Snap and Scribble

I went to Darwin for the weekend last Friday. I’d booked a couple of weeks earlier, so i managed to get a seat on the Friday evening flight, which leaves at about five o’clock. That meant knocking off from work at four to go to the airport – as they like you to be there an hour before the flight’s due to leave, in case they leave early (which they sometimes do).

The airport building at Maningrida is just a small tin shed with an awning on the runway side. I guess the bench against the wall under the awning is the “departure lounge”! There’s a fence in front of this, with a gate onto the runway – or rather, onto the area where the planes park (the runway’s a bit further away).

The evening flight starts, i think, from Millingimbi – another Aboriginal community, not all that far away. On Friday, it was running about quarter of an hour late by the time it got to Maningrida. But the flight to Darwin’s only about an hour, so i was walking out of the airport there before half past six.

Rohan and Liza, a couple of friends who live in Darwin, came to pick me up – and they arrived just as i walked into the arrivals area. I only had hand luggage, so we were out of there almost before we’d arrived.

One of the first things i did when i got to their place was to pop over the bottle shop across the road and buy a bottle of red wine. It had been six weeks since i’d been able to drink alcohol and i was just about ready for a glass or two.

The following morning, like every Saturday, Parap market was on. This is just round the corner from where i was staying, so i walked round there to get some breakfast.

Parap market is fairly small, but there are lots of stalls crammed in to it. There are always half a dozen or so stalls selling south east Asian food, and i got a veggie laksa from one of them. Afterwards, i had a black coffee and a sweet sticky gooey Vietnamese thing, made from coconut cream and taro, or something.

Later that morning, i went out to do some shopping to take back home with me. It took me several hours to buy everything on my list – mostly from Casuarina shopping centre. I’m not sure why it took so long, but some things were just really hard to find – like plates! I had to go to several shops before i found some decent dinner plates. You can’t buy china plates in Maningrida and i didn’t have any. I had to buy some cutlery too – and that was equally hard to find, for some reason. Some of the shops just had loads of empty shelves – like they’d been ransacked by frantic shoppers or something… But most of what i got was tinned and dried food, and stuff like that. Some of it came from the Oriental Emporium (which isn’t at Casuarina). It’s the best Asian shop in Darwin that i know of.

In the evening we went out to a Thai restaurant in Mitchell Street. It was pretty expensive, but the food was good. That part of Darwin has become a busy tourist hell over the last few years and the spectacle of an open-top double decker bus full of yelling drunks (probably almost all poms, no doubt), driving down the laneway next to the restaurant was a bit too freaky for me! The restaurant is on the first floor and it’s open-air, so the drunken dickheads in the bus were almost on the same level as us.

This bus, which apparently takes tourists on a pub crawl round Darwin, stops at the pub that’s more or less just across the road from Rohan and Liza’s place. That brings a bit of excitement into their lives, and often makes sure they don’t go to sleep too early! The tourist boom in Mitchell Street has been accompanied by the violence that those sort of people bring to a place, and there’s been several bashings there in the last few weeks. I can’t help thinking that the alcohol permit system in Maningrida should be extended to the rest of Australia – and dickhead pommy tourists shouldn’t be allowed to drink at all!

Sunday is Rapid Creek market day, and we got up early and went there about eight o’clock. We had to go then because Rohan had something on that day, which started about nine thirty.

Rapid Creek market is mostly fruit and vegetables – and mostly Asian. You can buy all sorts of fresh tropical stuff – like jackfruit, taro, cassava, various leafy vegetables, bananas, chillis, papayas, star apples, chilli, fresh turmeric, galangal – and sometimes freshly picked and cooked bamboo shoots. There’s also fresh tofu and tempeh, fish, various sweet things – including banana sticky rice and fried bananas. And there were a few stalls selling plants too. I bought Vietnamese mint, Thai coriander, and small-leaved basil plants, to take home to Maningrida and plant in my garden.

The main part of the market is under cover, but outside there are lots of food stalls. Mostly they’re the same sort of things – maybe some of the same stalls – as at Parap the day before. I had a veggie laksa again – which was a bit unadventurous of me, i know. But i don’t often get the chance to eat the stuff, so i made the most of it.

Monday was a public holiday and i had a ride back to Maningrida lined up. Felicity, an occupational therapist who’s based at Darwin hospital, but travels to Maningrida periodically, was driving there for the week and i’d arranged to travel back with her. It’s a long trip and she was glad to have the company.

She picked me up at seven in the morning. I loaded my boxes of shopping into the back of her government Land Cruiser and we set off down the Stuart Highway out of Darwin. The road’s tarred all the way to Jabiru, about 250km from Darwin. But we didn’t actually go through Jabiru and, instead, we crossed the South Alligator River – which is where the tar ends.

The South Alligator crossing, like all river crossings from there on, is a ford – not a bridge – and it’s only passable in the dry season. The water wasn’t particularly deep, and the concrete road surface was in pretty good condition. Most of the river crossings are just dirt river beds though, and not nearly so easy to drive through.

After South Alligator, the scenery’s pretty spectacular – with lots of hills with weird rock formations. Not long after crossing the river, you come to Oenpelli, an Aboriginal community. The road doesn’t pass through the town, but i could see some of the houses across a grassy plain off to the left of the road.

The rest of the trip went really fast – although it must have been at least three hours from Oenpelli to Maningrida. It was a pleasant drive and the road was mostly pretty good. Some of the river crossings were a bit scary though! At least a couple of them were so deep the water came right up to the bonnet of the Land Cruiser – and they’re not small cars!

We made it though, and i was surprised when we arrived in Maningrida just after one o’clock – the journey had gone so fast!

Arnhem Land, from the road to Maningrida, not far from Oenpelli.

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