Brief Visit To Darwin

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At about three o’clock this morning, I woke to the sounds of thunder, rain and croaking frogs.

Though I’d only been in Darwin for just over 12 hours, it was a welcome relief from the heat and the humidity. 

“Look after yourself. It’s only a 90 minute time zone difference. But the heat and the humidity can shake you around”, a colleague warned me.

Though I could probably do the sums, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve visited Darwin. Most recently I was here in August. On only two occasions have I been here when it wasn’t in the midst of the dry season. On both occasions – April and December – it was extremely warm and humid. And it was again  when I arrived around lunchtime yesterday.

The 90 minute time zone difference caught up with me early last night when I retired for, what I thought, would be a brief nap. When I woke up, the Evening Show on ABC Darwin was still on the air, though initially I had no idea if it was 7pm or 10pm. It was only 8pm, and so I headed in to town to grab some dinner and go to the supermarket.

The bars on Mitchell Street lacked the pace of the dry season. Most of them were notably empty, and I felt sorry for the blokes with guitars doing “90s covers”. The customers were mostly men, many in fly-in-fly-out attire, not the European backpackers and Grey nomad tourists you’ll mostly find half way through the year.  
After a couple of humidity-quenching beers and a small plate of salt and pepper squid, I visited nearby Coles, and then came back to the apartment where I’m staying for the next week, and fairly quickly went back to sleep.
It was awesome to wake at 3am to those thunderstorm sounds, and so I stayed up for a while, to enjoy the sounds, and to update this blog.

The confluence of a few things at work has brought me to Darwin for a week. The work ahead of me will keep me busy, and so I’m not sure there’ll be much time for after-hours activity. 

“There’s no Arts Awards or Baker Boy playing at this time of the year”, my colleague joked. Though looking online reveals Neil Murray is playing a gig on Saturday night, and it looks like there’s an interesting light installation along The Esplanade which I’d like to check out. 

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