Saturday, March 23, 2013

22 March 2013 - Aurora Shady Glen Tourist Park, Darwin, Northern Territory


So the day dawned without a new government or leader, in fact yesterday turned out to be much ado about nothing, even though we underlings had been taken through an entire gambit of highs and lows. 

It seems that the temperatures here in Darwin are a steady comfortable 33 degrees or similar, and that it is the level of humidity that decrees whether Darwin is a good place to stay or leave. We survived the night without covers over our sleeping bodies or overuse of electrical appliances, however I have had an obsession about overuse of electrical fans since I nearly burned down my house in Vanuatu.  It was only the vigilant attention of my neighbour who broke into my house, that saved all being burned to the ground back in 1979, the same neighbour whose dog I insisted be put down a year or two later when it attacked my toddler. Which all goes to prove that a good turn does not save you from grace at a later date.

Today we headed into the centre of Darwin and parked up on the Esplanade before heading off on foot to the Information Centre. We left the Centre with armfuls of brochures but none the wiser about the Arafura Hostel where Chris was ensconced when he was in residence in Darwin. We were told that the Darwin Hotel had been hugely damaged during the 1974 cyclone but had been resurrected as the Hotel Darwin just as it was in those days.

We set off to discover the CBD of Darwin, firstly to call into the Hotel. Granted, it was early in the morning, however the door was unlocked and a quick glance inside showed that it was not frozen in time, but was only as it would have been had it evolved through the interim forty years. Alas, Irish Jim was not hanging on the bar as we hoped; no doubt he is in a seedier bar somewhere else in Darwin if he is still alive. Yet another disappointment for my husband’s pilgrimage.

Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory with a population of over 100,000 and has embraced the progress of tourism and  modernity. What a beautiful city it is, albeit very different from that my husband lived in back in 1972.

We walked about the many busy city blocks and would have indulged in a snow freeze from McDonalds had their machine been operating. We also looked out for appropriate postcards to send to nearly-five year old Charlie and to three years old Isabella who is tracing our journey on the RACQ map on their garage wall, but there were none that suited. If your taste extended to topless blonds on crocodile free beaches, then you were well served.

We wandered along the Esplanade passing Government House which is in the best position one could ask for in Darwin, so long as there is no further war or cyclone on the horizon. Of course that comment is somewhat flippant because World War II did indeed impact on the city, the Japanese bombing this northern Australian outpost.

On 12 December 1941 there was an official evacuation of seven hundred and fifty of the estimated 2,037 women and children residing in the city, from the Territory capital and so those who stayed were in a small way culpable for their own involvement in the bombing. The last of the evacuees left by plane at midday on 18 February 1942. 

On the following morning the Japanese headed toward the port with eighty one medium bombers, seventy one dive bombers and thirty six fighters. There were at least forty five vessels in the harbour at the time. Almost two hours after the first raid, fifty four land based bombers attacked the Darwin RAAF Station. A total of two hundred and forty three people died in the raids, eight ships sunk, many buildings damaged, twenty three aircraft were destroyed, communications were cut and the township was shattered. This was Australia’s version of Pearl Harbour.

Apparently it was the leader of Hawaii's Pearl Harbour raid who led this assault, and then went on to subsequently bomb Ceylon’s Colombo; a valuable military man, no doubt.

And of course as if there was not enough for this lovely tropical city of the north left, tropical  Cyclone Tracy finished it off on 24 December 1974. It was the most compact cyclone or equivalent- strength hurricane on record in the Australian basin, with gale force winds extending only forty eight kilometres from the centre and was the most compact system world wide until 2008 when Tropical Storm Marco of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season broke the record, with gale force winds extending only nineteen kilometres from the centre. After forming in the Arafura Sea, the storm moved southwards and effected the city with a Category 4 on the Australian Cyclone Intensity Scale, while there is evidence to suggest that it had reached Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale when it made landfall. The wind speed register at the airfield was destroyed by the wind force and so unable to register the true final wind speed.

Tracy killed seventy one people, caused $837 million in damage and destroyed more than 70% of Darwin's buildings, including 80% of houses. Tracy left more than 41,000 of the 47,000 inhabitants of the city homeless prior to landfall and required the evacuation of over 30,000 people.

Tracy added another twenty nine vessels to the host of shipwrecks from the World War II Japanese air raids and previous cyclones in Darwin Harbour. At first light on Christmas Day, the harbour was wrecked. Some forty boats and ships, mainly fishing trawlers, harbour ferries and other small craft were damaged, wrecked or  lost and sixteen people had died at sea.

It appalls me that I do not remember the impact of this disaster in 1974; all I can say is that I must have been a very self-centred young person in those days whose news outside my own national boundaries had little impact. For my husband, he had already moved on from Darwin and was very moved by the destruction of his old stamping ground. He and his first wife were then in England and resolved to return to Darwin to assist with the rebuild. The reality was that when they returned to Australia, arriving in Melbourne with their limited resources, they were unable to raise enough funds to buy a caravan or like mobile home to come north and apply themselves to the huge project that faced the nation.

Major-General Alan Stetton was appointed to oversee the Natural Disaster and did so with some controversy in the days until the end of December. It was the aim of the authorities that only 10,000 persons be left in the city to deal with whatever was required. The evacuation resulted in those figures being realised however it is interesting to note that after a mere ten years, the pre-Tracy population had been well surpassed.

Today Darwin is an awesome city, or at least that part which we have explored. Perhaps I shall have a different view by the end of the seven days we have booked.

We headed to Vesty’s Beach for lunch, looking for shade and free parking. Beachside parking is a matter of great caution however we are wary and so should not be the object of concern. Fed and watered, we headed into the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory and spent nearly three hours taking in all that it had to offer.

It really is an excellent museum; we started with the Aboriginal art collection which apart from interesting facts about the local culture, had some of the best art we have seen. We were particularly interested in the exhibition which is totally devoted to Cyclone Tracy; a display that illustrated life before and after the disaster.

There is also a brilliant natural history exhibition, well displayed, brilliantly curated, full of information about the deadly killers of the territory; the Box Jellyfish, the snakes, the crocodiles, the spiders, and so on and so on.

The exhibition that really did surprise me however was that dedicated to maritime matters; a collection of South East Asian pearling luggers, refugee boats, boats used for fishing both legal and illegal, and all manner of crafts outside my ken. I have had a half-hearted interest in boats; my second husband built a yacht in our basement, my older son studied boat building and now is now heavily involved with marine design, and so I have been an interested bystander. Even I was enraptured by this exhibition at the Museum.

And just in case none of this was able to capture attention the interest of the visitor, the stuffed corpse of Sweetheart, a five metre, 780 kilogram saltwater crocodile has his own little exhibition complete with the sob story how he eluded his captures by drowning at the end of his rope back in 1979. His corpse is indeed something to behold and I cannot imagine coming off the better from such a bellicose embrace.

I should not omit the fact that there was also an excellent exhibition of artworks from a wide range of artists selected by the curator from the works held. These ranged from works by Brett Whitely, Arthur Stretton, William Dobell, Arthur Boyd, Jessie Trail, John Brack  and a dozen other artists who we have come to admire during our travels. My only gripe with this small gallery had little to do with the curating but all to do with the public. There were two mothers in their thirties seated in the middle of the gallery with their babies. The women were obviously delighted to be spending time together, chatting away and the babies spent most of their time trying to get their attention and then noisily enjoying their breast feed. Now I am not against women breastfeeding in public; I reckon I was one of the trail blazers myself, however an art gallery is for the quiet enjoyment of art connoiseurs (or pretenders such as ourselves) nor for the latte brigade even without the lattes. Anyway, needless to say, it was a pleasant surprise to find these gems, the paintings, tucked away up here at the Top End.

We shopped for bread and fruit and wine, the latter we have avoided for five weeks or so. Now with dinner over and two bottles of wine under our belts, I think it better to delay the posting of this blog until tomorrow.

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