Wednesday, December 31, 2008

More on Darwin

Darwin has at least a couple of tragic events on record from the 20th century. There may be more, I was there for a short time and didn’t get anywhere near the full history, with nothing at all from the pre-European era when the area was home for the Larrakia people.

Darwin is the smallest state capital in Australia with a population just topping 120,000. The first European settlement was established in 1869, so is less than 150 years old at the time of writing. The name came from a former shipmate of HMS Beagle’s captain Wickham – the now renowned naturalist Charles Darwin.

Its location at the top end of a very large continent is significant for a couple of reasons. Darwin is on the Timor Sea, closer to Indonesia and East Timor than to other Australian cities. Hence it was used as the jump off point for peacekeeping troops going to East Timor. I may find it hard to picture those tranquil streets of Irish pubs and tourist shops as freeways carrying army tanks and anti-aircraft guns, but residents witnessed this as recently as 2006. A few other remnants remain.


It seems East Timor’s struggle for independence from Indonesia that started in 1975 and passed a milestone in 1999 has yet to reach a final settlement.

In WWII, Japan’s assault on Australia began with an air raid on Darwin in February 1942. A further sixty-one raids on the Northern Territories and northern parts of Western Australia followed accounting for the majority of 100 Japanese attacks that lasted until November 1943.
There is a ‘common myth’ that Prime Minister John Curtin was ready to leave the northern half of Australia undefended and thus presumably open to Japanese occupation. Although bona fide researchers have since debunked it, the story remains the same. How different life could have been!

There have been a few more ‘assaults’– to use that term broadly - on Darwin since the end of the war. Cyclone Tracy flattened the city on Christmas eve and Christmas day in 1974. The net result is a very modern city with very few early settler buildings left as evidence of the previous century and a half. This is the only one I saw on an otherwise modern and pretty affluent landscape.


Government House built in the 1870s managed to escape the ravages of war and weather, and is now co-located with other grand buildings housing a state library among other things, with all mod cons, including efficient air-con, which is a frequent, necessary and welcome escape from the 43C heat of the day.


The excellent local museum displays an eclectic collection of traditional sailing and rowing craft from the surrounding tropical seas. Some have been confiscated in customs operations, others seized after asylum seekers commonly referred to as ‘boat people’ have been picked up in northern Australian waters. The stories can be complex, as the incident of the MV Tampa illustrates. There are likely to be many of these small craft that never reached their intended destination. The collection in Darwin museum includes what may be the last remaining examples of some historic designs.



Another wee treat came when I followed my ears up the stairs to a bar with live blues playing on a Sunday afternoon. The atmosphere was casual – extremely so. A table full of kiwis – easily identified by tats and greenstone adornments - supported their mate on guitar – of which there were no less than 5 in the band! A great wee interlude in a very atmospheric pub, from which just one burning question remains – who told the singer it is ok to dress like this on stage?


As a place for the budget or the reasonably affluent tourist, Darwin is hospitable, interesting and quite a bit exotic. Its a jump off point for boat and land tours to Kakadu, Katherine Gorge, Litchfield National Park, Arnhemland and other areas which are mainly accessible in the dry season (April – September). It’s rather quiet (and extremely hot) in the build up to the monsoon season (October – March). Don’t bother packing sweaters at any time of year. Expect limited tour options, good deals on accommodation and spectacular thunderstorms in the wet.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Northern Territories

The northern coast of Australia is truly in the tropics. The thick, sweet smell of frangipani drenches heavy, humid morning air that bathes the body in sweat by 9am. Nothing I know could please my senses more, not the best glass of Spanish red wine or the sight of a thousand orchids. If I have a personal heaven, this is surely it!


Cloud banks start gathering early, around 7am, pink and gray/blue billows that will turn almost black before giving in to unbearable pressure to release torrents of monsoon rain.


The rain doesn't break til around 5pm, when every scrap of sound in the atmosphere has been sucked up to be released all at once, as loud and as sudden as the snap of a crocodile's jaw closing on unsuspecting prey. The brown muddy rivers are full of these prehistoric beasts, so a dip in the water to cool off is definitely out of bounds.


There is all day to sweat before lightning picks out the bushy black clouds parading across the twilight sky. Sometimes it brings rain and sometimes not. The river beds are dry somewhere south of here. In the build up to the wet season, sometimes a thunder storm is only a promise of what is yet to come. But here on the coast there is plenty of water to go with the 43C heat. When its not cloudy on three days out of six, sunsets burn red streaks across the evening horizon.


Birds are up early in the morning to scavenge the remains of last night's takeaway meals, and better still, the huge ripe mangoes just fallen from a tree at the end of Darwin’s town centre esplanade. Fruit as big as footballs are scattered all over the grass. Ants, birds and the occasional tourist (i.e. moi) work hard to clean them up. Joggers slow to a walk as the heat starts ramping up.

The beach, uncovered at low tide, shows no signs of the imminent danger in the water. Box jellyfish are beautiful to behold, clear, pulsating inch square bodies with elegant, foot long, trailing fringes. Silent and deadly, their sting can kill a human in just three brief minutes. Stone fish, an impossibly ugly design in a sea full of gorgeous tropical fish, mother of pearly oyster shells and a thousand and one delicate, living corals. Standing on one is said to be more painful than giving birth.

Starfish, jellyfish, tasty fish and sometimes poisoned fish, abound in these tempting waters. Saltwater crocodiles 20 feet long, great white sharks and tiny biting lice all tell the same story, no swimming here – hot as it may be!


The inland rivers and rock pools are a safer bet, though not quite guaranteed. The tour guide commando crawling upstream in front of me got a powerful shock from the water swimming in a thunder-storm. No damage done though, a fabulous experience sitting under a waterfall in a pool the colour of tea, and only a clan of drowsy flying foxes high up in the trees, idle scary spiders and cute wee dark green frogs for sightings of resident wildlife. Things brush past my legs in the water, rousing not the slightest desire to know what they might be!



Heading west, away from the coast back towards the red centre are miles of living and fallen gum trees, muddy creeks and massive termite mounds. Kakadu and Arnhemland are too far for day trips and tours don't run in the off season. Lichfield is far enough in this country where all distances are vast.



Occasional jumping animals, can't say they are kangaroos because they are small like wallabies, and could be one of a hundred other species that are built to travel in the way of the outback. Boing, boing, boing, pushed up by strong back legs, projected forward by strong, thick tails, wee short front legs and sometimes a joey in the pouch. A wild black pig foraging in scrub, some horses standing in water, cattle gathered in the shade under trees remind me of groups of aborigines scattered around town landscapes. As displaced as any race I ever saw transposed on a fundamentally different cultureal landscape – maybe more so. More on that - and Darwin's 1974 distaster in the next post.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Alice Springs Goal

The jail is not that old. Built in the 1930s, it does not suffer from quite the same degree of thick gray stone hopelessness as older Australian jails. The jail at Alice Springs is more institutional blue, green or distemper coloured walls with the same heavy metal doors and concrete dunnys moulded into the corner of each cell.

Bed frames jut out from an end wall like mini railroad tracks. A cheaply constructed, built in corner table, a polished, stainless steel surface above a square sink poses as a mirror that cannot be broken and used as a weapon. Three square metres for the small ones, four or five for the bigger ones, all lining the dark corridor leading to a communal shower room and another locked door at the end.


The yard outside is red dirt with a few scrubby bushes, surrounded by a 12 foot high fence broken at one end by solid timber gates and topped with lethal razor wire. Any jail looks oppressive, a place to confine human beings who break society's rules. How could it look otherwise? This one could look like any other crudely constructed building in rural Australia and the heat in summer and the freezing cold in winter would signal the confinement. No air-con here, not even a fan.

Its 43C the day I visit and building up to rain. More rain than usual this year, the pressure is palpable. The dust is still overpowering. It looked like Los Angeles smog when I landed at the airport. The same pall, just redder.

The buildings are like cattle sheds or stables, only animals would have more freedom to wander round within the fences. The site was decommissioned by the 1970s and due for demolition. The pioneer women's society looking for a new and bigger home lobbied th council to be allowed to use and restore it. So now the territory's eminent and hardy ladies are housed alongside the ghosts of Alice's criminal past. Quite a contrast that neither the ghosts nor the ladies appear to mind.




Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Austin to Alice

Apart from names beginning with A, these two recently visited places have one or two more similarities - extreme heat, holiday mode and new to be explored. There are also many differences – Alice Springs is hot and mostly dry where Austin was hot and humid, at least that's how it was when I was there in early June. I didn't ride any camels in Austin or listen to any ass kickin' blues in Alice, and of course they are thousands of miles apart on different continents, the middle of Australia versus the southern central edge of the United States.


I didn't encounter any bed bugs in Austin either – travelers beware the Desert Rose Hotel in Alice!


The flight in to Alice left Melbourne on a cool gray morning. The excitement of the guy seated next to me when he saw green as we approached the ground told me the sight was unusual. I certainly didn't expect to see so much green in the red centre. More rain than usual in early December before the start of the wet apparently. Global warming or just an unusual year? Who can tell, but like exceptionally warm weather in Scotland, rain is welcome in the dust bowl that is Alice.

I learn that the dry appearance here in the centre of Australia is just that – there is a water table sometimes as close as a few metres under the ground. Rivers flow from nowhere to nowhere then sink under the ground. The river running through Alice is dry and is only expected to flow every few years.

It has already flowed three times this year according to Lindsay our young tour guide on the trip to the McDonnell range. These mountains are quite spectacular – older than anything I have seen – and apparently named after yet another far traveling Scotsmen from the 1860s when others were exploring the interior of Africa. This one was just as eccentric as any and an alcoholic in his spare time.

But I digress. The distances are long and the views unchanging. Red earth, red dust, very old rocks, ochre pits that only initiated aboriginal males are allowed to mine. The colors are purple, yellow and white or pale gray.

The inner lives and culture of what is believed to be the oldest human race on earth remain a mystery to me. People gather under trees in the dry river bed and sit for hours. Many do not 'succeed' in modern Australian society. The custom of living in cities is alien and unwelcome. The people are very dark skinned with distinctive features, thin legs, small frames and curly hair that goes gray but does not seem to recede or fall out. Many different languages are spoken, as they are across other nations where tribes are many and distances vast. It remains alien to modern times how these people deal with the heat, travel huge distances and find food and water in the bush (bush tucker includes ants that taste like lemon and other 'icky' things). It is sad to see this once great race reduced to small numbers and more or less confined to community lands with defined boundaries. Not uncommon though as humans progress through the ages and emergent races dominate earlier established ones

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Friday, September 19, 2008

Sunshine on Leith

No trip to Edinburgh would be complete without a visit to my father's childhood home and my own teenage haunt – the Port of Leith. Previously a separate entity from Edinburgh, Leith was incorporated into the capital city at some date in the not too distant past (as late as 1920s maybe?). A sea port for at least the past five centuries, the port has its own distinct identity and history. For a touch of distinction, Mary Queen of Scots arrived here in the early 1500s on return to the land of her birth after becoming a very young widow in France. Lamb's House, where she stayed on arrival still stands at the start of her tragic road to execution at the hand of her cousin Elizabeth 1 of England.

A number of other refurbished buildings remain to balance to the modern construction of the Scottish Office, a rash of reproduction apartments along the river and the massive modern Ocean Terminal which is home to all the usual mega-shops and movie houses as well as the now retired royal yacht Brittania.


The old sailors home transformed into the fashionable Malmaison hotel and restaurant. The Ship Hotel considerably cleaned up and popular after many incanations under different names.

The Tower Hotel, another of the oldest buildings in the area.

The Kings Wark, a former royal supply base has been a pub as long as I can remember. Known as 'The Jungle' in my younger days, it was the haunt of sailors ad call girls repeated in every sea port round the country. Seems its undergoing yet another renovation.

A mix of old, new and the best / my all time favorite wine bar and restaurant The Shore Bar. Limitations on space - or maybe just aesthetics - has produced creative options for offices and restaurants on the water.


A nostalgic question for all aging hippies - ever been searched in one of these?

This one really is the parting shot from my home city - waiting for the train south from Waverley Station.

Lang may yer lum reek

Sunday morning is time for a last leisurely look at Edinburgh before heading back south to connect with a 9.30pm flight out of London Heathrow. Not content to sit home with the olds and eat whatever is on offer for breakfast, I opt for some exercise before the long train and plane trip back to NZ. For a bit of self indulgence, I head down to the waterfront close by where I lived as a child. I learned to swim here, in what I later identified as a sewer outlet, had many adventures along the river walk and imagined many more on the causeway out to Cramond Island. Access to the island is at low tide only as the walkway is covered from about half tide onwards. I saw the most amazing bright green and black zig zag skinned lizard like creature in the water here once upon a time. Stories of overnight strandings, real or imagined, buzzed in fertile childhood imaginations, becoming bigger and wilder in the process.

The lasting memory is of pristine skies with an occasional tanker moving silently up the Firth of Forth, past the city, to the oil refinery at Grangemouth. Now a rancid, tobacco colored streak of industrial haze lines the horizon, a queue of tankers waits to load or unload at offshore pontoons, an idle oil rig lazes on a mooring and a thick column of smoke rises behind the island from some unseen industrial site. Hence the title of this post, 'lang may yer lum reek' – this is actually a wish for warmth and prosperity in the Scottish household, for if yer lum reeks (ie your chimney smokes) it means you have warmth, and by implication, the wealth to sustain it. The 'lang' part is probably self explanatory, even to non-native speakers.



The city may show all the signs of affluence, but clearly there is a cost.

The tide is out on this otherwise fine sunny morning, and so are a number of people, making the most of the glorious weather after a summer that didn't really happen. An unfortunately common problem in Scotland. Autumn comes on the tail of three short months of wet, cold, windy and only slightly warmer than spring months. Autumn is usually a lovely time, the weather calm with nature showing a few spots of color before the cold and frost of short winter days turn everything to brown and gray.



A lady sitting on the sea wall with a small dog on her lap, both enjoying the lukewarm sun, tells passers by that the old dog can't walk any further but doesn't want to go home yet. Who is that doesn't want to go I wonder? A young man walks on the beach stripped to the waist, his torso the painful purple / white color I have only ever seen on beaches in Scotland where bodies never see the sun.

Time is short, so I hurry back to where I left the car in old Cramond village. I've known this place for most of 50 years and realize that for all the history of Scotland I've learned in recent years, I still don't know the origins of this unique and lovely place with its whitewashed houses, old mill, ferryman crossing and ancient church and graveyard. Perhaps another time.