Prickly Heat Sucks. Just Like Loneliness.
Two years ago, I was back in Darwin for a work trip, a few days in the northern Australian city where I spent my teenage years growing up. I don't think I'll bother going back.
Two years ago, I was back in Darwin for a work trip, a few days in the northern Australian city where I spent my teenage years growing up. I’ve only been back a couple of times in 30 years, and on the plane home, I started jotting down my reactions and emotions. They’ve sat in my Google Drive since then, but I’ve now expanded on those scratchings.
Growing up in Darwin was a strange existence for me. I always seemed out of place. At school, I was the white English kid with no comprehension of the Australian lifestyle, an alien in a foreign land.
A year or two later, I was sent back to boarding school in England. I was an alien there as well. The English school holidays were not in sync with Australia’s. Back home in Darwin for the holidays, I’d be accosted on the street, “Why aren’t you in school?”. Nobody ever seemed to believe my answer. It was even more strange for those who knew the family because my Dad’s job was running the Education Department. I have a vague memory of the local newspaper running a story about how the head of the Education Department had such faith in his schools that he sent his children to school in England.
I’m back in Darwin for only the second time in almost 30 years; it’s mid-morning, I’m cooped up in a hotel room working, and cold coffee is attractive. I’ve ventured into the tropical midday heat, walked to the shop and back, and my body’s natural cooling system has broken down within a few minutes.
Prickly heat sucks. Within minutes, huge red blotches appear on your skin, and blister-like welts blossom. Everything itches, and the discomfort can be extreme. That’s the price I’ve paid for a sudden urge for an iced coffee from the supermarket. Standing under a cold shower and drying off in front of the air-conditioner soon soothes the skin. Swimming in the hotel pool later in the day washes away the last vestiges of discomfort.
The prickly heat attack is a reminder I’m back where my Australian-ness kicked off. This is the far northern Australian tropical town I arrived in with my family in the mid-1970s. I was a nine-year-old white English kid who thought 20 degrees Centigrade was a heatwave. Those first few months were a brutal introduction to life in the tropics, mosquitoes buzzing in your ear at night, prickly heat, nausea induced by low salt levels, tropical downpours – none of that wimpy splatter and spit English rain – raindrops the size of marbles thumping down in an unbroken wall of water.
Everything was a culture shock. I was a little white English boy raised in Surrey's middle-class commuter belt enclave just south of London. I arrived at my first class at Darwin Primary School and discovered there were people of different colours - white, black, brown, and yellow.
Darwin is nothing like its southern capital city compatriots. The city is the original melting pot of immigrants and cultures. Its location is so close to Asia compared to the rest of the Australian capital cities ‘down south’ has meant it’s always had a part of its heart with its northern neighbours - Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, China and beyond. I have strong memories of wooden Vietnamese boats burning on the harbour - the refugees arrived in Darwin in their thousands from that shattered country in the 1970s. Once the people disembarked, the boats were towed up to the middle of the harbour and set alight; they usually were barely seaworthy, infested with all manner of bugs and rats.
A wave of nostalgia floods me as I exit the airport, and the heat and tropical smell hit me like a wall. The lush green bush with the bright bougainvillea oranges and purples along the road evokes long-forgotten memories. Of childhood escapades, endless afternoons wandering around town on our bikes, and camping during school holidays.
Driving past Bagot Reserve, an Aboriginal community, in the taxi to my hotel, it seems hardly anything has changed, clusters of modest homes sprinkled among the bush and trees. This is where a Bagot employee reversed a truck into my Mum’s hatchback while she was out of town, and I had to work up the courage to confess whilst wondering if I could have the damage repaired without her noticing on her return.
Orange electric scooters are ubiquitous around the central business district. I spend 45 minutes cruising the city centre. Along the Esplanade, pausing to snap a photo of the Novotel Hotel – that’s where our first home in Darwin used to stand.
We arrived as confused, white English youngsters in 1975. The front door was locked with a piece of string - which explains why we were robbed on multiple occasions; just locals looking for food– bacon and eggs were popular. It was a traditional tropical elevated house with timber construction, a corrugated iron roof, and louvred windows that were rarely closed. The whole edifice sits on tall concrete pillars to allow the air to circulate. Rumour has it that my parents were told the back bedroom fell off during Cyclone Tracy, but “don’t worry, we nailed it back on again”. My Dad spent hours in the garden digging out great lengths of corrugated iron roofing that had speared deep into the ground during Tracey.
I remember how we kids used to race home from school on our bikes; during the wet season, you can set your watch by the monsoonal downpours. We’d screech out from school at 3.30 pm, rushing to beat the rain you knew would sheet down by 4 pm. If you mistimed, you’d slouch into the house completely soaked; Darwin has real rain, drops the size of house bricks, unlike the damp drizzle we were used to in England.
My scooter takes me around the cliff-top paths and gardens encircling the harbour. You can spot the tourists; they’ve paused to snap photos and ogle at the gorgeous sunset over Darwin Harbour, chattering in many languages. The locals don’t look; they want to get home from work – the sunset is like that every evening all year round.
The tourists stop and gawk at a taxi driver, trying to mediate amongst a group of Aboriginals fighting, attempting to drag a woman out of the car by the arm; there’s much screaming about someone’s wife. The locals don’t stop. This is everyday life on Darwin’s streets. The yelling, the fighting, the devastating effects of long-term alcohol use, and the conflict between one of the oldest cultures in the world and the more recent arrivals. It's so depressing that nothing has changed.
On my second night, I head to Darwin Sailing Club for dinner; nothing has changed. Dozens of diners at tables spread over the grass looking out over the beach from which we launched our small catamarans dozens and dozens of times as teenagers. The building that used to house the Junior Sailing Club, where I had my first leadership role as club secretary, earnestly typing up committee minutes on the IBM Selectric in my Dad’s office. Dad proudly wore his ‘financial director’ T-shirt whilst ours sported the names of our respective boats.
By my second day, the excitement and wonder has given way to something different – a sadness.
I take a stroll down the Mall early one evening. Every shop is closed; it is deserted. I look for the Vic Hotel; I have visceral memories of running the sound for bands in the tiny bar upstairs. But the doors and windows are shuttered for good.
My overriding impression of Darwin, at least in the city, seems to be a city in decline. Almost everyone in the CBD on a business day looks like a tourist except a handful of people, clearly employees judging by their lanyards. My former boss, who has run businesses in Darwin since the 1970s, says everyone is leaving. Look around, he says, there are few young people, employment opportunities are limited, costs are expensive, and the weather and the heat are exhausting. No wonder they head ‘down south’.
The big shows don’t come anymore. Midnight Oil just cancelled the Darwin leg of their tour due to poor ticket sales. The days of grand jazz shows on the Casino lawns like we did in the 1980s are long gone. The national rugby league competition is in town, but you’d hardly know it.
From memory, I went to five schools from when we arrived in Darwin until I finished school. Two boarding schools (in two different countries), two government schools and one Catholic school. At every single one, I was a foreigner, lonely, the fish out of water. And never there for more than a couple of years. Five schools in eight years. It’s no wonder I have no contact with any school friends. My 40th reunion for the last of the schools is this year. I have no intention of going. Nor, I think, will I bother going back to Darwin.
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself." — Michel de Montaigne
Next time: Am I a lonely, detached, blunted human?