If you’ve missed it, this series starts here.
Tuesday 17 January 1995
20/288 Casuarina Drive
Nightcliff NT 0810
G’day Mum and Dad,
Sorry we missed you on Sunday, Mum. How did you and Deb do at the Markets? Is this the first time you have sold stuff there? I can’t remember if we ever did get around to going to the Cannington Markets, I know we had intended to. How do they compare with other markets?
Greg’s going very well at work. His bosses seem very impressed with him so far. He’s also in the process of applying for his boss’s job, which he has to hand in by Friday week.
And, he’s been asked to go to Kuala Lumpur mid February. He doesn’t know the details yet, but is quite keen to go.
Now, I’ve just re-read your previous letters and realise that you both asked a variety of questions which to date I don’t think we have answered. So, in response…
No, I haven’t received any more offers of work from NTU. I may not, until the academic year starts in February. In the meantime, I have been honing my word processing skills – as you can no doubt see – in anticipation.
We’re both happy for me just to rely on any temporary work from NTU at this stage. And no, Greg hasn’t bumped into Margaret at the Uni thus far.
Mum, your friend may have eaten green ants, but they don’t appeal to us all that much. Were they eaten as a dessert or savoury dish? I ask this because there is plenty of “Green Curry” sold here, and until now I had thought it was the Coriander and Lime which made it green!
In regards to our old washing machine, we are currently storing it in the spare room. We may get around to selling it, but you know us when it comes to selling things! The apartment’s washing machine is a Simpson Delta 422 Heavy Duty. It’s quite a bit bigger and flasher than ours, but it sure makes a hell of a racket when it switches functions during the washing cycle.
We have also had to adapt to accommodate the restrictive hanging space here. There is nowhere officially that you can hang your clothes.
What we do presently, is hang Greg’s work shirts to drip dry from the shower curtain rail over the bath in the guest bathroom, tumble dry the towels and bed linen, and hang everything else on a clothes horse on the balcony to dry – this is only permitted, according to the apartment rules as a temporary measure and must be removed as soon as clothes are dry.
When it’s raining outside, it’s “snowing” on the telly
It works OK, but I would much prefer a permanently fixed clothes line somewhere. It will be interesting to see how we go with hanging space when we have guests.
We have noticed that some of our neighbours have these lines which hook onto their balcony doors, but we haven’t seen them in the shops yet.
Our laundry, which I call “The Hot Box” is just that. It’s about 6ft x 4 1/2ft, and when the machine and dryer are both on the humid heat that is generated is unbearable.
Yes, thankfully we do have ABC and SBS television. If we didn’t, we would have to rely solely on hiring videos, because Channel 8 is shocking. Even if it were good though, we get terrible reception for Channel 8. When it’s raining outside, it’s “snowing” on the telly.
Mind you, we don’t watch much telly here anyway because most nights, if it’s not raining alot, we go for a walk, then have a shower, cook dinner, eat dinner and have a chat, by which stage it’s gone 9.00pm.
Greg still gets up at 5.45am and goes for a walk as well. He averages about 2 1/2km in the morning, and in the evening we walk anything up to about 5km. I bought Greg a pedometer for his birthday so we have been able to measure how far we walk, it’s been very interesting.
Going for a walk, run, cycle or roller blade is a very popular pastime along the foreshore cycle way. Perhaps the poor quality of telly viewing is doing everyone a healthy favour.
It is very entertaining as well to watch passersby from our balcony. They come in all shapes, sizes, ages and styles. On the weekends many people walk to, or take their dinner to – you are permitted to consume alcohol in this section of the foreshore – the jetty 1km up from us (where the boat people arrived recently) to watch the sunset.
It’s a strange phenomenon indeed.
This ritual seems to appeal to all social groups. There’s groups of teenage guys and girls, blokes in their 20s, young courting couples, Greek, Asian, Aboriginal and European families, tourists, fisherpersons and groups of DINKS (double income no kids) all congregating together, but still doing their own thing, primarily to watch the setting sun.
It’s a refreshing sight. Usually, from my experience, 20 year old blokes or teenagers, don’t want to be seen dead in the same place as “families” on the weekends.
Regarding window dressings Mum. We have grey micro venetians covering the bedroom windows and grey verticals covering the lounge room window.
There are no window coverings over the French doors which lead to the balcony, or the louvreed windows next to them. Although it’s very nice to constantly have a view of the Sea, sometimes it’s a bit too bright in the lounge room.
For example, I watched some of the Hopman Cup while Greg did some work on his computer one afternoon, and I could barely see the screen, let alone the ball going back and forth. We had to hang our beach towels over the doors to darken the room.
Yes we do have awnings on the balcony. There are two large ones on the sides of the main balcony, and one for the front of the small balcony. They’re basically shade cloth with a metal rod along the bottom, which you can roll up or fasten down to the balcony floor.
Until this weekend, they had been perfect for screening sun, wind and rain. But, this weekend’s tropical depression brought them crashing down at about 3.30am Saturday morning.
It was a bit spooky, it was pouring and very windy. We seemed to fair better than our neighbours though, because ours just harmlessly lay on the balcony floor.
Where as, the awnings of our neighbour to the right of us broke their moorings at the base and the wind set sail to them. Their metal rods were crashing against the metal balcony railings, buckling the railings with each strike, then they soared upwards, scraping against the wall removing a fair amount of paint and plaster in the process, then the end of the rod hooked on to a flyscreen and flung it onto the balcony, then the awning smashed into their French doors breaking several panes in the process.
A number of our other neighbours tried to rescue their awnings in vain as well. The awnings of the unit above us though, probably caused the most damage, and definitely were responsible for us not getting any sleep for the rest of the night (and that’s saying something, Greg usually has no trouble sleeping, no matter what).
Their awning also broke free at the base, and set sail crashing against the railings. But in this case, the wind managed to carry the awning up and over the railings, so that it was crashing on the outside of the balcony railings, then soaring up against the downpipe, basically turning that into scrap metal, then soaring higher and thumping down on the tin roof of the apartments sending an horrendous thudding shudder through our apartment, it continued all of Saturday and well into Sunday.
The owners of both of these apartments don’t seem to reside here very often. In fact, the bloke to the right of us hasn’t been there since we arrived, and both had to be contacted before anything could be done.
Today is Tuesday and the situation still hasn’t been rectified completely. Although, the awning in the unit above us has been tied primitively to the railings, there is still enough slack to enable the metal rod to thump against the railings with monotonous regularity. I feel like I’m in a Chinese Temple and someone, at 30 second intervals, is striking a gong which is just enough off key to drive you silly.
Anyway, back to the story, we thought that the Saturday morning radio news would be full of stories about storm damage etcetera. There was nothing, not a thing! It didn’t even say that it was a particularly gusty night. The weather here, is a strange and frightening thing!
The awnings coming down though, did give us an opportunity to meet our landlord. He (Paul), came round to assess the damage on Saturday arvo, and brought with him the apartment’s new light fittings (we currently only have naked bulbs). He seems very nice, and assured us that we would also have our much awaited for, toilet roll holders in the next week or two. We hope so!
YES WE HAVE BEEN TO SEE THE CYCLONE TRACY MUSEUM DISPLAY. IT WAS MOVED RECENTLY TO THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. IT’S A VERY SOBERING DISPLAY. #
Thank-you Mum, for your well informed information about postage. Yes, we were caught napping, Christmas just seemed to be upon us before we knew it, thus we had no time to consider postage strategies. We know now!
In regards to you visiting us, June sounds fine. As far as we know, it should be nice weather then. In the Christmas Sales, we bought a sofa bed for prospective guests, so you needn’t worry about sleeping arrangements.
We also bought a bread maker during the sales. (We were inspired to make our own bread, after paying $2.50 for a very ordinary Multigrain Toasty Loaf.)
We just add the ingredients, and it does the rest, including filling the apartment with a most mouthwatering aroma whilst it’s baking. It makes a loaf 1/2 to 2/3’s the size of conventional bought loaves.
We have to date, had various degrees of success, but we enjoy experimenting. The Bran Bread works a treat, in more ways than one! Raisin bread is also yum, but you don’t get big chunks of raisins. Hopefully, we’ll have perfected a variety for you to sample when you visit.
So Mum, you have a “jam packed” pantry! I’m very impressed that you could make strawberry jam from your own home-grown strawberries.
I aimed to do that a couple of years ago, but only managed to get enough strawberries to make Greg and me a strawberry milk shake.
The only culinary plants we have up here on our balcony so far, are Basil and Parsley. On Friday evening, Greg commented on how well and rapidly the Basil in particular was growing. By Saturday morning the storm had changed all that. They have been almost totally annihilated by wind burn. It’s so sad!
Dad, your photos of Darwin in 1942, may look slightly different to the Darwin of today. From all accounts, there isn’t much of the old Darwin left. However, the Darwin Hotel is still here, and supposedly it still reflects the period of WW11.
We had hoped to get out and explore around the city this past weekend, but it still hasn’t stopped raining heavily, so we are at this stage still not that well informed about Darwin.
And Dad, regarding the terrain around Darwin. The land is quite flat but some areas must be lower, as they are the ones subject to storm surge during a cyclone. We are told that our apartment is not in such an area, but that land just a small distance either side, is.
The vegetation is also quite interesting. Here in Darwin there are plenty of tropical plants and palms, whilst in neighbouring Palmerston – 15 minutes away – the dominant trees are gums. It must have something to do with the proximity to the coast.
There are also pockets of monsoon rain forest, but not alot. We haven’t travelled much yet, and may not for awhile by the look of the weather.
But we did recently drive to Berry Springs, 60km down “The Track”. There are several attractions worth taking a look at there.
The Berry Springs Nature Park has springs set amidst tropical monsoon forests, and there are also some very pretty picnic and barbecue areas. We didn’t swim there this time round.
Actually, I’m going to have to be fairly brave to take a dip there because it’s full of protected marine life, including at least one huge carnivorous (how do I know it doesn’t fancy human flesh?) Baramundi, a variety of other fish and water SNAKES! Oohooh, the very thought makes my skin crawl.
But it did look idyllic, and there were plenty of people in the water, so it must be OK. But for the time being, I’ll keep my swimming limited to the Nightcliff Pool.
That reminds me, let me digress for a moment…We were at the Nightcliff Pool the other day, it was wonderful. The sky was blue except for a few harmless looking cumulus type clouds.
We walked amongst kangaroos, had a giant sting-ray swim over our heads, stroked a python, drank litres of water, spotted dingoes, dined in the kiosk, hiked along nature trails, stood within inches of a mega croc, had a bat chat, and my favourite, walked amongst beautiful tropical birds
We were sitting on the grass, I was reading and Greg was writing. We looked up and over to our apartments 400 metres away and were amazed to see an ink black sky because here we were still sitting under an azure sky.
We decided to go for another dip, but within seconds the sky changed colour and we scurried out only just in the nick of time to save our gear getting drenched in the Tropical down pour that ensued.
The weather changes so quickly here.
Now, back to Berry Springs. The Territory Wild Life Park is another attraction at Berry Springs. We recommend it as a must do for any of our future visitors.
It’s $10 a person, ($5 pensioners) we got $5 off, and a free hat and sticker because we’re Territorians, but we would have happily paid the full price.
We arrived in time to see the 10.00am feeding of The Birds of Prey. They were awesome as they swooped and soared over us and their handlers. We had my binoculars, and when we looked through them, it looked like these massive birds would knock us down as they flew past – they didn’t.
We stayed almost to closing time and still didn’t see everything. Mind you, that’s not surprising because there is 400 hectares to cover.
It was way too hot to walk everywhere, so we took the shuttle train – a tractor towing several metal carriages – hard on your backside, it rattles your teeth and blows your hats off, but provides quick and fresh access to each attraction.
We walked amongst kangaroos, had a giant sting-ray swim over our heads, stroked a python, drank litres of water, spotted dingoes, dined in the kiosk, hiked along nature trails, stood within inches of a mega croc, had a bat chat, and my favourite, walked amongst beautiful tropical birds in a large dome aviary which was linked to an elevated board walk through a monsoon rain forest.
It rained while we were walking through the rain forest, it was magic!
Speaking of rain, it hasn’t stopped since Friday. Our balcony is soaked and unfortunately, unusable for now – it’s not as good when we can’t eat out on the balcony.
Last night’s news said that Darwin city had received a record 320mm since Friday morning. Quite a few tourists have been trapped in various places due to flooding.
And now, many of the tourist attractions are closing because even the 4WD vehicles can’t access them. I reckon we’re going to be house bound for awhile.
Well, that’s it. I may have meandered somewhat, and given some fairly long winded responses, but I think all your questions have now been answered – and some.
Say G’day to everyone. We hope the heat in Perth is not too oppressive. Take care.
lots of love
Tren and Greg
OXXO
[# GM: As an aside, Cyclone Tracy destroyed Darwin on Christmas Day 1974. Trenna had a connection to it (other than living in Darwin) in that well before I met her she shared a house with Doug, whose grandmother was tragically killed by a flying fridge during the cyclone! She was one of 71 people killed that night.]