Bound for the bush

I haven't fallen off the face of the planet, I've just been trying to be sociable for the last few days!

One of the many people I met in Doha, Adam, is over in Oz on holiday and is likely to one of the very few visitors I get due to the incredible airfares that are required to get to Darwin from most Australian capital cities.

So it's been a week of trying different food options ranging from seafood platters at Lewinsky's (named after Ms Monica) and a delicious selection of Thai curries at Hanuman, it's been a truly delicious week.

Having promised myself I wasn't going to repeat Doha where I managed to not make it out to explore the desert (while virtually living in it), this weekend will see my first trip in a long time out to the bush.

Kakadu's only 250km from Darwin and while we won't see all of the park there are definite highlights that I've been given from my work mates. So I'm looking forward to sitting in a croc-free pool at the top of a waterfall to pass at least one of my afternoons.

Might even make it back in time to see all the fireworks on Territory day...

Must run, toast is ready and I have to leave for work otherwise I won't get to leave for the park!

PS. Hot showers are back!

Environmentally Friendlyish

We've had some delightfully "cool" days up here with the maximum temperature varying between 25˚C and 29˚C which made work feel much more pleasant. No air-conditioning required, just open up the doors! We even made it to a low of 15˚C some nights. Rumour has it the camping store has sold out of thermals.

I've made quite a few trips to the supermarket in the short time I've been here. It seems to be my hang out of choice when away from home (Woolies is no match for Carrefour in terms of random items that you don't need). However the green bags just never seem to be in stock... so while browsing the aisles I found a few balls of mercerised cotton yarn and hey presto, an environmentally friendly bag was born.



So now I'm taking my bag, book, hook and left over yarn, off to find myself a patch of park to make my own for the afternoon while I wait for the sun to do it's work and heat up the solar panels for the hot water system. Tonight is looking good for the first hot shower in three days!

Relaxing Darwin

Darwin is a gorgeous city, if a little warm for my tastes. There are tropical trees in almost every street and the wildlife - early rising - is amazingly vocal. Having been here less than a week it's still a bit rosy for me but I can imagine coming back for a relaxing break.

I took some time to walk around the city today, partially to sate my need to explore and also to fulfill my mission to get a hat before tomorrow's festival. It was a pretty successful day!

My walk took me down Mitchell Street which is one of the main streets in Darwin. It's the backpacker and tourist street complete with the 24 hour Coles which I'm sure I'll be well acquainted with soon. I browsed a couple of shops and tried on a ridiculous number of hats before I found myself in a hat shop just off Mitchell Street. I made the decision not to leave the shop until I had a hat in hand. I'm ashamed to say it took half an hour of hunting through hats and trying them on before I found one that fit, with a wide brim, that didn't look too ridiculous.

Armed with a hat I headed towards Fisherman's Wharf to check out the Darwin Seafood Festival site where I'll be stage managing tomorrow (as you do on your first weekend in Darwin). It's looking good and I watched the sound check for Double Entendre who played an awesome version of Caravan. I think it'll be a hot but really great day tomorrow and I'm looking forward to it.

One other piece of exciting news (if you're me) involves the purchase of a second-hand book in what could become my favourite shop in Darwin... the secondhand bookstore that buys books as well as sells them. While browsing the sci-fi/fantasy section I was looking for the familiar covers... Pratchett, Adams... Gaiman... when I realised that I didn't see any familiar Gaiman covers... On closer inspection, I found a copy of Ghastly Beyond Belief, the somewhat out of print book of quote that he wrote with Kim Newman. Best $6 I've spent in awhile. There goes lunch tomorrow...

Before I run off to lounge on my bed and soak up the good-bad sci-fi/fantasy goodness, I want to thank everyone who's sent their well wishes after my last post. I was in a bit of a horrible place but it's getting better now. Mum seems to be in good spirits and there's a team of people looking after her so I know she's in good hands.

Nothing Compares

Nothing in my 24 years of life could have prepared me for the news that my Mum's cancer is incurable. Not even my GP telling me that treatment was more likely to prolong her life than cure the cancer. Still to her credit she's still remaining positive and is ready to step up to the challenges that the treatment will set for her. To say that Mum is a strong woman would be an understatement beyond compare.

When I called Dad and he told me the news I was standing in my new bedroom watching a gecko scampering across the wall. I nodded and asked the questions that I wanted to ask and then he had to go. One minute later it hit me. A sudden feeling of being completely lost in the world. Not knowing what to do, who to call or how to breathe. It lasted for a brief moment before I realized that there is nothing I could do except to be there for Mum. The hardest thing for me (being the control freak that I am), is knowing there is nothing that I can do to fix this.

Luckily I remembered how to breathe and with that all-important knowledge remembered who to call. I deliberated calling home again as I didn’t want to disturb her rest. After all the phone was bound to be running hot tonight in the wake of the latest news. I called anyway figuring that I had special dispensation (being her daughter) for interrupting rest. I’m glad that I did because she seems to be having one of her better nights where she’s not feeling exhausted or dizzy. Just hearing her voice and hearing her describe her first thoughts (what am I going to do with all my wool and beads?) after mishearing the oncologist and thinking that she only had 18 months to live (as opposed to finding out the results of the treatment in 18 months which I believe is what he said).

Hearing her voice and hearing her talk was wonderful. For just a moment I was just on the phone having a chat with my Mum like I always do when I’m away. For ten minutes life seemed normal again.

Right now I’m sitting on my bed trying to remember what I was originally going to write. After all I’ve been in Darwin for 33 hours now and it’s a wonderful place.

The house I’m staying in is just amazing. The gardens are large and beautiful with a fabulous array of lizards of varying sizes. There are plenty of windows in each room letting the sunlight and fresh air circulate through the house. I’m staying in a quiet street that’s a mere 1.5 km from the city centre and it takes me just fifteen minutes to walk to work at a comfortable pace.

I had my first day at work today which is always exciting. It started with a staff meeting which is always a great way to start. It means you get to meet everyone and get an idea of what’s going on and where you’re at even if none of it makes much sense yet. It always feels a little slow settling in but I had a good time reading through the documents from last year and getting a feel for the information that I’ll need to gather in the coming weeks.
We ate our lunch in the Botanic Gardens where I managed to find my favourite tree from Singapore. (I’d just like to clarify that I don’t actually know where the tree originates from but Singapore is the first place that I encountered the tree). It’s a big leafy tree that has red seeds about the size of a pea. I used to go to St Andrew’s Cathedral in Singapore and collect the seeds with my Mum and she’d make them into tiny bean bags (about the size of the small high bouncing rubber balls you used to get in news agencies). Then we’d play five-stone (jacks) with them until it was time to come back to Australia where we couldn’t bring them.

So all in all there are plenty of things about my first day and night in Darwin that have been really wonderful and my brief experience of Darwin has been really positive. I think it’s a great place and will rave about it as much as I planned another day.

Tonight, I’m just not in the right frame of mind for it. I’m just going to have a quiet night so that I’m well rested for tomorrow.

I’m also going to continue to curse the fact that I forgot that I didn’t have a modem and as such have no internet access at home so this will have to wait until tomorrow to be posted.

This is a much longer post than I’d planned to write. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. It’s been really good to get these thoughts onto a page (and a half).

Many thanks!

Failing to Pack

While I should be packing for my trip to Darwin, I am instead updating information on the plethora of profiles for online communities that I've joined this week. It would seem that it's the week for it... after all I've joined three groups (Facebook which I much prefer to MySpace, Friendster, and Linked In). With the amount of time I've spent playing about with the profiles I can't help but think that I should have organised drinks with friends instead... Oh well!

Friday was my last day of temping for at least the next four months and I'm grateful for that. The day dragged on as there was very little for me to do. Still it was nice to be asked to stay on by so many people. Even nicer to know that I couldn't because I'll be in Darwin on Monday in a job I'm actually excited about!

So packing you say? Well, tonight wasn't really the night for it as I headed out for drinks to celebrate Dave's birthday. Besides, anyone who's traveled/lived with me knows that I'm a last minute packer. The world would implode if I wasn't up to the wee hours of the morning throwing things into my bags/boxes...

Merry-Go-Up-And-Down

Tonight I went for a ride on the Big Sky Wheel at Birrarung Marr. I thought that it was just the lights that made the wheel look like it was spinning quickly... I was wrong.



While Nick, Gene & I were walking towards Southbank for dinner after seeing Keating we spotted the ferris wheel which has been there for awhile and wondered why they're called ferris wheels. We guessed that it might have to do with the construction of the early wheels possibly being iron beams (turns out it was steel which makes sense). Wikipedia tells me that it's actually named after George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., who designed an 80 meter (264 feet) wheel for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois in 1893.

Naturally when we couldn't come up with a reason for its name we had to come up with a new one. Henceforth we now refer to them as merry-go-up-and-downs. A bit of a mouthful but we likes it :)