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On our return from Europe we spent a few days in Darwin and its surrounds.  We had a strong sense of re-engagement with Australia and found ourselves saying things like: 'isn't this nice'.

We were also able to catch up with some of our extended family. 

Julia's sister Anneke was there, working on the forthcoming Darwin Festival.  Wendy's cousin Gary and his partner Son live on an off-grid property, collecting their own water and solar electricity, about 120 km out of town. 

We went to the Mindl markets with Anneke and her friend Chris; and drove out to see Gary, in our hire-car, who showed us around Dundee Beach in his more robust vehicle. Son demonstrated her excellent cooking skills.

 

Cafe at Darwin Museum
Cafe at Darwin Museum - nice

 

Darwin harbour was named after Charles Darwin by the captain of the Beagle.  Darwin had sailed with the Beagle on the earlier, more famous, expedition of the Beagle to Tierra del Fuego and the Galapagos Islands; and had stopped in Sydney; before taking the southern route, by the Bight, to Cape Town.  He never visited the remote harbour named for him.

 

LNG loader Darwin
LNG (liquid natural gas) loader Darwin Harbour

 

Initially a small settlement was founded on the harbour in 1869, originally called Palmerston, after the British Prime Minister.  A year later the Overland Telegraph connecting Australia to the rest of the world terminated in the town.  The association of science and technology cemented the name 'Darwin' from that time onwards.  This is an interesting Australian affirmation of  Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection; quickly supported and taught by universities and natural history museums in Sydney and Melbourne at the time.  This central tenant of modern biology remains controversial in less scientifically literate societies to the present day.

The contrast between Darwin in Australia and similar sized cities in Britain, Russia and Germany is dramatic.   In early August, in the dry season, temperatures in excess of 30 C are pleasant when the humidity is very low.  And it is just so Australian.

 

Watching the sunset; with take-away Asian meals from the markets
Watching the sunset; with take-away Asian meals from Mindl Markets

 

There is a difference of scale and landscape and just getting there by air from Sydney takes four and a half hours; or four days by road. 

Australia is larger than Europe, nearly 32 times larger than the UK.  While much of Australia is desert, large areas receive more annual rain per hectare than the European average.

Darwin, for example, gets over twice as much rain as anywhere in Europe. But the soils are poor and heavily leached by water and age; including thousands of years of burning of undergrowth and leaf litter; that might otherwise have composted to form topsoil.

Australia is the oldest continental land mass on the planet; scoured by age and mostly flat.  Northern Australia lies in the tropics. The northern extremity of Cape York is just 10 degrees short of the equator; while the southern tip of Tasmania, South East Cape, has a latitude similar to that of southern France.    

 

Kakadu - just 140km from Darwin
Kakadu - 140km inland from Darwin

 

Although Darwin is the most remote Capital city in Australia  it is more famous in Australia for being devastated twice.  It was heavily bombed by the Japanese during WW2; and it was destroyed again by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, 1974; suffering the worst bomb then cyclone damage ever sustained by an Australian city.

 

 

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Travel

Canada and the United States - Part1

 

 

In July and August 2023 Wendy and I travelled to the United States again after a six-year gap. Back in 2007 we visited the east coast and west coast and in 2017 we visited 'the middle bits', travelling down from Chicago via Memphis to New Orleans then west across Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and California on our way home.

So, this time we went north from Los Angeles to Seattle, Washington, and then into Canada. From Vancouver we travelled by car, over the Rockies, then flew east to Toronto where we hired a car to travel to Ottawa and Montreal. Our next flight was all the way down to Miami, Florida, then to Fort Lauderdale, where we joined a western Caribbean cruise.  At the end of the cruise, we flew all the way back up to Boston.

Seems crazy but that was the most economical option.  From Boston we hired another car to drive, down the coast, to New York. After New York we flew to Salt Lake City then on to Los Angeles, before returning to OZ.

As usual, save for a couple of hotels and the cars, Wendy did all the booking.

Breakfast in the Qantas lounge on our way to Seattle
Wendy likes to use two devices at once

Read more: Canada and the United States - Part1

Fiction, Recollections & News

Julian Assange’s Endgame

A facebook friend has sent me this link 'Want to Know Julian Assange’s Endgame? He Told You a Decade Ago' (by Andy Greenberg, that appeared in WIRED in Oct 2016) and I couldn't resist bringing it to your attention.

To read it click on this image from the article:

 
Image (cropped): MARK CHEW/FAIRFAX MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES

 

Assange is an Australian who has already featured in several articles on this website:

Read more: Julian Assange’s Endgame

Opinions and Philosophy

The Prospect of Eternal Life

 

 

 

To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

[1]

 

 

 

 

When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west.  And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death.  This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.

 

Read more: The Prospect of Eternal Life

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