Top End Angel

(contemporaryartbychristine.com (image used with permission of the artist)

There was a bombardment of crocodile jokes when I started sharing the news I was moving to Darwin. I didn’t know anything much about Darwin, apart from Cyclone Tracy and a vague awareness of the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese. I knew it was the capital of the Northern Territory, and that it was our smallest capital city, smaller by half than my hometown of Wollongong. I also knew I wouldn’t be encountering crocodiles roaming the streets of suburban Darwin, any more than I met kangaroos bounding free, left, right and centre in the suburbs of Sydney and Wollongong. I also knew Darwin was a hot place.

With my marriage over, and the demise of the substitute relationships I got involved with afterwards which caused trouble in my family, particularly with my children, I felt like it might not have been a bad idea to get away. I’d become very good at making bad decisions which had unpleasant consequences for me and those I loved. My hope was that this was a good decision: a strategic move to help me and those I’d hurt recover.

It was early in 2016 and I had been working for Mission Australia in Wollongong for three and a half years. I’m an English language teacher and as all teachers in this sector know, the availability of work relies heavily on the number of students we have enrolled. When enrollments started to dry up, and classes were being collapsed, I could see the writing on the wall. I needed something stable in my life and work had been that one thing during an incredibly difficult four year period. Had I lost my job at that time, it would have been devastating so I decided to take matters into my own hands. With nothing tying me to Wollongong, and a feeling that it might be good if I removed myself from everything and everyone familiar for a period of time, I applied for teaching positions all over the country and around the world.

In July of 2016, I treated myself to a holiday in Alice Springs; my first venture into the Northern Territory. I had wanted to experience Uluru for as long as I could remember so I booked a tour to ensure I got maximum bang for my tourist buck, and that I did. Whilst in Alice Springs, I received a job offer; the only one out of all the applications I had sent out. Due to the desperation of the company looking to employ me, I was able to negotiate a very attractive salary which included my airfare to Darwin.

There was one other stumbling block to me leaving Wollongong. My dad had been recently diagnosed with stage 4 mesothelioma (lung cancer). There was every chance that, although he was relatively healthy at that time, he could rapidly deteriorate. I was moving thousands of kilometres away from him. If he went downhill, how would I get to him? I asked him how he felt, and he unsurprisingly told me to go for it. Whether he thought it was a good move for me or not, he told me it was, and his confident assurance sealed the deal.

I was excited at the prospect of a new job in a new state. I was confident God was again directing my steps and that this was indeed the right move for me at the right time. A few months after I left Mission Australia, they lost the government contract which had kept me and my fellow teachers employed. My colleagues all lost their jobs, but I had already moved on to bigger and better things.

Darwin smacked me in the face, (the heat was a fiery wall of welcome as I left the airport terminal) then embraced me like a long-lost brother. Australia’s northern most capital felt like a big country town. I quickly lost myself in the new job, and finding somewhere to live, and learning how to get around on the buses. I enjoyed the lack of traffic, the friendly vibe, the lack of pace. I quickly found my groove and was too busy and too enthralled in exploring my new life to miss anyone back in Wollongong. Sadly, I never saw dad again. He died in December, and I was unable to return in time to say goodbye.

Finding a church enabled me to quickly make new friends. I took a gym membership and settled into a very happy routine. After a failed attempt to breathe life into a dying relationship back home which involved the person in question moving to Darwin and us renting an apartment in the city, I began to feel like I needed one more very important piece of the puzzle to be put into place. I did not want to live alone so I commenced a very serious search for love; a relationship which I hoped would lead to marriage.

In January 2018, after three months of using the eHarmony website, I was ready to cancel my membership. The novelty of searching for a life partner online had well and truly worn off, and I was disappointed at the lack of results. At the very end of the month, I saw a new profile on eHarmony and I sent a message. I believed then and still do, that God had sent me an angel. Thus began a great romance which we believe had God’s fingerprints all over it. After a couple of months, I decided I had to meet this amazing woman who I had been chatting to. At Easter I flew to Vietnam to see if the chemistry I felt online with her would translate into real life magic.

She was so nervous about meeting me, she had not slept the night before, but I knew immediately the magic was there. As soon as I embraced her at the airport and kissed her cheek, I knew I would marry her. I held her sweaty hand as we walked away to her friend's waiting car and all the way to a nearby restaurant where we had our first meal together. He friend joined us to save my angel from her oppressive shyness. Later she relaxed a little, and we walked alone on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, stopping for a quick game of imaginary tennis on the sidewalk.

And so began a series of trips to Vietnam which thrilled my senses and made my heart swell with love. When my angel came to the Top End for her first visit in August 2018, I had been living in Darwin for two years and was excited to show off the charms of the Territory. Despite being a little overwhelmed, particularly by how quiet it was compared to Ho Chi Minh City, she spoke enthusiastically about our future life together in the Australia. On August 18, we got married at Cullen Bay in front of a small group of family and friends, at sunset.

By this time, I was housesitting full time, and loving life in Darwin more than ever. The plan was to save money and pay off some debt in preparation for my wife and children to move to Darwin. We put in the visa application in December and so began our long wait, scheduling holidays as frequently as we could; the first of which was to her hometown, Buon Ma Thuot where we had a traditional Vietnamese wedding ceremony. On February 26 the wait ended with the grant of the visa, and now our dream to live together in Australia as a family has come true. For this we thank God, and we’re also grateful to the laidback, tropical city of Darwin and her people.

I’ve seen plenty of crocodiles in my four years in Darwin, but aside from the Adelaide River residents who amuse tourists, I haven’t seen any outside of the zoo. I’ve learned more about Darwin too: her proud and resilient history, and her culture, but most importantly I’ve learned a lot about myself. Counterintuitively, coming to live in this remote, and oft maligned frontier city, a place which many call a wilderness, full of ruffians and runaways, has tamed me, calmed me down. It’s also true that my Top End Angel has done immeasurably great things to being me some peace. You could say she is a miracle: the answer to my prayers. I say that and I believe it.

by D.A.Cairns

The Back of the Bus

The Back of the Bus

by

D.A.Cairns

There are sufficient seats at the front of the bus so he doesn’t need  to sit anywhere near the back. A stolen glance as he boards and presses his Darwin bus card against the scanner while greeting the blank faced driver, confirms this. Relieved, he walks through a curtain of fetid air and takes an aisle seat so he can move at least one of his legs. The buses are rarely crowded, in fact on a number of occasions he’s enjoyed their cavernous and frosty interiors in solitude. The bus pulls out into what passes for traffic in Australia’s northern capital, before he’s settled, so he’s forced to grab the handrail and swing his backside down onto the seat.

Stony faced passengers stare out through the windows if they don’t have mobile devices, as he allows the icy air to cool his skin. After a five-minute walk to the bus stop he was sweating already. It’s only seven thirty but the mercury is already poking thirty and the build up humidity draws sweat from the skin as though squeezed from a sponge.

He watches them through the window, meandering through the park in a loose herd formation. The front runner is dressed in a hi-vis shirt and King Gees. Thongs adorn his feet, but he’s carrying a Coles shopping bag in which he probably has a pair of boots. He reaches the bus stop seconds before the bus pulls in, having received its command via a long high pitched beep instigated by a passenger wishing to disembark. The bus stops. Two exit through the back door as hi-vis enters via the front. He shuffles down the aisle without making eye contact with anyone, and makes his way to the back of the bus. The back of the bus is dark and it smells. It’s noisy too and with the arrival of a hi-vis guy, the hubbub ramps up. They appear careless of the presence of others as they chatter loudly in a language he doesn’t understand.

So far, his curiousity has not compelled him beyond speculation. He’s still disappointed that the stereotype he hoped would be destroyed by his actual experience in the Top End, has instead been unambiguously reinforced. Hi-vis guy is a rarity for two reasons: he has a job and he’s sober. Listening to the back of the bus jabber makes him wonder why hi-guy sits with them. The reason strikes him quickly, making him feel stupid. He is one of them. He looks like them and speaks their language although as gainfully employed citizen he is inhabiting a different world. There are many worlds on the bus. Individual planets in which people sit in safety, enjoying their self-imposed isolation. Darwin draws people from all over the world, but no matter which piece of geographical space one occupies it is always different from others. Everyone experiences the world through the lens of their own culture.

The bus stops again, relieving itself of another burden, before proceeding along the Stuart Highway towards Palmerston. He becomes aware of other conversations taking place, but they are not in English either. All of his fellow passengers can speak the local language with varying degrees of proficiency, which makes it an unsecured mode, and besides it is infinitely easier to converse in one’s own tongue. Even though there’s no need for discretion when no one else can understand what you’re saying, most people, mindful of others, speak as quietly as they can. The mob at the back of the bus are boisterous, loudly calling to a couple of their members as they leave the bus at the next stop. Perhaps, it’s the parting shot of an argument now severed by circumstance, or maybe it’s a hearty wish for health and happiness. It’s impossible to tell. They always sound angry. The disembarkees, don’t smile as they gesticulate towards the back of the bus on their way out.

Others takes their place, dressed in the uniform dirty rags of their tribe, and set off nicely by an assortment of bandages and plaster strips. They fight all the time. He’s seen them in the parks, staggering around in an alcoholic fog hurling curses and fists at each other. He studies one of the women and realizes that she might have been beautiful once, before her lip had been split a dozen times, and her nose broken. She’s shrouded in weariness, her dull dark face framed by thick unwashed hair. The back of the bus waits for her: a broken and battered woman bearing ten extra years of life in every crease of her face. They are not a good-looking race. Oversized noses, brows and lips. He quivers with disgust at himself, but this latent racism has been nagging him ever since he arrived. They are more different than any other people and yet this land is theirs. They belong while everyone else, in one sense, does not.

He wishes it was different. That his only conversations with them hadn’t involved humbugging. That making eye contact meant being hit up for money or cigarettes. He wishes he had not seen them sifting through handfuls of cigarette butts looking for a smokeable remnant or staggering around the streets of Darwin in the middle of the day, menacingly intoxicated, or sleeping in the middle of footpaths and on bus shelter benches and in parks, flat out on their backs and oblivious. The awful statistics are on the news every night, as they valiant efforts of community leaders to rescue their people from despair. He would rather not have seen or heard any of this. The rampant racism and typecasting he heard back was easy to refute when distanced from actual experience, and nothing is more powerfully influential than an individual’s own experience.

It was becoming a torment for him to endure this increasingly undeniable awareness of his own prejudice. He wanted desperately to do something about it, to transform himself, instead of merely joining the eye rolling and long suffering majority who with differing degrees of tolerance shared the city with its minority of resident natives. His stop was approaching, and he would soon be at work, fully engaged mentally and unable to give consideration to the troubling thoughts he suffered on every bus ride. He often thought of purchasing a car, but it made him feel sick to think that was his best and only solution to the festering problem of how to live with his Indigenous brothers.

He presses the stop button and shuffles in his seat. When the bus stops, he rises and walks to the front  door. Fifteen minutes have passed but the stench of the back of the bus passengers still hangs heavy in the air and it drapes him as he exits the bus with a nod to the blank faced driver.

As he walks, he thinks of Rosa Parks: a champion of the American civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Her particular brand of protest focused on ending the restrictive and racist law which saw negroes forced to sit at the back of the bus. More than half a century later, black Australians choose the back of the bus. It’s their territory, as they travel around aimlessly, resenting the white invaders who stole their land and their children. The same invaders who pay for their pitiful, violent and alcoholic lifestyles. The irony takes his breath away, makes him feel dizzy and despondent.