Melbourne-Darwin-Bali

The day and a half “trek” to Bali was tiring but well worth the effort. After shipping our winter clothes home from the Carlton area post office on a boat that will take almost as long to get to California as the original ships took to arrive in Botany Bay some two centuries ago, we sensed the need to get on the road and left Melbourne on an earlier flight than originally planned, traveling back through Sydney and then on to Darwin, arriving after 1:00 AM.

We were delayed taking off waiting for mechanical repairs and got this great shot of the QANTAS fleet tails at sunset in Sydney. Sunsets are one of the most stunning natural features in this part of the Southern Hemisphere. Something about the angle of light makes the whole experience familiar yet disconcerting and in this moment of intense beauty what is magnified is a sense of wonder and disorientation at being 8000 miles from our California coast home. It’s a little like standing upside down in a garden of bougainvillea at dusk.

The nearly five hour flight from Sydney to Darwin courses north from the southeastern corner of this vast country. It was late when we cut across the interior outback and too dark to see the great desert whose craggy, austere landscape in the center and western parts of Australia artists such as Sidney Nolan and Aboriginal Artists such as Eubena Nampitjin have represented in their paintings.

We could see nothing until we neared Darwin and the captain alerted us to bush fires visible in the near distance. Below us fires dotted the landscape every fifty miles or so with amoeba-shaped outlines blazing vermillion and gold in the low bush and the next morning we read in the news that the dry season in this region was expected to bring more fire. Residents of Alice Springs and nearby areas were warned to clear perimeters around their homes to deter fires from spreading.

Darwin is the most northern territory in Australia. Known locally as the Top End it was named after Charles Darwin because of his expeditions in the region. For us, it was a disturbing bit of a blur. After a disappointing breakfast of poorly made coffee and the predictable imitation English Breakfast at the hotel (which followed a disappointing sleep) we ambled along the Esplanade that meanders above the bay of the port of Darwin leading into the Timor Sea and toward the city centre, discovering a few interesting sites, including this monument to American WWII service members killed defending Australia’s northernmost point from Japanese invasion. The current population of Darwin is an odd mix of student backpackers and other tourists—mostly white Australians from the southern regions, Asians, especially Japanese, some Europeans, and a few Americans—in search of a “genuine” Outback experience or, like us, about to use Darwin as a gateway to Asia, and Aboriginals. Near the center of Darwin, some Aboriginals had congregated in Tamarind Park making them seem at once more numerous and nearly invisible. Was it they or we who were ghosts wandering the streets, engulfed in a commercial blur?

The question became almost unbearably haunting; we retreated from it to lunch at an Irish Pub and then a nearby movie house and into the fantasy (or was this reality?) of the con game of Ocean’s Thirteen. Later, we walked toward Mindil Beach to catch its much-reputed sunset, along with hundreds of other tourists and locals, including Aboriginal artists and musicians there for the weekly Thursday night market at the beach. Finally, it was time to take a taxi to the airport. At midnight we left Australia behind with a promise to return and departed for Bali’s Denpasar airport.