If you’ve missed it, this series starts here.
Monday 13 February 1995
20/288 Casuarina Drive
Nightcliff 0810
” HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM! “
G’day again Mum and Dad.
We enjoyed our chat with you both on Saturday. Hope you’re still going good.
But rest assured, I won’t let the mundane get in the way of me telling a story or two
We’re both slowly recovering from this wretched flu virus. We thought we might be able to get out and do a few things this weekend, but as it turned out, we were basically just lounge lizards.
Greg’s been boning up on the college that he’s going to in Malaysia. The weather’s been fairly lousy most of the time as well.
So with us being less than healthy, and the weather being less than obliging, our exploits have been fairly limited. There’s not a great deal to write home about.
But rest assured, I won’t let the mundane get in the way of me telling a story or two.
Talking about this lousy weather reminds me, that I drove for the first time up here the other day. I’d gone a fair distance, when I decided to pull over and let Greg take over.
Boy, am I glad I did, because we got caught in one of these famous Darwin monsoonal downpours, that just don’t let up.
We had to crawl along at about 20kph with headlights on, it’s just absolutely blinding. One moment you can drive down a certain road, then it rains and the road becomes totally impassable – like waist deep water impassable!
A lot of people reckon “The Build Up”, with it’s horrid humidity is the worst season here, but at least you can get out and about then. Not like now during “The Wet”, you’re really quite restricted in where you can go.
UPDATE TO 17/1/95 LETTER
We finally found and bought from Kmart, a clothes airer that we can hang from a door, so that’s increased our hanging space a bit. Our basil has miraculously recovered.
We still don’t have toilet roll holders. Our awnings were fixed almost 3 weeks after they came down.
The awning on the balcony of the unit above us persisted to bang day and night for 3 weeks as well unfortunately. We complained twice by phone to the manager of the body corporate, seemingly to no avail.
yes, there really is a place called Humpty Doo, it’s where “The Hard Croc Cafe” is!
So one arvo, sitting on our balcony, we decided to write an extremely, strongly worded official letter of complaint to the body corporate, threatening further action if the situation was not rectified immediately – because it was driving me in particular around the twist.
Well, talk about the pen being mightier than the sword so to speak, Greg was just putting the finishing touches to the letter on his laptop computer when I heard a noise coming from above – somebody was rolling up the delinquent awning.
I did a very exuberant dance around the balcony with absolute sheer joy! Much to Greg’s amusement and relief – it was a really good letter nonetheless!
GM: The above “Update” was contained in a box at the side of the letter (Trenna using her Microsoft Word V5 DOS skills!)
However, thankfully a couple of Saturdays back, there was a brief respite from the rain, so we jumped at the opportunity to go explore.
We went to Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve which is about 60km from Darwin on the Arnhem Highway, via Humpty Doo (where we might go to hire our videos from now on, because a sign on the video shop window at the Humpty Doo shopping centre, read “UP TO 3,000 VIDEOS PER WEEK FOR AS LITTLE AS $1″…what a bargain!). And yes, there really is a place called Humpty Doo, it’s where “The Hard Croc Cafe” is!
OK, back to the dam, it was constructed in the mid 1950’s as a water storage unit to supply water to an experimental new rice growing industry. The experiment failed for a number of reasons and the dam was abandoned.
What’s resulted is a large area of wetlands with a bio-mass of animals unequalled in the world (water pythons and dusky rats are the main contributors to this statistic). The water is filled with masses of plants some of which are currently, spectacularly in flower, including large water lilies and other large leafed bright pink flowers.
There are crocodiles – we’re sure we disturbed one at our first lookout stop, water pythons, turtles, and many varieties of water fowl. The nearby scrub and bushland is also a wildlife refuge.
We took my binocs, and I’m so glad we did. Thanks to them, we saw a lot of wildlife in very clear detail.
For instance, we parked and got out at the roadside – there were these small, bright vivid red (even their face and beaks were a lighter shade of the red) birds nesting and foraging just metres from us. I, and even people with good eyesight would never see them if they just drove by (as several cars did whist we were there).
We had been checking out some water fowl, when Greg spotted a bunch of wild wallaroos about 30 metres away, they were a bit wary of us but didn’t take off, so we watched them eating and watching us for awhile, they were very cute.
There is also a two hour return boardwalk through pockets of monsoon rainforest which we had intended to go on, but it was past 5.30 by the time we got to it.
And as it turned out, we weren’t appropriately armed with salt to fend off the leaches that we would possibly encounter along the way.
We shall return though better prepared. On the drive back to Darwin, we pulled over to take a close look at some grazing buffalo, they are sure big, mean and ugly looking animals – I don’t think they liked the look of us either.
Talking about wildlife reminds me that I should tell you about the wildlife that lives in and around our apartments.
Inside our apartment, and it seems anywhere you live in Darwin, live lots of tiny, weeny, brown ants. Apart from cleaning up any crumbs we may leave on the kitchen bench, they seem particularly fond of our toothbrushes.
They don’t seem to do any harm, they’re just there – better them than big, biting green ants, I guess. Also, along the side of our driveway, lives at least one rather vocal green tree frog.
It’s hard to tell whether there is more than one because their loud rasping sort of call, echoes – echoes. You see, they like living in downpipes or hollow trees, and I’ve read, that they also like living in toilet bowls too – beauty!
In the evenings, we get regular visits from large – 5 to 10cm long, black, flying crickets. They look extremely evil, but are actually only generally a nuisance, except for when they land on you, just ask Greg Mahney, they can give you a rather nasty fright to say the least!
But the ones that amuse us no end are – a couple of dragons, or maybe three! The frilled lizard variety that is.
They hang out – literally – in a palm on the front lawn. At least one (there may be a baby one as well) is generally hanging horizontally from the trunk, the other one just lounges around on the lawn – cleverly disguised as a 60cm piece of palm bark, watching it’s mate’s impressive gymnastics half way up the palm trunk.
But then…, something invariably startles it, and it’s disguise is blown as it stands erect on it’s skinny long hind legs and runs for cover up the palm trunk and into the foliage. They are just so hilarious to watch.
The Arafura is usually a flat aquamarine sea. The recent stormy weather has turned it into a choppy, sudsy, brown sea which has got the young local surfers wrapped.
There’s usually not the slightest hint of a wave, but we’ve watched quite a few boardriders across the road having a go, it’s even made the news. I’m not sure if they’re brave or mad, because their wetsuits may offer protection against stingers, but I’m not convinced they offer much against hungry crocs.
There’s a pretty large ebb and flow of the tide here, at least a couple of hundred metres. It exposes brown beach sand, and many red stained rocks – perhaps from iron?
The area of beach just near the Nightcliff Pool was used as a dump at the end of WWII, much of the debris remains, and it now serves as a museum of sorts – a good way to save on cleaning it up I guess.
When the tide is out you can see drums, large wheels and other unidentifiable rusting stuff. This is not like Perth beaches – white sands, decent waves, no crocs, no killer jelly fish, OO! OH! I’m sounding slightly homesick.
Not to worry though, we went for a walk along the beach immediately across from us on Friday evening. One of our neighbours was there fishing. He’d only caught a couple of catfish, and a small whiting though.
We might have a go when we get Greg’s rod back from Grace Bros – they broke it in the move. We walked up to the mouth of Rapid Creek along the rocks, which have great swirling wave patterns and sea creatures etched into them.
The tide was coming in and making the rocks a bit too slippery, so we went home. Saturday’s News contained the enclosed item – we might leave walking along the beach for the time being.
GM: I don’t think I have the news item, but I remember it. It had a story about a big croc being seen near the mouth of Rapid Creek right about the time we were there! The story speculated that it was probably looking for a mate and had probably come into the creek mouth from the ocean.
Some things we’ve discovered that makes living in Darwin, especially during “The Wet” less than ideal:
– Walls, shoes, clothes, towels and furnishings go mouldy
– Fridges last three years max – they rust, ours has already started to, and we’ve only been here three months
– You need two fridges, cause you have to store potatoes, onions, flour, vegemite, p.p., and makeup in them as well as the usual stuff
– The Weekend Australian costs $1.00 more than anywhere else in Australia, and that’s whether they’ve put the magazine in or not
– Constant use of overhead fans seems to have burnt an almost permanent flicker onto my retina
– Anything made of chipboard can’t hack the humidity
– Melioidosis, known here as Nightcliff Gardener’s Disease, is a soil borne bacteria that kills you – we happen to live in Nightcliff and like gardening
– Paintwork and putty, don’t seem to totally dry out, humidity keeps them soft, and very easily damaged, if you lean anything against a wall you remove the paint when you remove the object
Anyway, despite some negatives we’re still enjoying life here in Darwin. Mind you, we’re pretty keen for “The Dry” to come.
Which reminds me that the weather has been causing us a few minor flooding woes. The tiled floor area outside the door to our apartment, and along the walkways to the stairs and lift has been experiencing some drainage difficulties – it seems that the tilers have made the drains sit on the highest, rather than lowest section of the floor.
Thus when it rains, we’re left with only the narrowest dry strip of tiles to gingerly make our way to and from our apartment. On Friday, there was a lot of hammering and drilling outside our door, we were naturally delighted that the tilers had been called back to fix this problem.
They opted to remove the drain completely, and built up the area to make the tiles slope away towards the front of the apartments, the idea being that any water would just flow off the edge of the walkway.
Choosing this option, obviously did not take the wind factor into consideration – it howls in from the sea (in the opposite direction to the slope of the tiles) particularly strongly in this area – water can’t flow towards the oncoming wind.
It of course was windy and raining heavily on the weekend. Water is now lapping at and slightly under our door. We and our neighbour now need a boat or a pair of “wellies” at the very least, to get in and out of our apartments.
And the poor person living in the ground floor apartment copped all the debris that the tilers created when they removed the drain, straight into their spa. I somehow think that we haven’t seen the last of the tilers.
Well that’s about it from this neck of the woods. Greg checked with the Health Department and found out he doesn’t need malaria pills, so that’s reassuring.
How’s your garden growing Mum? And what vegies have you got in at the moment Dad? I miss our garden something chronic.
Give our love to the rest of the family, and tell Rhonda we do feel for her. Take care.
lots of love
Tren & Greg
XOOX