Darwin is a strange place. I can tell. I have been here for a week. It is fully tropical, it is hot, it is humid. Palm trees and flowers everywhere, mango trees line the streets and parks, flocks of screaming cockatoos, noisy parrots... Nice beaches, but nobody would consider a dip in the crystal clear sea, aggressive salt-water crocodiles and deadly box-jellyfish are far too common. So if you do have to leave the air-conditioned interior of buildings during the day, you try to spend as much time as possible in the pool.
Life starts around sunset. Not only is this the time when the locals leave work, but it is also the moment when the travelling crowd has sufficiently sobered up from last-nights excessive drinking and partying and has digested the 3pm breakfast. Time for a drink. Or two. If you do not move too quickly then the humid 30+ degrees can be almost pleasant (at night, that is, during the day it is alwyas above 35!). The average traveller hereabouts is 19 years old. Only very few above 23, only the exceptional weirdo above 30 (that's me, hence). Priorities in life seem to include not much more than binge-drinking and partying. And everybody is oh-so-poor. That means buying the cheapest possible food from the supermarket in order to save a dollar or two, and then, not much later, to go out and spend insane amounts of money on booze and drugs... A 50$-night out is considered a very cheap one, indeed. Due to the relatively big time-lag between Australia and Europe or America you can often hear a traveller whinging on the phone in the middle of the night "Mum, can you send more money? Everything is soooo expensive hereabouts!"
Darwin is a transient place. I can tell. Most people only spend a night or two in one of the huge hostels on the main strip. Who is here for longer has a reason. A lift to somewhere else that is not going to happen before Tuesday next week, waiting for some days before the tour to Kakadu or Lichfield national park will start, stranded because the passport had expired and the new one has to arrive by mail in everything in between a week and a month, or general lack of organization. What there is to see in Darwin, you have seen pretty quickly - the museum which actually has an excellent exhibition on Aboriginal art, the parliament building (since Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory), the shopping mall. Not much more to mention. Well, except for the nightlife which is quite tremendous! No surprise with so little to do during the day and the oppressive heat.
Time to leave. Everybody is very glad to leave this little boom-town with so many concrete apartment flats - very recently finished ones and the ones still in construction. And I am leaving, too. Hurray! One last day and shortly after midnight I am off again to Sydney.
One last remark - go and see Brasileirinho. If you enjoyed Buena Vista Social Club you will totally love Brasileirinho (by Mika Kaurismaeki)! Saw it last night in the open-air deckchair cinema with a thin-slice moon and fruit-bats overhead. Fantastic! I must go back to South America... The film is about choro, a traditional Brazilian form of music, sometimes dubbed Brazilian Jazz. Besides the music which is fabulous, the photography is just wonderful. I can only say it again - go and see it!
