Friday 26 August 2011 CDU Library.
Another perfect day in paradise, warm and dry under a cloudless blue sky. Kids at school and G at work. We seem to have found a house about 900 metres from G’s office, 3 bed, 2 bath, 2 living, with deep verandas all around and in a quite street of family homes, somewhere we’d be happy to buy into one day. Rent is$200 or so less than the previous house we applied for, so that’s a real bonus. If we take possession early September, we’ll have to move in when our time in Argus ends on the 8th and make do with camping equipment and an eski. Better to spend a bit of money on new stuff (at Aussie prices using Aussie dollars) than to pay $200 plus a night for furnished accommodation.
We have also finally had our finance approved for the cars, and hope to pick up the CX7 soon. The other car, a Mazda 3 hatchback, is due in 2 or 3 weeks but we have asked for a loan car until it arrives. This will allow us to return the hire car, and to allow G to drive to work independently, saving me and the children the need to drive out at 5 or 5:30 to collect her from work, with all the stress that entails for tired children during the arsenic hour.
Life will get much better once we’re out of the apartment, which is getting increasingly unpleasant as the weeks pass. The toilet in the ensuite is being replaced today in an effort to fix the sewage smell which has persisted since last Monday. Keeping the place clean is a real challenge without proper equipment, while relying on a weekly full service from the Argus staff and irregular light services between times. What I have realised is that tiles are damn hard to keep clean and that those tv ads for steamer mops are aimed at people who live in the tropics. I’m definitely going to get one and use it daily in the kitchen. The question is, if the ceramic tiles show this much mess, what would a close examination of the cork tiles in the kitchen of 46 reveal?Ah, the travails of the domesticated male.
When not fretting about such trivia, I’m still delighting in the local environment, especially the bird life which is prolific and hugely varied, especially compared to New Zealand. Yesterday, while parked in central Darwin, a large eagle or hawk with a beautiful white breast and brown wings cruised over. Wedge tailed eagles are commonplace, and smaller birds, often hard to see, are noisy and busy. Walking on the Nightcliff foreshore yesterday I came across a small bird with a long curved beak feeding on the date like fruit of a palm with large fan-like fronds. The ground under the palm was covered in the dates and large bunches hung from the base of the fronds. I’ve checked a few reference books but am overwhelmed by the number of bird species and the difficulty of identification in the field.
21 August
Two weeks since our arrival and while the effects of the two and a half hour time difference have dissipated (even 2.5 hours leads to hunger at odd times and being awake too early, especially for the children), there is much more that has to be resolved before we can declare ourselves sorted, let alone acclimatised. Our offer to lease the Brinkin house for 12 months for a slightly discounted rent was refused and the owner’s counter-offer of 6 months at the advertised rent seemed to speak of a greedy landlord intending to put the rent up as soon as she could. (Having said that, I was shocked to learn today that rent hikes are normal here, with one landlord increasing it every 3 months, which is the minimum time required for notification before any rise.) However, each day brings new housing prospects as we scour the market and consider our options regarding location and type of house. A new inner city apartment seems more attractive now that we’ve seen some very unpleasant houses, dark, rundown places surrounded by wild jungle-like gardens (one with a fallen tree leaning against the rear wall which the agent was surprised to have pointed out), broken air conditioners of uncertain vintage and ceiling fans that wobble drunkenly and seem certain to fall with catastrophic effects on any tenant sleeping restlessly on the bed below.
Meanwhile, and more significantly, G has completed her first week at work and in the process run the full gamut from elation and optimism to confusion and despair, though with a final and enduring sense that the move here was the right thing to do, and the job while not without its challenges, will be professionally rewarding. From my perspective, G’s most telling comment is her surprise at the lack of email traffic on the weekends, which, when combined with an office that closes at 4:30pm seems to indicate a job that is confined to the normal working week without spilling over into family and personal time. I am hoping that the series of evening engagements during her first week are to do with the time of year (more visitors, the Darwin Festival), and her taking up offers to meet new colleagues.
The most difficult aspect of the week has been trying to commute from the city to the northern suburbs in one car. The children started school on Wednesday and seemed to survive the experience well, but having to get them there by 8:15 and G to the office makes mornings stressful, and having to do the school run at 2:30 and then return to CDU to collect Giselle at 4 or 5 makes for an arduous afternoon which adds more stress to tired children. The best part for me has been the realisation that we can say goodbye to G at the school, allowing her drive straight to CDU and me to walk down to the coast and hence to CDU by way of Rapid Creek and the Casuarina Coastal Reserve. In the 15-20 minute walk I’ve observed wedge-tailed eagles, various parrots and parakeets and other smaller birds, and my first cane toad, dead on the side of the road like every good cane toad should be.
On the subject of cane toads, they have had a major impact on the local wildlife since arriving in Darwin from the east a couple of years ago. Whereas previously there were lots of lizards and other wildlife to be seen within the city, now they are rarely seen, killed by contact with the venomous toad. Tim Flannery describes the effect of the toad’s arrival in a new region in his 2010 book Here on Earth in the following terms:
In northern Australia it’s easy to know when you’re ahead of the toads. You see crocodiles, goannas, frilled-necked lizards, birds of prey and countless other native Australian creatures every day, all around you. But if you visit the region behind the moving frontier (which in 2010 lay near the West Australian border), all is silence and devastation. Unless you were there when the first toads arrived, it’s hard to fathom what happened. A friend of mine was camping on a river in western Queensland when the toads went through. He went out one evening to fish, and was distracted by a nauseating smell. Following it upstream he discovered a logjam of dead crocodiles, their bodies lying so thickly they clogged the stream. The toads had arrived, and so sensitive were the crocs to the toad’s poison that a single toad was enough to kill even the largest of them. (p. 76)
The local Darwin authorities maintain a toad deposit for the humane disposal of the toads comprising a small enclosure surrounded by a low fence into which the toads can be placed. Water is provided so the toads don’t suffer in the heat until they are collected and euthanized by being placed into a chest freezer. The toads cannot jump so are easily excluded from gardens with a fence to the ground, though they metamorphose from the tadpole stage at about the size of a fingernail, making them fatally attractive to smaller predators. Their inability to jump was the fatal flaw in their introduction as a biological control for the cane beetle: the toads walked about at the base of the sugar cane stalks while the cane beetle continued to thrive above them and out of reach. As Flannery points out, with toads unknown in Australia prior to their introduction in 1935, native predators had no defence from the poison glands on the backs of the toad’s necks. There are rumours that some wildlife, especially birds of prey have learned to flip the toads on their backs before eating them, so avoiding the poison glands. Some snakes are thought to be becoming immune to the poison, though this has yet to be confirmed.
For their part, humans have found at least one use for the toads, though not one any sensible person would pursue. Licking the poison glands apparently induces a hallucinatory experience similar to that provided by magic mushrooms and just as dangerous. This may be one other reason for the large numbers of barefoot and dreadlocked hippies to be seen wandering the streets of Darwin , attracted by the dry season climate and the top end’s proximity to Indonesia, SE Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
School has been, to say the least, a big success. Both W & E’s class teachers are great, and the school community has given us a warm welcome. Will has been looked after very well by his assigned buddy and came home Friday very excited to have learned that his class will be issued iPads to use in class, the first class in his year to be given the privilege. He also took pleasure in telling me about the 3 or 4 wedge tailed eagles that he’s observed cruising above the school oval. When I arrived at 2:30 on Thursday, I counted 11 black and white ibis patrolling the grass for grubs and insects, and a solitary currawong, the large black native crow watching disdainfully from a distance. Ellie’s own animal encounter (her current heroine seems to be Bindi Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter’s daughter) was with a couple of frilled necked lizards, her school house mascot. She was told to stop when she attempted to climb a tree in which one of the ‘frillies’ was sleeping; not sure what she would have done if she’d reached it, though after her baby croc experience she may have intended adoption.
Symptomatic of our welcome into the school has been my immediate involvement in the annual School Fete, wherein I was assigned an hour’s duty on the lolly stall and contributed a batch of chocolate coconut macaroons to the burgeoning tables of sweets prepared by the parents. It proved to be a great way to meet people, including one mother who, it turned out, has escorted us on a tour of CDU on our first visit to the campus in March. All were very encouraging in our struggle to find a suitable house to rent, and my efforts to negotiate the intricacies of the NT and Commonwealth government bureaucracies.
Although I am pleased to report that I’ve had some successes there, too. I’ve managed to obtain Medicare cards for the four of us, something I regard as a major achievement. We have working (if intermittently so) debit cards, complete with money in the account. Unfortunately, after using mine successively and successfully, it unexpectedly and repeatedly refused to accept the pin so is now locked until I can get to the bank tomorrow. The same thing happened with my NZ Visa card so that now I have to sign for everything, which is fine as we’re trying not to use NZ dollars now that G’s income has started to appear in the ANZ accounts.
We’ve also made progress with the cars, having had the finance accepted, though not before having to explain that as NZers we do not have residency visas. The 4WD should be available by the end of the week, providing G can find the time to apply for an NT driver’s licence, something I managed to do on Friday. The other car will be some three or four weeks away, so we’ll have to continue commuting from the city at least three times a day. At least we’ll be able to return the Holden Barina hire car which I’m starting to get quite fond of, despite it being so small and underpowered. I’m sure we’re going to be squashed flat as the proverbial shoe lace by one of the many huge 4WD we share the road with. The $3500 excess is supposed to be covered by the Visa card we used to hire the Barina, but that’s not going to be much use to us when we’re smeared across the Stuart Highway like so much vegemite (or should that be marmite, one’s Aussie and the other’s not).
The car leases include all insurances, tyres, servicing, petrol, etc. and up to 15,000kms travel per year, so if we live in the city apartment we’ll be doing about 7000km/year commuting, with plenty left over for weekend excursions.
Shortly after waking up this morning I heard the sound of firecrackers coming from the small temple in the grounds of the Chinese Club across the road from the apartment. When I looked out the window, a young Asian woman and a man dressed in a traditional Chinese smock were standing on the porch looking towards the lawn from which a plume of gunpowder smoke was still rising. She was holding a cluster of smouldering incense sticks and bowed from the waist three times before turning and walking back into the temple accompanied by the man, presumably a priest or temple functionary. Perhaps she was acknowledging the spirit of a dead parent or relative, the crackers intended to awaken the deceased, the prayer to comfort both them and the living. People visit the temple throughout the day and can often be seen performing small, private rituals on the porch, bowing to one or other of the deities represented there. A tall statue of Lao Tzu or Confucius stands in the garden. On Saturday afternoon a Chinese man paid his own tribute to the immortal by mowing the lawn slowly and methodically.
15 August 2011
We’re slowly realising that the NT works in ways which are often circuitous, not to say interminable. In arranging leasing finance for our new cars we’ve been told we need NT driver licences, though only after being asked for and providing photocopies of our New Zealand ones. We’d earlier been assured that transferring to NT licenses was straightforward, a matter of paying a fee and having an id photo taken. On enquiry however, we find we need proof of residency, such as a lease or power bill, which of course we can’t supply as we’re living in a serviced apartment until 8 September. Likewise with the city library, proof of residency is required, in addition to photo id for the adults and Medicare cards for the children to prove, presumably, that they belong to us). Fortunately, Medicare seems to be a little more flexible, and will accept any two documents proving our shift to Darwin, including the transit documents for our household goods and evidence of G’s employment by CDU (hopefully a letter will suffice, as no payslips have been generated yet.
This all means that we have to continue to rent a car until such time as we can prove we are living here, so that we can get a Territory licence and thus complete the car lease application.
We had a similar problem with ANZ Visa, who refused to process our application for a new Australian credit card without two payslips to prove G’s level of income, despite having supplied them with a copy of her contract on the bank’s advice that this would suffice.
Otherwise, we’re trying to acclimatise as well as we can, which at this time of year is not hard. G had her first day at work today, so must be relieved that that at least is underway. The children are starting to get a bit bored with each other’s company, exacerbated today by G’s need to use the hire car which restricts what we can do here in the city. Not that a morning at the wave pool and lunch at MacDonald’s can be said to be boring. Presently (3pm Monday 15 August 2011) we three are sitting on the balcony in the shade (E’s drawing from her book of Aussie wildlife and Will is on his Nintendo), while a small army of cleaners gives the apartment a ‘full-service’ on the 7th day since our arrival. They come in each day except Sunday to change towels and do the rubbish, but today was the day for fresh sheets and clean bathrooms. Tomorrow we plan to take G to work so we can have the car, so we can drop in to the school and make arrangements for W & E to start, buy uniforms and stationary, and arrange for fees to be paid. We might go for a drive out of the city, though aimless touring along dusty roads in tinny Holden Barina is hardly going to be a winner with the kids.
One positive thing: we may have found our house, the closest we’ve seen to Chesterman Rd but with a large swimming pool. We’re waiting to hear back after submitting an application through the rental agent. The house has been vacant for a month or so, and a previous applicant was declined, but if we’re accepted we hope to not have to take up the lease until our stay here in the apartment ends on 8 September. Even at that late date it’s unlikely our container will have arrived in Darwin, so we’ll probably have to move to intermediate accommodation, by which I mean waiting a week or two somewhere much cheaper that the Argus but hopefully not too small or unpleasant. The prospect of camping in the house, while appealing, presupposes we buy or rent beds, linen, chairs of some sort, and a fridge to make the house habitable. Camp beds and a beer fridge might be of long-term use, and we would have access to the pool and the aircon to make life bearable, so it’s not a bad option.
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