Driving in Darwin

I am renting a car here in Darwin. Yep, yet again… I need to take the adventure of driving with the steering wheel on the right side, while staying on the left. THINK LEFT I have to tell myself over and over. Tomorrow I will have to do quite a bit of driving and I am nervous! Oh and of course, it went absolutely fine. I actually really enjoyed it and wanted to keep it up, but it was late and I was tired. I really did get into the hang of it though, the more I drove the more confidence I got. I still couldn’t get out of the habit of looking right when I should have been looking left, and vice versa though.

On the first day I arrived in Darwin, I was honestly pretty tired and cranky. So I sat at my computer and wasted some time, talked to some friends, and then did some internet work. I noticed outside that it was getting very dark, but it wasn’t time for the sun to be going down. Then the thunder started, and the rain started, and then it got worse. It was hailing, the lighting was hitting right in front of the hotel, and the wind was blowing so hard that I could see five feet out of the window. It was like a hurricane, I hadn’t seen a storm like that in quite a while. What a sight to see!

I was told by some people in the past couple cities that Darwin was “interesting” and that it was very multicultural. I had no idea what that meant. Now I do. There are some very dark people hanging around the city, they have tattered clothing and many go barefoot, but they do not beg. I tried to think up where they could be from, but nothing about them looked familiar to me. Their skin almost has a purplish color to it, and they have unfamiliar bone structure. Then it hit me. These were Aboriginal people. REAL Aboriginies! Like the ones we watched in the video in Anthropology! They look more indigenous than even the deep, dark African people. Their bone structure even seems to resemble that of apes a little bit. It is a strange sight. What are these people doing here amongst the settled people, while they are poor and tattered living in the modern world I wondered? Why don’t they go back to where they are more comfortable and have an easier way of living. Unless, maybe Darwin was their home. Hmmm…

My lower back has been killing me. Like it’s telling me, Lauren…. You’ve had enough. No wonder so many surveyors have needed surgery on their backs… we walk around all day long carrying things. I think my bag does happen to be a whole lot heavier than most though, oops! I’ve been making more of an effort lately to reduce the items I carry around.