A Gough Whitlam Moment!

October 20 2017
Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.

It seems an age since we left Fremantle. We have enjoyed our stay in Darwin, but as Gough would say, “It’s time!”.

The decision to cast off and head north to explore Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand is becoming an imperative and has motivated us to attend to all those pesky ‘to do’ items that have been sadly neglected due to the work commitments we made here. Our stay in Darwin has been a bit like a hibernation from the cruising adventure for three years. How the time flies.

We arrived in Darwin somewhat unexpectedly due to a severe problem with our gearbox while exploring the Kimberley. The plans to head south after exiting the King George River were abandoned as we lost the use of the engine and decided to make a beeline sailing to Darwin for repairs. Temporary repairs allowed us to nurse Moonshadow into Fannie Bay and (after replacing the starter motor) into the Tipperary Marina on the east side of Darwin. We stayed at Tipperary for a while before moving to Bayview Marina a little further north.

Darwin has had it’s highlights but has been tinged with sadness with our Mums’ death earlier this year. Thankfully, it was pain free and peaceful for her in the Katherine Hospice and we had the chance of some quality time with her and with the opportunity to say all that needed to be said with the family (of which Mum was so proud) gathered together. We took Moonshadow out into Darwin Harbour and had a touching ceremony of scattering Mum’s ashes in accordance with her wishes.

Working in Darwin has been interesting to say the least. The heat and humidity of the build up to the ‘wet’ has been a bit of as shock to the system. I got a job driving buses for the Inpex gas project, delivering the FIFO workers out to the site. At least the buses were air-conditioned!

The split shift system was awful as were the employers treatment of the staff. I have never experienced such childish bullying and demotivating attitudes in the workplace as were practised at Buslink VIVO. The staff turnover was reckless, but I suspect that due to government grants and subsidies to train new drivers, it was regarded as a cash cow that just had to be milked.

I lasted seven months or so, a relatively long employment in the circumstances but I was dismissed for some damage I did to a bus in a minor accident!

For the past eighteen months I have been working as a Student Advocate at Charles Darwin University. This was a great opportunity and a really rewarding chance to help struggling students navigate their courses through CDU. Sometimes there were practical ways of helping them and at other times all they needed was a quiet talk and a shoulder to cry on. The danger of this kind of work is not being able to maintain a professional distance from the horror stories, especially the indigenous and international students. This, combined with the pressing need to work on Moonshadow, prompted me to ‘retire’ in June to concentrate on the ‘to do’list.

Margie is still working for Darwin Paediatrics, bringing her organisational skills to a group of diverse doctors. It sounds to me to be akin to herding cats, and I can’t understand how she manages the inevitable and never ending multi-tasking! (A skill that will be extremely valuable when we resume our cruising adventure!)

We have achieved so much since June on Moonshadow that it deserves to have its own blog page detailing the process of preparations for resuming our adventures. There is so much to learn.

‘The punters know that the horse named Morality rarely gets past the post, whereas the nag named Self-interest always runs a good race.’ (Gough Whitlam, 1989).