gerburgkamm

Accommodation

Suppose you don’t want to spend a lot of money, actually,

• you want to spend as little as possible
• you want to have company around the clock, like being in a six-bed-room, 12 square meters, mixed male and female piled on top of each other in bunk beds
• you want to be welcomed by a manager with the nicest Asian smile at 2 o’clock at night who doesn’t mind your late arrival because he still has a lot of tidying up to do
• you don’t care for fast wi-fi, instead, you want to meet wonderful, relaxed people who – being on a work-and-travel-visa – go to work, do their laundry and their cooking and beer drinking, laughing and chatting at any time of day-night, who are easy-going enough not to bother about cleaning up their mess after warming up a can of Heinz’ baked beans
• you love the type of air conditioning that converts a sauna bedroom into a cold room emitting a monotonous “white noise” that puts you to sleep and a sudden jerky rumble that startles you every time it turns on or off
• you are rugged enough not to mind spotting hair of all colors, lengths and types in the shower

then you book into:

Gecko Lodge is a hostel, give yourself one night and you’ll throw everything your mother ever taught you about hygiene over board!

The less readable sign says:

 Thank Heaven for dirty dishes!

They have a tale to tell.

While other folks go hungry,

we’re eating very well,

with home and health and happiness,

we shouldn’t want to fuss,

by this stack of evidence

God’s very good to us.

And in fact: the work-and-travel folks sometimes earn around 25 Au$ per hour and can buy food and drink at will and still help out a penniless old lady (whose ATM bankcard didn’t work because she had forgotten to tell her bank she was going overseas; thank you, Iva!). Mind: you can get that visa until you are 31 years old. Afterwards, you are simply too old!

I liked Gecko Lodge, it’s out of town, has a small pool, a bus stop right next to it, a good-natured Chinese manager who proudly carries his little daughter around while still doing his job after sunset, nice sociable people from all over the world, a porch, a veranda with chairs and tables, fridges, clean sheets, you name it … geckos (and other mini fauna), too, of course …

Downtown

(remember I’m not Wiki … for real infos, google!)

The library, wonderful building, one hour free internet, air conditioning, café with a view, silence, order, cleanliness

wow-Intersection: at green traffic lights cross right and left and diagonally; you can even take pictures in the middle of the intersection (!!!!)

Stick by the rules, you are being taught in a nice way, so be good, the rules are many, people expect you to abide by them, better start getting used to them:

Artists

Aboriginal women painting and selling their art in the street. They are not from Darwin but further south

To the left of them there was a man painting on a big canvass. He was not unfriendly but he didn’t want to have his picture taken, least of all, a picture of his picture.

2 WOMEN DIGGING for GOANNA & EGGS; CAROLYN KENTA, ERNABELLA PUKATJA. This is what the lady is writing on the white rim

Without signature and explanation the picture is less valuable.

In the Art Gallery I got to talk to Edward Watts Blitner from the Ngukkurr area and a member of the Marra tribe. At first I was really worried that I might disturb him. He seemed so absorbed in what he was doing, highly concentrated. In the end he turned out to be very open and forthcoming and the only thing I was sorry about was that I had such little familiarity with the Australian accent.

 painting a Brolga (crane)

The pictures often tell mythological stories which were once told in song and dance cycles at ceremonies, stories about a narrow escape or with an educational intent. One myth is about a man who escaped two hunters that were about to kill him jumping into a billabong and getting transformed into Ngalyod the Rainbow Serpent. As a snake he bit his pursuers and killed them. Later the man who had saved his life by becoming a serpent became a Brolga crane and as such was able to avoid further persecution and danger. Fan-tas-tic!

Another story tells about two sisters who loved to dance near a billabong in spite of being warned by their tribe not to do so. Now, if one thing is true: young girls and boys never listen to their elders, anywhere in the world. The consequences for breaking the rules in aboriginal life are rather harsh! You want to have your own way? Fine, you will, but only once. The Rainbow Serpent got upset and transformed the disobedient young girls into Brolgas. Actually, these birds are very beautiful. They live on the waterside where they make dance movements which have been imitated by the Aborigines.

I had a long discussion with the artist about aboriginal art, which, in his opinion, is a natural kind of flow that comes out of a person, you can’t be taught and you can’t teach it.

My opinion: the exact opposite. You teach, the children sit down and learn, at school, in courses, at home, wherever.

He kept shaking his head: “No, no, no … It doesn’t work like that.”

Now, look at the picture he is painting. Doesn’t it look carefully … painstakingly planned?

I was to understand what he tried to convey to me much later when I talked to Coco, who had lived with aborigines for a long time. (But I still believe in teaching and learning, I just can’t help it).

And I fell in love with aboriginal art …

Just a little help in reading the aboriginal art iconography – Courtesy of What is Aboriginal Art? By Margo Birnberg, a short introduction to the understanding of aboriginal art 

… and I started getting interested in didgeridoos, musical instruments, which I would get to know better on my trip to Kakadu National Park.

Didgeridoos are those long artfully painted tubes with a wax rim on top where the mouthpiece is

… my TRIP from DARWIN TO LITCHFIELD AND KAKADU NATIONAL PARKS

How difficult it can be to get there, that is a whole different story which I will tell you in my next letter.

Cheers

Gerburg

… Charles, what comes to mind? Lessons about Evolution, the Origin of Species, survival of the fittest and most adaptable (and merciless, okay, no, he didn’t say that). So why would a place where the explorer himself never set foot on be called DARWIN? I think, the First Officer and the Captain of the HMS Beagle must have really liked the voyages with this weird guy, keen observer – explorer – theoretician. And after Darwin had got off the ship and started dedicating himself to organizing, editing and publishing the reports on his collections, the officer and the captain of the Beagle got the task of surveying the shores of Australia and they called the nice new port at the Top End Darwin.

Coming from a Roman summer (hot), to a Sydney winter (fine days but cold nights and mornings), where would you want to go to warm up? The tropics sounds great and Darwin is the northernmost city of Australia, a stone’s throw away from Indonesia and the equator, with a temperature between 19 degrees (night) and 36 degrees (daytime). That’s nice and waaaarm! Only 4 hours flight from Sydney, slightly different time zone, just half an hour, but set your watch (!), Australians can be over-punctual.

this may look really new and modern …

… and unexciting to you

Some of what is really interesting here is underground.

Remember WWII? Another ANZAC memorial? No! Look at this:

Now why would anyone want to bomb Darwin? Who? Germans? Japanese?

Australia wasn’t on the list of the countries to be occupied but after WWI Darwin became a key location of the Singapore – Australia defence line (I guess they saw it coming).

note the words “naval refuelling station”

Clearly, never underestimate your enemy!!!! Seeing huge fuel tanks on the Darwin waterfront the Imperial Japanese .. bla .. Forces didn’t think twice and bombed the oil out of them on the morning of February 19 in 1942 destroying the naval base and killing more than 200 people.

Japanese air raid, successful, these things blow up like hell

Australian guns and searchlights on the waterfront hadn’t been of any help, the attack came from the air. Gee, didn’t they KNOW, the Japs had planes? (Mitsubishi was already a name to be taken in consideration!).

Then, brilliant idea, put that stuff underground!

… the tunnels were built entirely in secret … 400 men … sneaking in and out of this hillside like rabbits … sandfly-filled mangrove swamps … not an ideal working environment (understatement!)

Secret?! The soil that had been removed from underground remained dumped at the entrance of the tunnels clearly to be seen during reconnaissance flights (just in case Japanese intelligence officers were wondering what was going on now). Never mind, the tunnels were made of concrete walls with steel lining and were bomb proof. However, they turned out to be not entirely water proof in the long run. They were restored and ready to be visited in 1992 at the 50th anniversary of the bombardment.

a hell of a lot of work (5 tunnels)

These pictures probably mean “everybody, really e-ve-ry-bo-dy,  lent a hand”

overworked and

and underpayed

overworked           and          under-payed

The tunnels, now a museum with posters and explanations  

Australia, keep these things in good condition, Kim Jong-un may NOT be “blustering”! (as Aussie newspapers suggest) Oh okay, no, no chances, he’s gonna nuke us right away …

Wartime humour: I found the menu really funny.  However, as the saying goes: “war is not a picnic” (Yeah, I know, it’s “life is not a picnic”)

“joints” are large pieces of meat cooked in one piece, not the ones you smoke; the meaning of the name of the inn? … no idea!

On the whole, as all the ANZAC memorials tell, Australia had and still has a military force to be reckoned with. Amazing the Catalina flying boats, you would think, you don’t need anything else.

Perfect multi-purpose war equipment: search and rescue, bomb and lay mines, medical supply and courier service, reconnaissance and sabotage. Had they been faster, they would have done the job and won right away.

Happy to be over ground again and back to the present: tropical vegetation, the well kept ruins of the town hall, Bicentennial Park (nice benches in the shade, green grass carpet, public restrooms: clean and for free), Christ Church Cathedral, as garrison church first destroyed by the Axis powers, then rebuilt by the military and finally, in 1974 cyclone Tracy struck and (besides devastating the whole town) wreaked havoc on the church leaving only the porch of it standing. It happened one hour after Midnight Mass on Christmas Day. (Je …)

lush green tropical vegetation

Ruins of the Town Hall (cyclone Tracy,1974)

Bicentennial Park, green and clean

Christ Church Cathedral, the old porch integrated into the new, modern building

Cyclone Tracy Memorial window (Dalle de verre technique, pieces of glass)

Multi-ethnic Darwin: countless origins, cuisines, languages, >50 shades of beige-brown, at the night market you meet them all  

Mindil Beach at sunset

No salt water croc in sight but having heard of them I gave up the idea of going swimming in the morning.

Cheers

Gerburg

clean! public! spectacular!

Just listen to these names:

Bondi Beach (say [bondai] otherwise no one is gonna tell you how to get there),

Palm Beach (wow-name),

Barrenjoey Lighthouse, Bronte Beach (if you think you’ll find “Wuthering Heights” there, you better look up vice-admiral Horatio Nelson, Duke of Bronte),

Whale Beach, Shark Bay, Dolphin Point, Narrabeen (hear the Beach Boys in your mind’s ear: “… Santa Cruz and Trestle, Australia’s Narabine … Everybody’s gone surfin’, surfin’ U.S.A.”)

beach in winter

windswept

rocky

sandy

Balmoral (not the one where the Queen keeps out of sight when she doesn’t want to show her feelings or the lack of them)

Names that sound at once familiar and new, exotic, classy, promising fun, leisure, sport, relax

Ocean pool: water always fresh, conditions always safe, no crocs, no sharks, no currents that suck you into the open sea

and two hours free parking somewhere in the vicinity. If 2 hours is not enough, you take you Opal Card (smart, remember?) and go to the beach by public transport.

This is what you want to do, when the conditions are right (preferably not in winter, remember, summer is around Christmas): sailing, swimming in the ocean or in public ocean pools, surfing, diving

the boardwalk down by the sea

And this is what you can do any time of the year, because even in winter you feel like being on the sunny side of the earth most of the time:

• basking in the sun, lounging in cafés sipping at an aperitif or a healthy smoothie or a coffee (but don’t call it just coffee, order a “flat white” or “long black” with or without milk on the side, make it almond or soy milk for a ridiculous 50 cents more),
• beach walking or just strolling along the literally litter-less waterfront promenades and smooth boardwalks,
• whale watching, bird watching, blue tongue lizard watching (don’t wait until it pulls its tongue out to check if it’s blue, even a different type of lizard is still worth taking a picture of). Here’s the bird I watched

seagull following its shadow

run gecko run

“One more pic and I’m gonna throw myself down there”

towards the lagoon

the lagoon is pretty big

Safety is important to Australians: on a sunny winter day you see helicopters circling over the rough sea where reckless surfers challenge the waves. They were too far away to be taken pictures of.

Sorry, no photos of sharks and crocs or selfies of coffee sipping ladies.

Cheers

Gerburg