If you’ve missed it, this series starts here.
A note before Tren starts: There is about a 4 and a half month break between the following letter and the previous one. I suspect that there wasn’t one written in that time. That period includes a lot of “The Dry” when we were way more active, but during this period my parents visited and Trenna’s sister Barb visited. Our friends Lorraine and Neil also arrived to live in Darwin, Lorraine had landed the job as my boss at NTU. We were involved in settling them in. Trenna also had a short-term contract to work at the University. So all in all I suspect Trenna was just too busy doing stuff to write.
Thursday, 3 August 1995
20/288 Casuarina Drive
Nightcliff 0810
Well Hello there Mum and Dad,
Finally, now that we are once again guestless, and I’m home on Thursdays and Fridays I have the time to exercise some creativity, so I’m about to get ink to paper – provided I can figure out how to use this program of course.
Anyway, how are you both? Dad, how is your back going?. We are both fighting fit, and the weather here is suiting us perfectly. It’s cool enough in the morning for me (not Greg though) to wear a winnie, and the days are the same glorious sunshine as when you were here, although we have had a few rather humid days recently, one day recording 100% humidity in the morning.
Greg is very busy at the Uni, and his recent trips to Melbourne and Malaysia have not helped to lighten his load, but he is coping very well. I’ve happily ended my contract, but have agreed to do relief work from time to time for the Staff Development Branch.
Going back a bit… 1st July is the anniversary of self government for the Northern Territory, but it is better known as ‘cracker night’.
For the couple of weeks leading up to this date, households are swamped with junk mail and bombarded with TV ads offering the cheapest, biggest variety, safest, or “IMPORTED DIRECTLY FROM CHINA” fireworks.
Cracker night was on the Saturday eve of Greg going to Melbourne. He had only returned from Malaysia on the Friday, so we had not had the time or the inclination to be bothered with getting any fireworks for ourselves.
As we hadn’t seen each other for the past week, and weren’t going to see each other for the coming week, Greg decided he would like to treat me to a special dinner, so he cooked one of his very yummy pork roasts.
We of course ate this out on the balcony, and were treated to what seemed like our very own spectacularly colourful and loud fireworks display. There were hundreds of people all along the foreshore letting off crackers of many colours and styles, all trying to outdo each other.
The group immediately in front of our balcony must have spent a fortune because they had such a magnificent variety (Catherine wheels, rockets, etc) which lasted from 8.00 – 10.00 PM.
The police and fire-brigade cruised by a couple of times but there were no major incidents, although there were a few near misses. Some ‘bright spark’ tied a cracker to a balloon and let it loose, it wafted onto our front lawn area, and left a 1 metre round burnt patch in the lawn.
The group in front of our balcony managed to set fire to a palm which, after much hysterics and some panic, they eventually managed to beat out using a large palm frond. There was much screaming and running when some of the crackers misfired and shot out sideways instead of upwards.
Beats me why no-one was seriously injured, especially considering that anyone is allowed to let off their crackers anywhere, and that quite often alcohol has been consumed as part of the festivities, but the locals assure me that no serious burns have occurred over the past 20 year history of these celebrations.
Unfortunately though, since that night we have not spotted the lizard that lived under the large ‘mains’ box across the road. I’m not really surprised, it must have been terrorised by the noise.
I reckon Darwin has at least doubled its population in the past month. Even in our apartments there has been a steady stream of ‘oldies’ visiting.
We see stacks of caravans and campers on the road, many more grey haired couples up at Casuarina Square, and the city is swarming with Aussie and European backpackers. My sister Barb, and niece Natalie thoroughly enjoyed their 10 day stay up here.
They arrived late on a Monday afternoon. I rang to see if their flight was going to arrive on time, and was informed that it was going to be half an hour late – well Mum wouldn’t you just know it, it rolled in 15 minutes early!
Luckily we found them, not too concerned still waiting for their luggage to come through. I’m not sure about this checking to see if arrivals are running to schedule – I might give it a miss in future.
Greg managed to have one day off while they were here so we went for a BBQ down at Howard Springs. It was a really gorgeous day, and we swam amongst some very large barramundi and other unknown aquatic life whilst dozens of ibis and white cockatoo hovered and chattered very loudly over-head.
Barb and Nat also went on a 3 day safari tour in Kakadu, which sounded absolutely marvellous. They went in a 14 seater 4WD bus, camped out, and paddled on air mattresses through gorges to Twin Falls, which they thought was breathtaking and exhilarating.
They also went on a 2 day tour to Katherine which took in the Orchid Farm where they were each given a bouquet of several orchids (we have since acquired these). They stayed the night at a motel in Katherine and went on the boat cruise through several of the gorges, and then they returned to Darwin via Litchfield Park and The Territory Wildlife Park (unfortunately they weren’t given enough time to see many of the exhibits).
They rated the Kakadu tour as a much more exciting tour, but they still thought the Katherine tour was worth doing.
As I’m sure you know, the military operation ‘Kangaroo 95’ is currently under way up this neck of the woods. This has meant some interesting happenings out on the waters.
Apart from seeing some very impressive ships, we’ve heard ships exchange fire, seen considerable amounts of smoke on the horizon, and followed large navy helicopters (with our binoculars) as they go out to eventually land on the ships, it’s very interesting viewing.
Mind you, we’re a little concerned for our safety, because we have been told terrible stories of ineptitude on the part of one of the countries participating in the exercise, we hope they don’t mistakenly set us in their sights.
Last Friday was a public holiday for The Royal Darwin Show. We had been given various advise on whether it was worth going to or not. We decided we’d give it a go, but not during the day on ‘peoples’ day, we’d wait for the cool of the evening on Saturday or Sunday.
We opted for Sunday in the end and got a video out, “Pulp Fiction”, on Saturday night. Apart from our work colleagues advice on whether to go or not, we hadn’t heard much about the show, so on Sunday morning I tracked down a Suburban news which had a liftout detailing the events – I wanted to make sure that the show didn’t close early in the evening, it being a Sunday.
No fear of that, it finished on Saturday night – The Royal Darwin Show (unlike The Royal Perth Show) only runs for 3 days! Whoops – spot the new chums!
Some things that might interest you –
∙ our potted coconut palm is now 10cm higher than the balcony railing and considerably more leafier.
∙ your pot of mixed cuttings is doing very well Mum
∙ we have had two more occurrences of “meteors” falling and burning up on the horizon – it was very strange, as Greg, Barb, Nat and me walked back along the foreshore from taking touro snaps of the sunset from the jetty, I told Barb and Nat the story of “Bea’s Comet”, I pointed out to the horizon to show where we had spotted it, and there one was again – Nat could hardly contain herself.
∙ tomatoes are currently being sold for $1.59 per kg at Woolies, (they’re usually about $5.99) so I stocked up and plan this week to make your recipe for Tomato & Onion Relish.
∙ Dad, the balcony I’m afraid has never looked quite as clean since you left
∙ the frilled lizard has returned to the palm on our front lawn and the rainbow lorikeets have returned in force to the large tree at the back of our apartments.
Well folks, that’s about it from us at the moment, so take care. Say G’day to the rest of the family.
lots of love
Tren & Greg
XXOOXX
