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Charm - Australia 8: The Top End



Human beings seem to have a lack of creativity in our ability to name things. The Australians are no exception to this and have named the area where Darwin is found the “Top End” because, as you might guess, it is at the top end of Australia. Its official name, no less unoriginal, is the “Northern Territory” but Top End is slightly more creative and has a nice double meaning, making it sound like that part of Australia is somehow superior to the rest. It’s an odd city, with bits of it poking out into the water and lots of tall buildings for a population of 150,000. Unlike the US, Australians seem to build up instead of out. They also build shopping malls that are like Faberge eggs – difficult to access the treasure inside.

The kids and I went on a shopping/movie excursion to the mall and I spent twenty minutes trying to find the appropriate parking area to get us where we wanted to go. I eventually gave up and parked in what looked like the loading dock area. The nearest access took us into sort of an indoor/outdoor space with a nice children’s play area and lots of restaurants. I decided that it was one of those “malls” that is really just a nice block of restaurants – kind of a fancy strip mall. But we knew there was a movie theater somewhere so we kept going. After 5 minutes of walking, there was a door to an inside area. I assumed this was just a couple of shops around the movie theater but it ended up being a decent-sized mall. On later visits, I discovered more and more of the mall, including two grocery stores (why?) and a large food court, none of which made sense to me. The mall was confusingly laid out, with loops and stores that were like hallways to other parts of the mall. The parking continued to perplex, as there were several large parking garages and time limits varying from 1.5 hours (for grocery stores) to 4 hours, all regulated by security cameras taking photos of license plates. The US sure makes it easier to spend money!

While any country we’ve visited seems to have cheaper and more efficient healthcare than the US, I did discover one way in which we are far superior. Availability of antibiotic ointment! At some point, Charm’s stash of ointment was getting low so I walked into a pharmacy in Australia and asked where I could find their antibiotic ointment. They told me I needed a prescription! I laughed in surprise and asked why. I told the woman behind the counter that for me, it was like being told I needed special permission to buy milk. She didn’t seem to understand my amazement and told me that it was regulated because some people might be allergic to it. I found that very odd. If a person didn’t know they were allergic to the ointment, how would the doctor writing the prescription know? I mean, unless they tested them for allergies and why would they do that? Thankfully, we had visitors coming from the US who brought us the ointment, which you don’t even have to get at a pharmacy. Good old USA! Guns and antibiotics, freely available, often in the same store! You can’t get that in Australia.

We did get to experience the prescription process firsthand when Tully came down with a skin condition. Ironically, the pharmacist diagnosed it and sent us to the doctor who dutifully wrote the prescription (and didn’t ask anything about allergies). While I was there, I asked about a specific seasick medicine and the doctor sent me to the pharmacist to ask them what they recommended. Then I was supposed to go back and get him to prescribe it. This was entirely too complicated and inefficient for me so I just got the pharmacist to jot the names down, thinking I would buy the medicines in Indonesia where I’m hoping, like Vanuatu, I can just buy what I need at the pharmacy. For the curious, Tully’s impetigo has since cleared up. She thought she might die from it since at one point she heard me say you could die from an infection, and she also heard that impetigo was an infection. I reassured her that impetigo was not a fatal condition.

In Darwin, Joe decided to finish up all the projects that were plaguing him so he spent many hot days toiling on the boat while the kids and I wandered around town, alternately buying boat parts and visiting water parks and wave pools. I gave up far more sightseeing plans than I carried out but sometimes we just have to take care of daily life, as painful as that is. One day when we came back to the boat, Joe told me that he had dropped one of the battens in the water. This is a long stick-like object that is used to give shape to the sails. The sailmaker working on various projects had already told us that he recommended we fix one that was broken because it would take him 10 days to get one special ordered. So, since there was no hope of replacement, Joe went swimming.

From the moment we entered Australia, we have been cautioned against swimming. At the top of a long list of dangers in the water were box jellies and crocodiles. Anyone who heard we were going to Darwin emphasized that we could not, absolutely could not, swim in the water in Darwin. The danger of crocodiles attacking was severe, they told us, and even the thought of swimming was likely to entice a crocodile to snack on us. Over 200 crocodiles are caught in the waters around the marina each year and released or given to crocodile farms.

Joe told me that he dove a number of times for the batten. The water was so murky (just how the crocs like it) that he couldn’t see a thing. Conveniently, a diver was in the area, doing whatever divers do in marinas infested with crocodiles. Joe’s friend from EQ2 convinced the diver to try to find the batten. Nothing. Finally, Joe tells me, he decides to do one last dive. He swims down, feeling around in the murk. Nothing. As he’s coming up, he hits his head on something. I hold my breath, sure that he’s going to tell me he bumped the bottom of a crocodile (And yet, he’s here, telling the story, some part of my brain tells me). He hit his head not on a crocodile, but on the batten, sticking straight out of the muck. Success!

Upon further reflection, the likelihood of there being crocodiles in the marina is fairly slim. Darwin has 24-foot tides. In a typical marina, the boats would spend part of each day balancing in the mud on their nether regions, which isn’t anything boats want to do. Darwin has solved this by installing locks. Just like the Panama Canal, we had to enter a lock (only one) to access the marina. The lockmaster controls the water flow in and out of the marina and, presumably, can also control the flow of crocodiles to some extent. The marina is surrounded by shops, condos, and houses so not exactly prime crocodile territory. Still, Joe was happy to be out of the water.

Speaking of crocodiles, we got to go on a tour and see them up close. Upon hearing that we were going on a boat tour to see crocodiles, Tully repeatedly asked, “What kind of boat is it? Is it a kayak?” I’m not sure if she was hoping for a kayak, but the boat was not, to my relief, a kayak. We had a a 45-minute drive through the countryside during which we learned many interesting things, like that the Top End now exports camels to the middle east because the Australian camels, originally brought from the middle east over one hundred years ago, have become toughened by the Australia countryside and are now greatly prized for their endurance. After a few false stops due to a miscommunication about which tour we were on (there are three with the same name), we arrived at the Adelaide River. We boarded a metal boat with railings. Phew! The driver cautioned us against leaning against or touching the railings. The reason became clear as he dangled chicken parts on a line out of the stern of the boat and fed the crocodiles that would propel themselves up out of the water to eat the chicken. It was exciting to see them up close.

In Mackay, at our Bredl’s Wild Farm tour, we had learned that crocodiles don’t eat things that aren’t moving. The man demonstrated by putting a frozen wallaby gently in the crocodile’s mouth. Nothing. But if he wiggled it around, the crocodile clamped down on it. So, the lesson was that, in the unlikely event that a crocodile grabs you and you have the presence of mind to stop moving, you should freeze.

Our guide on the river tour confirmed this. He told us a story about a ranger who was new to his job. Somehow a line got looped around his leg and dragged him into the water where a crocodile was waiting. The croc dragged him 8 feet underwater and the ranger froze. The croc eventually left him alone and the ranger was able to get back to the surface where his compatriots pulled him out of the water. He spent eight months in the hospital recovering from the initial attack but survived! A useful tip for future crocodile encounters.

​Other big hits in Darwin were the parks which are fantastic across Australia and far superior to our cookie-cutter playgrounds in the US. Most are designed by Kompan which also has an innovative outdoor gym “playground” for adults that I tested. The outdoor cinema was another hit. It is in a gorgeous spot by the sea and such a pleasant experience. On the night we went, they were showing an Iranian film called “3 Faces” that looked interesting although, being a subtitled foreign film, wasn’t the kids’ first choice.

They did remarkably well – I thought they would just fall asleep on the bean bag chairs at the front of the rows of deck chairs but they actually paid attention to the plot. I know this because they kept coming back to where we were sitting and asking questions about what was happening. I eventually gave up and went to lie on the grass to read the subtitles to Tully. While there, I told her, “Look at the cool geckos on the wall of that house.” She said, “Mama – they’re on the screen, not in the movie.” Sure enough, the geckos appeared in the next scene on the rocky terrain and in the next scene in the sky. Cobin said they were the best part of the movie but he missed the opossum that ran down the aisle, looking for scraps. I enjoyed the movie, especially noting some of the similarities in features in the cast to my Uncle Fred (originally from Iran).

​On the last night we were there, Larissa and Tyler offered to babysit and Joe and I went to a fabulous restaurant called “PeeWee’s on the Point.” The restaurant had repurposed some WWII buildings that housed some organization called PWD or PWA – anyway, the name derived from those letters. We sat out on a large terraced patio with gorgeous views of the sea and had a delicious meal of seared meats and green beans with bacon. Our waitress had just moved to Darwin from southern Australia. When we asked why, she said that her twin 15-year-old daughters were competitive swimmers and the opportunities for training were better in Darwin. She and her husband found new jobs and moved their family from a farm to a high rise so the girls could get up at 4 am and swim. I’m not sure why Darwin is a good location for swimmers – perhaps the crocodiles are an incentive to get fast quickly?

​We enjoyed our time in Darwin and will miss the easy lifestyle we had in Australia – it was a nice break from the constant newness of traveling in the South Pacific, although that, too, has its charms (for Charm). Next up is Lombok, Indonesia, followed by Cocos/Keeling and Christmas Islands (both affiliated with Australia), then Mauritius, Reunion, and South Africa for Thanksgiving and Christmas!



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