tropical pause

I hear it’s something of a Tassie tradition to escape winter’s grip for a couple of weeks and schedule holidays in more forgiving northern locations – though for me it’s also  an escape to my second home.

Veterans of the Darwin landscape for close to 30 years, now that my parents have decided to shake things up in their retirement years and make the move to Tasmania as well, this may be my last trip to Darwin in a very long while. On the one hand I feel ok about it. Aside from a handful of Darwin-specific experiences, the town isn’t holding me like it used to and I spent a lot of this break thinking that it would be nice to make use of my holiday time exploring some of the hundreds of other potential destinations around Australia that I haven’t yet visited. But part of me will always miss very specific sensory experiences about this old home town of mine – particularly cycling or walking through the suburbs after sunset; listening to the screeching bats, watching the soft light through the wall-length louvres of people’s houses, enjoying the wafting odours drifting out from a hundred kitchens; ginger, lemongrass, green curry, coconut, garlic. I’ve been a teenage student, a 20-something uni bum, a temporary visitor and a 30-something 9 to 5er over the decades but one thing that’s always remained constant is my love of this frontier town’s abundant wildlife, and cycling around the suburbs in the twilight hours.

Despite switching between lingering FOMO and nostalgia, the break was much needed. For the last few months, work has been hectic and hellish and this was one small window of holiday opportunity that I needed to grab between one major project finishing, and another one starting. I was grateful to have a free bed waiting in what’s otherwise a pricey town at this time of year and the opportunity to do little but read and cycle without feeling like I had to get out and ‘experience’ this holiday destination.

The eventual sale of my parents home will be a little poignant, however. While its design wasn’t optimal for tropical living, and it wasn’t in the most charming suburb that the town has to offer, the years of work my parents have lavished on the garden will be hard to farewell, with only a hope that new owners will continue these decades of care.