Farewell to the Land of Oz
Jan 19-25
We arrived in Darwin and checked into our hostel, Frogshollow Backpackers, at 4:30 on Friday afternoon and Claude went straight to a used car dealer to get a quote for our car. The guy gave him a lowball offer of $1500 (yikes!) but was then nice enough to tell Claude that he’d probably have better luck selling it privately by putting an ad in the Saturday paper (the office closed at 5PM). So he raced to the newspaper office and got his ad in at 4:55PM; the clerk was not impressed that she had to type it in manually since he’d missed the deadline. Our phone started ringing at 7AM the next morning and by noon we had gotten about 15 calls and had two buyers bidding against each other. In the end, we were able to sell the car to a nice Filipino couple for $3100 and only lost $1000. This meant that our car only cost us $15/day while we were in Australia – not too shabby!
The only problem with selling our car so quickly was that it meant that we were without wheels for almost a week in Darwin. We had planned a side trip to Litchfield National Park, but had to quash those plans and figure out how to amuse ourselves within the city limits. Now, if you didn’t already know, there are two seasons in the Northern Territory, the Dry and the Wet. During the Dry, it is high season and Darwin is full of backpackers on their way into or out of Australia and ready to party. During the Wet, the humidity skyrockets, it rains almost daily and Darwin starts to resemble a ghost town. Personally, I think they should consider renaming the Wet season, “the Steamy,” since the humidity is so high that there everything and everyone seems to have an aura of steam emanating from them. I know I’ve never seen Claude sweat so much. When he was crazy enough to go for a run, he would come back literally dripping. I’m not talking about a few drops of sweat coming off the end of his nose – I’m talking about caught in a torrential downpour kind of sweat. Anyway, this type of humidity made it very difficult to go anywhere on foot with the kids without listening to a constant litany of, “I’m hot” and “I’m sweaty.” We did try to walk to the museum, but underestimated the distance and were completely drenched by the time we got there 45 minutes later. We practically froze in the air-conditioning and ended up catching the bus back after only an hour.
Luckily, Frogshollow had a pool and the kids were just as happy to stay at home and swim and watch TV, so we ended up taking turns going out to run errands. We had a lot of last minute details to work out and I had a lot of blogging to do. I quickly discovered the free WiFi zone at the local library and practically took up residence there. We also had to downsize dramatically since we were going to be truly “backpacking” for the first time on our trip. We were ruthless and threw away, gave away or shipped home almost half of our stuff. It was amazing to see how much we had accumulated while in Australia when we had the luxury of a car boot (Aussie for trunk) to store everything. The gang of ne’er-do-wells at Frogshollow was happy to unburden us of all of our beach toys and miscellaneous sundries in exchange for a night of babysitting so Claude and I could have a date night (only our second on the trip thus far).
The residents of Frogshollow were a combination of traditional backpackers and seasonal fisherman, some of whom lived there long-term.
When not working, it seemed like their sole purpose in life was to sit around drinking beer and philosophizing about the meaning of life.
This motley crew of characters grew so attached to our kids that one of them gave Alexa and Simon real crocodile tooth jewelry as a parting gift and Mika, their ringleader, actually got a little teary-eyed when we left for the airport.
As we waited for our flight to Bali, I reflected on our time spent in Australia, the places we had visited and the people we had met. This vast country is home to a spirited people with big hearts and a love of sports (especially cricket), beer (XXXXGold) and life. It never ceased to amuse me how these tough, macho types love to use cute words. See if you can figure this one out: “On Friday, we’ll pitch some brewskies in the esky and head over to the relly’s to throw some sausies on the barby.”
Tags: Australia, Darwin, Travel
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