There were the usual sort of things you’d expect at a show, but unlike The Perth Royal Show where the focus clearly revolves around rural life, the Royal Darwin Show didn’t seem to have a particular theme.
It was more like a large country fair, where the emphasis is on broad community participation. In terms of standards, there was little demanded of exhibitors or competitors.
The level of most competition entries was particularly amateurish, and some were dreadful. We reckon if we’re here for next year’s show, there’s a number of competitions we could enter and stand a fairly reasonable chance of winning.
The photography display for one was truly woeful, and the display cases housing the prize winning sponges, and pikelets, and lamingtons looked like they contained the remains of last year’s entries.
I had been particularly keen to see the orchid and tropical plants pavilion, hoping that I may at long last learn the names of some of our balcony plants. I zero-ed in on a variegated leaf that looked like one we had, it’s label read – shade plant, others read – hanging basket plant – green leafed plant – pot plant and so on, it was very disappointing.
Pride of display was definitely not high on the agenda. The orchid display though not bad, was not nearly as beautiful as I’d expected it to be, the blooms were certainly gorgeous but most plants had yellow or burnt leaves.
The gerbera and rose picked bloom collection looked particularly sad. All the winning entries sat in individual vases in single file along a white sheet covered trestle table. Despite this night being the official first night of the show, many of the blooms had already withered and died.
The animal pavilion held a strange mix of critters. There was one turkey, one pig, a couple of ducks with their ducklings, a few pens of very attractive dairy goats with their kids, but the rest of the large pavilion contained aisles and aisles of cages upon cages of Guinea pigs, chooks and fantailed pigeons each displaying 1st, 2nd, or 3rd certificates of honour, and that was it.
The closest we got to seeing a buffalo for example was when we had a “Buff Burger” for dinner, a very delicious burger mind you, which we ate on a lawn embankment watching an amusing “dogs, and then a boy, mustering ducks” display.
We capped the night off with a stroll through side show alley, getting stuck into a very yummy cookie and cream icecream, craning our necks watching those death-wish rides that zip and dip and rip you to pieces.
And now, that really is me all in. Say G’day to the rest of the family. Take care.
lots of love
Tren & Greg
XXOOXX
