Darwin, with regret....

Having left you beyond a far horizon I now realise that I judged you way too harshly and all too quickly.  I committed the greatest sin by comparing your new image to the one of which I first experienced.  From this inconsiderate stance, I chided you for changing over time passed.  I too had changed and this I knew, but still you accepted me with the decency you have constantly shown.  I understand now that you are the same gentle spirit I knew all those years ago.  You bear the same colours, the same warmth and the same pace.  You still paint the sunsets with brilliant colours and the stormy heavens with streaks of tropical gold lightning.  You still dance with the palm trees in the sultry breezes along the seashores.  Yet all I saw were the new changes, not what was still there.  I owe you an apology and one day I will return once more to reconcile.  For a creature who had hoped to live without the burden of regrets, I may just have collected my first one.   

"I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done." - Lucillle Ball

A friend to guide me

And the journey begins.  Leaving Darwin posed a bittersweet uplift for my emotional energy.  After months of wondering what’s going to happen next, my anxiety levels had begun to escalate and unhinge my spirit.  Together with oppressive heat and high humidity, while living in some very basic accommodation, the end of my time in Darwin had become personified as a friend looming on the horizon, walking towards me with arms stretched out.  The last morning in Darwin was a surreal moment when I could finally embrace this friend.  As we held hands the journey began and it was this moment which provided the bittersweet element.  Looking into the past 10 months was enough to make me a little melancholy.  As we headed away from Darwin though, the sadness subsided.  As we ventured further and further south into the interior of Australia, the lush tropical vegetation gave way to an increasingly arid and dry landscape.  As the landscape became increasingly drier, it withered my tensions and I could feel the anxieties and worries falling by the way side.  With each sunset, a sense of greater closure was obtained.  With each sunrise a reinforcement of this grand new beginning.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths - Walt Disney

Life in Darwin

It’s amazing what affect environment can have on a person’s psyche.  I recently spent a week back in the realms of family and old friends in my hometown and it was gratifyingly refreshing.  The instant I stepped off the plane and back into a past life I felt comfortable.  Confident.  Sane.  I have struggled with my new surroundings of Darwin for a few weeks since leaving my job and searching for a different direction.  So many questions and doubts have swirled around me.  What to do from here?  Am I going to find something to keep me happy in Darwin? Should we have stayed in New Zealand?  Why won’t it rain when they say it will? I feel a little dazed with the amount of uncertainty that I am currently experiencing.  Having time off to do what I want when I want sounds great, but the reality is far different.  Carrying this sense of uncertainty around saps the energy and motivation out of me.  I feel very little inspiration to spend time doing the things I love –writing, mosaics, photography – and the heat destroys any enthusiasm to enjoy any outdoor activities – walking, gardening, bird watching.  Returning to cooler climes and friendly faces gave me feelings of delight and relief. Being in a place that felt familiar and welcoming gave me inspiration and foresight and a new found sense of clarity.  I think I know what needs to happen next.

When you don’t give up, you can not fail.

Something amiss?

Don’t get me wrong, I did miss Australia terribly when I was living in New Zealand.  I often wrote of my desire to hear the morning chorus of native parrots, the aroma of eucalyptus and the vast open skies.  I longed for the fierce displays of native flowers and the butterflies that danced around them.  I missed the kangaroos observing silently as people went about their lives in the countryside and the snakes and goannas not afraid to live in the company of humans.  And now I have all of this, and more.  So why do I feel there is still something missing?  Something that I left behind in New Zealand.  Is it a case of the grass is always greener on the other side meaning no matter where I am, I will always be looking for new grass to stretch out on?  Maybe I am simply not appreciating what I have when I have it and for some reason feel things were always better in the past or will be better in the future? I have always been the sort of person that moves from one adventure to another and often wishes for the next one to start as soon as the current one begins.  A lack of patience some might say.  Or not stopping to enjoy the moment I am in because I am thinking too much about the moments passed and the ones yet to come. 

So, where does that leave me?  I have the realisation of what I feel is senseless, almost offensive, and yet I continue to hold on to it.  Is this which drives me from one adventure to the next and maybe without that deep seeded feeling, I would fall to the ground and hold tight for fear of change? Perhaps it is the motivator for all things I do, but I am letting it get too much control over my choices?  Whatever the answer to my searching queries, the impact will be the same.  Get up, shake yourself down and look at where you are.  Every moment is fleeting so enjoy the experiences they bring through your heart and live life with the spirit of contentment.   What I am feeling is not to be ashamed of or changed for it is part of my psyche, of what makes me ‘me’.  Why would anyone, let alone myself, want to change that?

An interview with myself: Part 2

Q. What have you been enjoying the most since arriving in Darwin?

A.  Oohh, let me see.  A number of things really.  There are markets scattered around  the city area, especially on weekends.  Walking through the Mindl Beach markets on sunset is a vibrant and lively experience.  Getting some dinner from the dozens of international food vans and then sitting on the beach to watch the sun finish its journey for the day is a tradition up here.  I love having all the wild birds right outside my door – flocks of big red-tailed black cockatoos flying overhead, all sorts of parrots and honeyeaters flitting through our garden, storks and ducks flying between the lagoons scattered over the plains.  We have a hundred, if not more, Rainbow Bee eaters which roost in a colony along our driveway.  It’s an amazing chorus of commotion as they all have a final dust bath and flutter to their selected branch.

Q. What other things are you looking forward to?

A. Definitely the wet season which will start making its presence known again around October.  We saw the tail end of the last one when we arrived, but it will be much more brilliant to see a full season of it next summer.  The thunder rolls across the countryside with an unforgiving rumble, combined with the display of lightening in every direction.  As the season moves on, the torrential rain becomes part of the extravaganza culminating in a deafening drum of water lashing foliage and rooves alike.

Q. What are you not looking forward to?

A. The storms I just mentioned are amazing, but more rain, more heat, means that there is an unbearably stifling humidity for much of the day.  This oppressive humidity is what I am not looking forward to at all.

Q. Where to from here?

A. From Darwin you mean?  Well, that is yet to be discussed but I have a few ideas.  If I tell you everything now though, you won’t have a reason to catch up with me later.

Interview complete.

An interview with myself: Part 1

Q. So how have you been since we last communicated?

A. Well, busy to put it in one word.  After packing up our lives in New Zealand we now live in Darwin, with a two week long stopover in South Australia.  It was a whirlwind period and I feel like I have lost the past few months.

Q. Are you happy to be back in Australia?  I know you missed it a lot while living in New Zealand.

A. Yes indeed,  I did miss Australia and have written in the past  how I pined for the sounds of the Australian bush, the smell of eucalyptus, the bright wide open spaces and so forth.  Having said that though, there were always going to be things I’d miss about New Zealand once I had left.  So while I am enjoying being back here, I often think about what I have left behind.  I anticipate moving back there again one day, perhaps in the not too distant future.

Q. Wow, breaking news, we will save that for another interview then!  So, what was your first impression of Darwin?

A. Having been here many times as a tour guide, I did have some idea what I was getting myself in to.  It has certainly grown in the past 10 years though, with several high rise buildings now giving a definitive urban outline to the skyline.  It is remains a lovely, tropical and sunny city surrounded by blue ocean and palm trees swaying in the breeze.  The ‘dry’ season has just begun so the savannah woodland which makes up most of the landscape here has begun to dry out.  We live about half an hour south of Darwin, so I enjoy a drive through this harsh environment which then gives way to the tropical parks and gardens of Darwin city.  It’s a nice transition.

TBC in the next post

So, hows it going so far?

A bit of deviation from my usual ranting and raving about Life.  As promised, I am going to use my blog, Facebook and emails to make contact with everyone about how the move is going.  This posting is going to be more about facts and events as opposed to fanciful philosophical prophecies.

After driving almost 3500kms over a 5 day period, we finally arrived at our new home in Darwin.  The house we are living in is little more than a renovated shed, divided into thirds making up 2 small bedrooms and a larger kitchen/living area.  It is cosy, but comfortable surrounded by 7 acres of land including lots of areas of lush tropical gardens full of palm trees and ferns.  There are also two large verandas which act as outdoor rooms and are great for relaxing under and eating meals outside.  All up, it is enough room for the two of us and considering it is rent free due to some very generous cousins owning the house, we have nothing to complain about at all.  The property is about 30km outside of the city surrounded by similar properties and native scrub. It still feels like we are ‘visiting’ but with time, it will become home.

The dogs are coping with the heat OK.  A bit of a shock for them, although the two weeks down south did give them a taste of 30 degree plus heat.  Their fur shedding has gone in to overdrive since arriving up here though, leaving a trail of hair as they walk around.

It is still the ‘wet’ season up here so there have been daily storms and showers, keeping the humidity at a premium level of discomfort.  Nigh time temperatures get down to 25 and then back up to 33-34 during the day, so the trackies and jumpers have all been relegated to the bottom drawers of the cupboards.

As expected, Darwin has grown since we last visited 10 years ago.  There are a number of new high rise apartments which have transformed the city from a low tropical city to a modern metropolis.  Entire city streets which were once backpacker strips and vacant lots are now decorated with cafes and restaurants of all nationalities.  While never really been a sleepy village, it has apparently livened up in recent years.  There is also a large development at the old wharf which is now a fancy residential and restaurant district.

One of the great things about living here is the amount of native bird life in Darwin.  There are no feral black birds and starlings up here.  Instead we have flocks or Red-tailed Black Cockatoos alighting in our trees, Rainbow Bee eaters swishing through the air in search of insects and Red Winged Parrots dodging the tree tops on their way to the nearby lagoons.  These are but a few of the number of native bird species I see from our property here.  There are also a myriad of different coloured butterflies, possums, bandicoots, reptiles, spiders (some as big as my hand) and snakes. A few minute ago a tree snake fell from one of the palms about 2 metres from where I am sitting with a gecko in its mouth!

I recently took up a position with Conservation Volunteers Australia as their NT regional manager.  It will be a bit of a change for me and be more administrative than my previous positions but I am really looking forward to the change.  The role is overseeing all the conservation projects which are underway in the Northern Territory plus to seek funding and resources to expand.  There are a few big new exploration and mining projects about to start in the region which are always looking to contribute positively to conservation projects, so I am hoping to hit them up for some cash!

So that is the gist of things at the moment.  It has been really busy and will continue to be so for sometime no doubt.  I will write a similar 'dull narrative' again in a month or so as an update, but for now, time to get to back my fanciful philosophical prophecies........

Darwin

Sorry for the absence. Relocating house is crazy enough, but relocating countries is immeasurably crazier.  The transition has been long and convoluted, with visits to family and friends in other parts of the country before arriving in Darwin in the week just past.  It was a perfect whirlwind revisiting my old haunts and seeing everyone again.  Hitting the road for the drive to Darwin was initially daunting, but it quickly metamorphosed in to a period of tranquillity and respite.  I was captive in a vehicle on the move with little to do except sit back, appreciate the ever changing scenery and reflect on life.

Upon arrival, there were things to do and people to see, decision to be made and things to be bought.  Arriving at our destination was almost an anti-climax after the previous days of wistful repose and inactivity.  Faced with a new environment, it was easy to return to thoughts of New Zealand and the joyous sensation that surges within when I do so.  This was followed by a few days of bewilderment and discovery, but slowly the dust is settling around me and a clearer picture of my future is emerging.  Its looks magnificent.