A TERRITORY GIRL
Returning to Darwin is like slipping back into a comfortable bath. There’s the familiar warmth upon arrival, even though the sky is inky with stars and the smell of early rains. The tarmac steams softly as I step outside, floating that localised monsoon straight back into heady humidity.
It’s been a year since I was here, and I’m struck by the contrast of the new alongside the old. Trees whose shade I tiptoed under, my feet baking from bitumen sprints, are gone now. What’s left is ground torn up by strong winds, and the remnants of old timber. There are pieces of my childhood in that timber, scattered across the parks of town. There are pieces of me as well.
New buildings have risen to replace the trees. Their shapes are unfamiliar ghosts on a once familiar skyline. I don’t recognise the shadows they make on the roadways, or their quirky balcony decorations. I don’t remember their construction, wasn’t present for their rise from the red earth under a sparkling sun. They are alien to me, like hastily pasted additions on the collage of my own observations, still to be acquainted with in the city that has ticked on without me.
For just a day, I allow myself to feel like a visitor here, in this place I once called home. I marvel at the heat and how people just survive in it, persisting as insects might in the face of a radioactive future. I sweat buckets, drown myself in iced coffee, and wait for the reprieve of sunset. Now I am a down south blow-in, here to soak sunshine, see family and experience the wild frontier.
Still a Territory girl remains, and the heat leaves old habits lingering.
So I walk barefoot and relish the burning pavement on the soles of my feet. I allow my skin to sit silent in the sunshine, feeling the warmth run through my body in twisted ropes.
I relish the tropical wind teasing my hair and drying the sweat on my skin at the seaside. I feel no desire to swim in the turquoise depths, but I hazard a stroll in the shallows, picking over seashells.
I watch the sun rise from what’s left of a Territory rainforest, and sink then again into the endless northern sea. I spark a backyard fire pit to life and tilt my head back to stare at a thousand unknown constellations laid out above me.
I experience the minor celebrity status of having returned, recognised by familiar faces at the markets, the shopping centre, and then just walking down the street. I try to justify why I left here in the first place.
I sample satay chicken with homemade peanut sauce, Thai sweets in the colours of the rainbow, and curries from all the corners of the world. I eat my bodyweight in soft papaya and sticky mango smothered in sweet passionfruit and tart limes. I wash everything down with enough juice to almost remember what it is to be cool again.
It happens in a blink, and just like that I am home.
In this case, it is a short-lived return. A brief visit between two stages of life. I have a foot in both places but I know where I belong for now. There will always be a warmth hanging around under my lingering tan, a proclivity for sweating on a Saturday morning while scoffing spicy laksa, and a wild love for the Poinciana in bloom. There will always be a part of me that loves the chaos of early July, the slow measured pace of October, and the monsoonal rush that heralds a new year. There’s a clock that ticks inside my heart that will always run on Territory time, even though for now I’ve set it to another state, and another state of mind. Turns out you can take the girl out of the Territory, but it’s a much greater challenge to take the Territory out of the girl.
Oceana Setaysha is a casual wordsmith and full-time coffee drinker on the pointy end of an Education degree. She thinks there will always be part of her that lives in Darwin.
