Shelly, a young playwright met in Alice Springs had warned me. Darwin is not easy on visitors.
To get a real feel for it and love it, and love it she did, after 3 years spent there, it takes surviving your first steamy, sweaty, wet season and the parching, dry season and enjoy both in their own right. Well, that's what she said.
Though I only spent two weeks there, she was not completely right. I loved seeing those old-fashioned houses built on stilts, the ground floor perched at first floor level, wooden louvred walls designed to provide the faintest waft of cooling breeze. I relished the lushness of gardens sprouting with all sorts of tropical greenery unknown to me, spiky red flame flowers and ubiquitous palms. I marvelled at the quiet glittering blue of the bays that make the coastline but regretted not to be able to swim because of salt water crocs, a toothy wildlife presence I wasn't keen to encounter in the flesh, so to speak. I remedied it by spending a day of sunny indulgence at the wave pool on the waterfront, followed by some writing time in a Mexican restaurant and crowned by an evening of live music at Browns Mart courtyard where Scott Bywater, an excellent Tasmanian singer, entertained a friendly, beer-sipping crowd. I particularly recommend his song, 'The Long Division'. Rocky and humorous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-R4ElGXpTw
I enjoyed Elinor's house, with her two beagles chasing each other around the shaded pool in the backyard without ever falling in, and the walls covered with her paintings and shelves groaning under mosaics and sculptures. My lovely host took me along to table tennis competitions where I didn't completely disgrace myself, and to family celebrations, around burgers on the barbecue, green curry and birthday cakes. We went to a quiz night, where our team didn't lose and to a jazz and blues evening where couples from the local dance class twirled like pros.
She dropped me at Parap market, a lively slice of Darwin's demography, with Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Indonesian stalls selling succulent dishes to take away or eat on the spot at one of the many tables nestled in the shade. There, I struck a casual conversation with a young man on his pet parrot's first outing. Coffee shops offered a wide variety of fancy coffees, clothes and batiks were on display and purses and belts in all types of leathers. A bald man read the Tarot to a middle-aged lady, both bent on the cards in a bubble of esoteric concentration. My feet and back were kneaded and pounded at a Thai massage stall. I tried blowing in an intricately decorated didgeridoo and found I was useless. I closed my eyes and listened to a group of Aborigines sitting in the shade, singing in a shrill voice almost tuneless tunes that felt thousands of years old. This is probably my favourite spot in the whole of Darwin, with its buzzing, easy going friendliness. In my opinion, it beats Mindil Beach night market, in spite of its stunning location on the coast.
The Chinese arrived a early as the late 1800s, not long after European immigrants, to work on the gold fields and are a well settled Australian community in Darwin. Other Asian nationals also have flocked en masse to the Northern Territory and work on tropical fruit plantations stretching under the sun on the way to the Adelaide river. Dragon fruit, coconuts, bananas and other pineapples could well be threatened by the contamination of their water supply, as the Northern Territory lifted the ban on fracking a year ago. There is a lot of protest against it that will probably be not listened to. I don't know what you think but, to me, it seems that the most foolish and damaging initiatives get the priority. I have lately been increasingly thinking that there are few real leaders. Real leaders who take the good of the people and of the land in consideration, not just what benefits the greedy, many tentacled god 'Economy', those that will set an example of generosity, care for the environment and openness, those who will be an inspiration and not a desperation... Ah well... What is it called? Peter's principle? Is that right? Rising through hierarchy to a level of respective incompetence. I really do not have a picture for my ranting so here goes: the table used to do screen printing at the workshop on Bathhurst island. Almost more stunning in its randomness than the actual prints.
Darwin never set foot in the city that bears his name but he was a good friend of Lord Stokes who first sailed into the harbour. The capital sits like a small cherry on a very empty cake, with the Northern Territory counting a quarter of a million people for an area bigger than twice the size of France. There is quite a sense of pride in living at the 'Top end', in its self-sufficiency, in the cultural and artistic vibe, the economic accomplishments of this isolated part of Australia, 'closer to Bali than to Bondi'. Funnily enough, though half of the Territorians live in Darwin, it feels more isolated than Alice Springs, which is in the middle of nowhere and I haven't felt so fussily European anywhere else in Australia. Yet.
The people of Darwin are proud of their home and can also be proud of their resilience. It should be called Phoenix for the number of times it was destroyed. Not many people know (but I did because I watched the film 'Australia' with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman) that, on February 19th 1942, the Japanese dropped more bombs on Darwin than they ever did on Pearl harbour, a fact that is superbly ignored by the rest of the world. It was actually attacked 64 times in total. Broome, in Western Australia, Townsville and Mossman in North Queensland, were also bombed. Half of the population of Darwin left for ever and the town had to be rebuilt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z5rOXxjRWI
Let's skip 3 decades. Now, cyclones are a common occurence in summer but the odds for them to strike a city are few on that long and sparsely populated stretch of northern coast. On Christmas 1974, cyclone Tracy hit and hit hard. 70% of the buildings were destroyed, there were 71 deaths and 30,000.00 people were airlifted, including Elinor's children. The town had to be rebuilt. Again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXRt_theCe0
When I arrive in an Australian city, I find a visit to the museum is as good a start as any. The Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory (MAGNT) was a wealth of information. It had a room dedicated to cyclone Tracy, a maritime hangar with Indonesian crafts and an exhibition about the making of didgeridoos, actually called Yidaki. I discovered that white ants (termites) do the work of munching the inside of a small tree and there you have it. All the ingenuity is in spotting it, cutting it, shaping it, decorating it and ... playing it. Ah, and let's not forget the aptly named Sweetheart. Sweetheart is a 5 metre stuffed crocodile that would have been about 50 years old when it was killed in 1970. They come bigger than that, I have read. This one was big enough. He was the dominant male in Sweets lookout billabong (hence the name), a part of the Finiss river system.
I especially liked this painting in the moon exhibition, by Balang Kubarkku, 'Moon dreaming and Sun'.
I think I didn't do justice to Darwin and its surroundings during my stay, busy that I was preparing my trip to Indonesia: visits to the consulate to get a two months visa, doctor's check-up (it was due), dentist check-up (Should I mention that I am 2 molars poorer for it? Obviously, that check-up was due, too), online bookings, blog writing, agonising about travel decisions (a very time-consuming occupation), etc...
So, I regret very much that I didn't go to Kakadu National Park, magnificent and stunning though it is...but I stayed long enough to select my favourite neighbourhood café, friendly and shady, with muffin-stealing birds and to go on a day trip to Lichfield park.
More was to come as our small bus arrived in the early morning on the banks of the Adelaide river and trouped on a worryingly small craft. A jumping crocodile tour, it was called. And jumped they did and jumped we did at the sight of them catching lumps of meat at the end of a pole. We saw Brutus, a 100 year old croc, toothless but no less impressive for that with its 6 metres of powerful body thumping the hull of our boat, keen for his grub. As frightening as they are, they were almost shot into extinction.
On the way to the park, a jabiru took flight. I imagine that's pretty close to what a pterodactyl must have looked like, back then, when Australia was young.
At the entrance to the park, which used to be a cattle station, a field of magnetic termite mounds stretched like gravestone slabs in a cemetery, oriented north-south to better control the heat inside. I was dwarfed by 50 year old cathedral termite mounds, swam in the cold water pool by Wangi falls, admired the Florence falls and splashed in Buley rock hole. I cannot but feel humbled and awed, again and again, by the power and diversity of this land and its fauna, by their unique and archaic character.
Elinor and I went to see a comedy at the cinema. 'Top end Wedding', released in April 2019, is not just a showcase for the Northern Territory, it is much more than that: an Aborigine production with quite a few native actors, including the leading lady. It is light-hearted, fun and I highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoDBvGF9pPU
Quite a few scenes take place on Bathhurst island, one of the Tiwi islands, a two hour sail north of Darwin, where I happened to have booked a cultural and art day tour that made quite an impression on me. It was heart-warming to witness a small, proud, creative community, that had retained its culture and identity and was also adapting to the 21st century with a unique style of art, sculpture and prints. I recognised the church I had seen in the film, the bright fabrics used to make the wedding dress, spotted the armbands with little feathers... I eventually understood what those decorated trunks seen in Sydney and Canberra museums meant. The Tiwi islanders call them Pokomani and they celebrate someone who died. In Tiwi, they are topped by the family animal of the deceased. There are different animal spirits or totems (skins) for each family and they determine who one can marry, in order to maintain genetic diversity.
White and yellow ochre is gathered from a cliff on the island, by a beach where turtles lay their eggs. Ochre is used in painting and in covering the bodies during ceremonies, to protect from the sprit people. Bear with me. I am reading the notes I took from our guide's explanations, a bright-eyed, cheerful young artist. After being all fumigated, purified by the smoke of ironwood, we witnessed a traditional dancing, at the end of which our small group of 3 Australian couples and I was invited to participate. Yay!! That was fun. A note: the smell of ironwood is toxic so it was a short cleansing...
In the museum, I learned that the first PoW on Australian soil was caught by Matthias Ullungura on Melville island, February 19th, 1942. A statue has been erected in his honour in front of the church. I also learned that, on the same day, the mission catholic priest, Father Mac Grath, seeing a large plane formation fly over had quickly radioed the mainland. A warning that was mostly ignored. This is when the little light went on in my head. In the film 'Australia' (yes, that film again), Hugh Jackman defies the dangers of bombs falling right, left and centre to retrieve the little orphan boy who had been sent to Mission Island. Bathhurst! Tiwi! Though, in reality, the island wasn't bombed. Our guide had also seen the film and grinned when I mentioned it. We spent the afternoon screen-printing T-shirts and tea towels with Tiwi designs and left with handshakes and hugs and thanks to catch the ferry. On the beach a huge local crowd was gathered to celebrate a tall and fit islander with dreadlocks. He is in the Melbourne football team and is a local hero.
On the ferry journey back, I was quietly reading in the sun when someone sat next to me with a grin. Someone vaguely familiar. Certainly, that couldn't be Christopher, my Alice Springs host and friend, because he doesn't live in Darwin and, besides, wears a beard. Ah, the conditioning power of the mind...that was Christopher all right, who had done 4 days of work on Tiwi, lucky him, and had shaved.
Somehow, it felt I had gone full circle in the Northern Territory. I watched the sun set behind the palm trees and thought of new discoveries to come. Bali. But there still will be the fragrance of frangipani on the other side of the Timor Sea.
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