The Darwin Letters – The Final Letter, No. 14

If you’ve missed it, this series starts here.

Tuesday 5 November 1996

20/288 Casuarina Drive
Nightcliff 0810

G’day Mum and Dad

Nov 96 Greg has accepted a job offer at Murdoch University, and has agreed to commence working there on Monday 2nd December 1996 – less than four weeks from today – YIPPEE!! 

So we’re packing our bags, and aim to fly out on Saturday 30th November 1996 – 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days after the day we first arrived in Darwin. 

Although we are very keen to return to our home in Kensington, we reckon that our time up here, although perhaps a tad too long, has been an invaluable and worthwhile experience.

Well, the “Build-Up”, the season which has few redeeming qualities, appropriately called – the Troppo season, is well and truly here.  Temperatures hover between 27ºc and 34ºc night and day, and the humidity falls no lower than around 50%. 

We’ve had to leave the cupboards in the spare rooms open because the stench of mould is becoming rather potent.  Our ceiling fans are working over-time. 

We’ve had some rain, however the regular monsoonal downpours are probably still a few weeks away yet.  Late last night we stood out in the cool breeze on the balcony, watching large flashes of sheet lightning illuminate the sky, as though some unseen hand was flicking a switch off and on in rapid succession. 

Whilst we were out there, we were mildly startled by a fruit bat in search of food just metres away in the – now taller than our balcony – carpentaria palm. 

Several days previously the palm had been heavily laden with large bunches of bright red berries, that had attracted a beautiful range of birds.  However, much to my disappointment, our gardener deemed in his wisdom, that the prospect of bats and birds dropping well nibbled berries on his pristine lawn was just unthinkable, so promptly lopped them down.

Generally, life at the apartments goes on as usual, old tenants move out, new ones move in.  Some of the apartments have been up for sale, you can have one if you’ve got $250,000.00 – $300,000.00 to spare. 

I am pleased to see that our frilled neck lizard has returned to its possy on our front lawn coconut palm, but I am less pleased to see that the weather has brought back a persistent plague of tiny and annoying ants. 

Our social life has been fairly limited, seeing much of our spare time was spent on job applications.  Mind you we haven’t been totally reclusive. 

We still make good use of the local pool, and we always enjoy going on long drives. We’ve also indulged in a bit of fine-dining, including at the newly named and renovated MGM Grand Casino. 

Grand it aint!   Tacky it is!  Thongs are out, but that’s about the extent of the dress code, and I’ve got to tell you, that whomever is responsible for the interior decorating needs to be put on medication. 

The floor is covered in the world’s worst taste carpet we’ve ever had the misfortune to see – nauseating would not be too strong a word to describe it.  Large bright yellow-orange-pink flowers (or something like that) scream out from a black background.   If you look at it too long as you walk across it, it’s like looking into a kaleidoscope, you become quite disoriented.

We did have a rather interesting adventure a couple of weeks back.  Our good friend Ken Eggleston is on an extended holiday travelling solo in his ute around Australia. 

He was our house guest for four days.  He was particularly keen to experience the ferocious tropical weather he’d heard so much about.  It looked like, he was going to dip out, but then we went to Litchfield Park…

It was a fine morning as we loaded up the car with eskies and bathers and towels to eventually set off on our 2 hour journey.  We stopped at a few points along the way to take some photos, and once at the park we made our way along the various water features, having a dip at each, and finely settling at Wangai Falls to enjoy our picnic lunch, keeping an ever watchful eye on a Gould’s goanna as it persistently tried to steal food from unsuspecting picnickers. 

We went for a brief amble along a boardwalk through monsoon rainforest to let our lunch digest, before heading in for a swim.  We were enjoying the beautifully warm water of Wangi Falls, wary that the distant rolling thunder was becoming louder and more frequent, the sky was getting darker, and a light drizzle was falling. 

Ken guffawed about the extent of the threat, but we convinced him it was time to leave.  We packed up our gear and headed for the car at an ever increasing speed, only just making it to the shelter of the public toilets before it started bucketing down. 

We changed out of wet bathers, and made a dash for the car.  Parts of the drive home will remain clearly etched in my memory for some time to come. 

We’d warned Ken about how localised the rain could be, and how some low lying roads could be flooded in minutes, and that he should heed flood warnings as he travelled around the Top End – he had upto now been highly sceptical. 

Greg remained remarkably calm as he tentatively negotiated stretches of floodway deep in water, headlights on trying to see through solid walls of monsoonal rain.  Ken, now the earnest back-seat navigator, his once haughty bravado making way for serious recommendations of best driving strategies. 

And me, to say I was nervous would be to understate the situation somewhat.  We made it through in one piece, nerves intact – just. 

However, the Pintarra has as a result of playing hover-craft sustained a rather large and noisy hole in its muffler.  Ken, has since left seeing the value in heading south before the real rains come.

Last Wednesday, we returned home about 6.40pm having done the weekly food shopping.  Now, we generally use the stairs to get to our apartment, but when we have stuff to carry we use the lift.

A ride in the lift to the second floor would normally take about 10 seconds all up.  However, on this occasion around about the 5 second mark, the lift bounced up, then down, then completely shut down. 

There we were, the light still worked, but that was all. Greg pressed the emergency button which linked us by computer to the headquarters of Otis Elevators somewhere in Melbourne or Sydney. 

After several seconds of listening to the beeping and dialling sounds of a digital phone, a disembodied voice of a young female asked, “are you trapped in the lift at Northpoint Apartments?”, we said “yes” and she said “I’ll send a mechanic as soon as possible”. 

Now, if we were sitting in our apartment with the doors open, and the fans on, we would describe the weather conditions as uncomfortably muggy.  Being trapped in a 2 metre square lift with no ventilation can be described as nothing short of sauna-like. 

Thankfully we had water and OJ, we were mindful of stories of people without water dying within 20 minutes in conditions such as this.  After 20 minutes of puffing and sweating and trying to amuse ourselves, we were becoming concerned. 

We rang ‘the voice’ again, she assured us the mechanic was on his way, as soon as he had rescued another person who was also trapped in a lift somewhere in Darwin.  We explained to ‘the voice’, that it was becoming stifling hot in our little lift – she sympathised and rang off. 

My heart was starting to beat harder and faster and louder, Greg was dripping with perspiration, so we both started shedding our clothing.  10 minute later we were more emphatic about our condition to ‘the voice’. 

10 minutes later there was a whirr and the lift jerked back into life taking us down to ground level.   We grabbed our discarded garments and groceries and were out of there in milli-seconds. 

It was dark outside but no sign of a mechanic.  The lift had come back to life on its own. 

The night air that we would usually find hot and muggy felt refreshingly cool.  We started to climb the stairs to the second floor, this task became increasingly arduous with every step, our leg muscles had become amazingly weak from our ordeal. 

We don’t know if the mechanic ever did get there, but our oven clock showed that the power had been off for forty minutes – so much for the lifts back-up system.  And, do you think we’ll be getting in that lift again?

Anyway, that’s it.  The time has come for me to sign-off.  Hope you’ve enjoyed reading as much as I’ve enjoyed writing.   Take care.

lots of love 

Tren & Greg 

XXOOXX

GM: NOTE: Although this was the last letter to my parents there will be other occasional instalments in this series as Trenna repurposed a lot of this writing. You will see what I mean as it comes out. I also have a few stories of my own to tell about our time in Darwin.