Tiwi Islands, Northern Territory
A full day tour of the Tiwi Islands, 80km north of Darwin, makes for quite an interesting day!
I just need to write this out. It's Tuesday evening. I'm
depressed right now. For the first time on the trip I'm homesick. It's been six
months.
It's not even a 'real' homesick. It's more of a 'weary' homesick, and almost an
'I'm ready to go home and get on with things'. Part of it is that I am having a
problem remembering things.
We're seeing so much it's hard to remember it all. Every day is at least twelve
hours of completely new experiences, sometimes it's all day. I find it hard to
remember and sort out what I did two days ago without the camera, much less what
I did at any point last week. I want to believe that I can remember, but I often
can't, especially when the pictures I took two weeks ago are developed. "Is that
a picture near Innamincka, or a picture near Coober Pedy, twelve hours drive
away?", I ask myself.
I've had an OK time since Cape York. Not quite a really good time, but fairly
good. Problem is, I've been living about two days in the future: "oh, when we
get to Mt Isa/Alice Springs/Darwin it'll be so much better". I think a good
amount of it is not having a camera along--maybe the camera makes me stop and
think how to look at things that are right around me. The film camera does an
adequate job, but it's not all that fun because every time I take a picture it's
50 cents gone, plus the hassle of dealing with the negatives and prints. I feel
sad that I can't sort out what the good stuff we've seen is from the OK stuff by
looking at the handful of pictures from that day.
I think I don't want to leave for the Kimberly without a digital camera.
I'm also feeling isolated. Chris is here, but everyone and everything else is
far away. Hours of flying by air, days driving. It's just a bit rough,
even in a big populated city like Darwin where we speak the language, we don't
quite connect with anyone. Must think some more about this, and figure out
why I feel this way.
Nothing much, except the first banksia in weeks--a Banksia dentata on Bathurst Island. That was kinda neat.