Isolation and realisation

The Big City expats of Katherine wisely warned me, ‘Yeah, it takes about 3 weeks to really hit ya.’ “I’m pretty sure I know where I’ve moved to thanks,” I internally scoffed.

The niggling feeling started on Saturday. And it’s intensifying.

Heading out with my housemate Peta who wanted to buy a bicycle, we got to the shop 15 minutes too late. As it turns out most shops, if indeed they’re open on Saturdays at all, (and there are not very many at that) close at 1:00pm.

Sitting in the car, we had the mutual realisation that our sole task, the task we were looking forward to completing, was not going to happen.

Slowly reversing, we were at a loss. What now? I genuinely suggested we go to an isolated road see what speed the car could get to. Fortunately, she saw the lunacy in my suggestion and wasn't having a bar of it. Perhaps an activity for another time.

The weekend past with a few key activities ticked off. Getting over my hangover on Saturday, a souvenir from Friday drinks with the charter pilots, was a triumph. Going for a swim at the Hot Springs, another pivotal activity.

Katherine has a cinema, and sitting in there watching Gone Girl on Saturday afternoon, I almost forgot where I was. I never knew the air-conditioned dark of the cinema could be such a comforting, joyous experience. It didn’t even matter that the movie is essentially an extended episode of SVU.

Sunday: another swim. In just six weeks from now – perhaps less – this pleasure will be ripped from the narrow list of outdoor activities one can do in Katherine. The wet season means the low lying springs will be flooded. And with flooding, come the crocs. As I’ve found out, the traps set by the rangers can only do so much.

My newly purchased bicycle is bringing me much joy. Riding to and from work reminds me of riding to uni in Graz during the stifling heat of summer. I never could have guessed I’d look back fondly on Graz summers, which are comparable a summer’s day in Brisbane, but positively cool by Top End standards. And it’s only October.

I’ve realised more truth in the saying ‘An idle mind is the devil’s workshop’ than I care to admit. To aid this, I’m the newest member of the Katherine Library. It’s a small library/ DVD repository/ internet haven for grubby-looking transient backpackers. In there on my lunch break today, I enjoyed witnessing the verbal stoush between the librarian and an irate Katherine man who has repeatedly requested ‘Scar Tissue’ – the autobiography of Anthony Kiedis.

The frustrating part of the way I’m feeling is not even that I’m particularly bored. I’d describe it as more a collection of various fears that have started to shadow my days. That Darwin is so far away. That when Peta goes away for work and weekends I will have no one to talk to. That I've willingly left behind my friends, and they won’t be there when I get back. That I’ll step on a cane toad in the pitch black of my unlit street. That one day a negligent dog owner will leave their gate open, and one of the hundred-odd ferocious guard dogs in my street will bound forth and maul me. That the intense sun will burn me, and I’ll get skin cancer. That I’ll get too hot…

Three weeks, they said. They were dead right.