The Actual Letters…
or at least the first of them
If you’ve missed it, this series starts here.
Welcome to the third instalment in this series.
I’ve changed my mind several times, wrestling with how best to present this series of stories from when Trenna and I lived in tropical Darwin.
I’ve now decided I will do it by publishing, in the order they were written and sent, the letters Trenna wrote to my Mum and Dad.
We later found out that my Mum and Dad, once they had read the missives would then pass them around to their fellow inmates at their retirement village. So you aren’t the first people to hear these stories…..
Here is the first Darwin letter to my parents.
NOTE: To make them clearer to read on a screen I have broken up Trenna’s original large paragraphs into much smaller ones.
AND ANOTHER NOTE: This was way before digital photography, so photos weren’t included with the original letters. I have added these to this series of posts for added interest.
Friday 25 November 1994
20/288 Casuarina Drive,
Nightcliff 0810
Phone (089) 854591
Dear Mum and Dad,
How are you both? We’re going good. Greg’s settling in to work and I’ve given my CV to the Human Resource mob at NTU and am now just hanging out to hear from them.
It was very nice to hear from you on Sunday. We have been writing this letter for a number of days now, so you may have already heard some of this over the phone, but what the heck.
Thanks very much for returning my dress. I’m very pleased they accepted it back from you without any drama. We have redirected our mail so, you shouldn’t be getting any more. Thanks for handling that for us.
Now lets not beat around the bush here, we are both not too keen on letter writing, so there won’t be too many of these, but we’ll certainly keep in touch by phone.
Well, I’ll give you the drum on what has happened so far.
The flight was relatively uneventful apart from the usual occasional turbulence. Oh yeah, and we saw some very specky salt lakes somewhere in the North of WA.
We had a 15 minute refueling stop at Kununurra, which allowed us to stretch our legs on a quick walk across the stinking hot tarmac from the air-conditioned plane to the air-conditioned arrival and departure lounge.
The temperature was reportedly a scorching 41 degrees, but I reckon outside amidst the dust of nearby earthworks, the smell of fuel and the reflective heat of the tarmac it was probably in excess of 45 degrees.
Once back on the plane it only took about 50 minutes to get to Darwin.
Margie (Greg’s boss) met us at the airport. She was very welcoming and helped us take our luggage to her car.
The Darwin humidity certainly hit us when we got outside. We could already see that air-conditioning was going to feature heavily in our lives here.
Margie took us on a brief but informative sightseeing tour of the city and around the University. She then very thoughtfully bought us a street directory, took us to get some essential food items from a small shopping centre close to where we would be staying, and then delivered us to our hotel.
The “Coconut Grove Holiday Apartments” where we stayed for the first week was less salubrious than we had expected, but nevertheless there was a very nice pool and spa there that we took advantage of on several occasions. The pool water is constantly tepid so there is no initial shock of getting in.
We had a very close up view of green ants as they steadily ran along the pool fence. They are BIG, but very impressive to look at, I don’t fancy getting bitten by one though.
Darwin Airport is owned by the Airforce and they do quite a few practice runs (big boys games), we witnessed several flyovers of F111s and other stealthy looking machines during our first week here.
On our first Friday night here we had dinner at Margie’s, her husband Steve’s and their three year old son Anthony’s place. Their house is elevated and Steve has built an elevated deck to extend the verandah out over the pool to capture some of the dearly sought after breeze.
We had our meal out on the deck which was very pleasant sitting amongst the many large palms they have grown in their garden, some already four metres high and only five years old.
A bunch? of fruit bats flew overhead during the course of the evening searching out mangoes to either eat or drop on a car, according to Steve, fruit bat pooh is also a pretty effective duco stripper.
Our search for housing was less than enjoyable. We hired a tiny little Mazda 121 (in which my leg kept on getting in the way of the gear stick), to get us around the various real estate agencies and suburbs.
We had been warned that housing was expensive, but not to the extent that it is. Especially if you want a post seventies house with a pool – a very big ask for under $350 a week.
So we opted for an apartment without a pool, but on the beach and 400 metres from the Nightcliff Swimming Pool. It is in the northern suburbs, a few minutes drive from the Uni and Casuarina Square (the biggest shopping centre in Darwin).
The apartment is almost brand new and has everything that goes “bleep bleep”, including remote control security gates (with a jazzy little telly that you can see your guests on), remote control air-conditioning in the three bedrooms and dining/lounge, six ceiling fans, a food disposal unit, dishwasher, fridge, washing machine and dryer, two bathrooms and toilets, and a great balcony which is big enough to fit our large jarrah outdoor table as well as our smaller jarrah outdoor setting and gas barbie.
We also have two undercover parking spaces, one of them has a couple of lockers for Greg to store some of his tools in. There is also a lift, but be warned that it is like travelling in a moving sauna.
Our car arrived on time, perhaps not as clean as we expected, but it was good to have some leg space again. Our furniture arrived on time – just. The Grace blokes were still unpacking at about 7.30 on Friday evening.
Several boxes went missing until the following Monday and a few things did get broken, but nothing too serious.
Darwin seems like a nice enough place, more spread out and greener than I had imagined. It’s a very tropical looking place with a lot of palms, mangoes and fabulous red, pink, orange and white frangipanis lining the streets.
There are a huge range of magnificent palms including many coconut palms which means you have to be careful where you park your car or you could be in for some serious panel beating expenses.
We have seen coconuts just lying on the ground, some had even started to sprout obviously not moved by anyone – amazing man!
The housing varies dramatically from house to house, there are “Gold Coast” like apartment blocks, next to traditional elevated homes, next to flats, next to ground level homes, many with very Darwinite architectural features – louvres and verandahs.
Some shops are open seven days a week and Coles Supermarkets are open 24 hours a day. We have already discovered the joy of food shopping relatively late at night, there are few people in the shop, parking is easy, and the car stays cool(er).
The cost of most food seems only marginally more expensive than Perth, but dairy products are definitely pricier.
Initially we were concerned that we could not buy muffins here, (our staple diet for weekend brekkys) but were relieved to find them in the deep freeze section alongside the Greek style breads and crumpets. They obviously don’t survive too long on the shelf here.
There are a range of things that have impressed us so far,
- the large number of restaurants and food outlets
2. the lack of flies and mozzies
3. getting your booze at the supermarket
4. the extended trading hours
the things that have not impressed us so far,
5. mangoes! Yuk! Greg and I both reckon they taste like eating diesoline
6. no telly mag. You get a weekly telly liftout in Monday’s rag
only (this is not glossy, just newsprint)
7. only one commercial TV channel which seems to have picked the worst programmes from channels 7, 9 & 10 to screen
Electrical gadgetry is not my forte. Here I sit amidst all this gee whiz techno stuff writing this letter, and I decide all my thinking energy is making me very hot. However, this does not faze me because I can just zap the air-conditioner with my remote control.
So, that is what I did and consequently this computer went haywire and froze the screen, the printer went crazy and started printing 35 pages of this letter (I know I have waffled on, but it’s not that long) and I also blew a fuse thinking that I had lost all that I had written.
Trusty Greg came to the rescue, and although he couldn’t fix the problem on Microsoft Word, he was able to retrieve the data from DOS, so I have just gained some valuable typing skills by retyping it.
This malfunction, Greg feels, only strengthens his case to get a flasher computer, but I don’t know about that. I only hope the printer will now print this, so if you don’t hear from us, you know the printer wouldn’t work.
Observations we’ve made so far about life in the top end:
no-one wears hats, strange I thought, but changed my mind after wearing my hat on my morning walk – it felt like I was wearing a terrarium
condensation, you can’t put a cold glass down and expect to not get soaked when you pick it up to drink
one item of clothing is more than enough to wear at any one time, underwear is definitely for formal occasions only
thongs are the most favoured footwear
sweaty palms (hands not trees) do not indicate nervousness, they are merely par for the course
We have had some neat storms
We have thus far eaten all of our meals (when at home) out on our balcony. We are on the second floor and get a wonderful breeze. We have a panoramic view of the Arafura Sea and Nightcliff foreshore.
In fact, you may have heard the news recently mentioning that some boat people had made it to a jetty in Darwin without being detected, well that’s just up the road from us, and can be seen from our balcony, but we didn’t see them arrive either.
At the moment, and for the next few months you can’t swim in the sea because of Box Jellyfish which can kill you. There are also some salt water crocs, but I don’t know how much of a problem they are in this particular area.
We will find out though before we venture into the water.
We have a wonderful variety of birds around here, so we’re both making good use of my newly acquired (birthday pressy from Greg) binoculars to check them out. Each evening about six, some trees at the back of the apartments get invaded by hundreds of bright red squawking Rosellas, and there are these other birds which Greg thinks may be called Kites that just continually glide without flapping their wings, they look very graceful.
Back to the weather, (I must be running out of things to say) “At last!” I hear you cry.
The WET has partially arrived. We have had some neat storms.
Our balcony offers a front row seat as sheet and fork lightning combined with rolling thunder put on a riveting display out at sea. Both the lightning and thunder seem to come from all directions, and then it pours, it really is quite thrilling.
It gets not only us, but our neighbours as well out onto their balconies oohing and aarhing at each new strike. The only drawback, is that we are also in the frontline should a cyclone hit Darwin, we wait with bated breath!
Well folks, that’s about it from us teritorians for now. Say G’day to everyone.
love
Tren and Greg
OXXO