Read all the Darwin letters in order…
Whilst living in Darwin Trenna spent a lot of time writing.
I have a number of the letters she wrote, and they will appear on these pages.
Some other Darwin related material may also appear here….
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- Commencing the Darwin Letters
By Greg, and then Trenna Trenna and I lived in Darwin the capital of the Northern Territory from 1995 to 1997. Darwin, for our international readers is well and truely in the tropics. During that time, thankfully, Trenna took the lead in writing home to friends and relatives. Yes it was the era of letters and expensive long distance phone calls. Trenna really mastered the new Word Processing technology. For those of a geeky disposition I think back then we were using a 386 PC and probably Windows 3.1. What I do know for sure is that the letters and… Read more: Commencing the Darwin Letters - The Darwin Letters No. 2
By Trenna, Intro by Greg It’s been a long time coming, and then it is only a short piece! The whole Chapter is only three paragraphs long. Future installments will be in a different format, as you will see. If you missed Chapter One, you can find it here. By Trenna Chapter Two Leaving home Finally, after months of consideration and anticipation, and weeks of preparation, departure day Thursday 10th November 1994 has thankfully arrived. The past couple of weeks have seen us in perpetual motion. We’ve attended more social functions (not all in honour of us) during the past… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 2 - The Darwin Letters No. 3
The Actual Letters… or at least the first of them Welcome to the third instalment in this series. I’ve changed my mind several times, wrestling with how best to present this series of stories from when Trenna and I lived in tropical Darwin. I’ve now decided I will do it by publishing, in the order they were written and sent, the letters Trenna wrote to my Mum and Dad. We later found out that my Mum and Dad, once they had read the missives would then pass them around to their fellow inmates at their retirement village. So you aren’t… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 3 - The Darwin Letters No. 4
Monday 19 December 1994 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Christmas! Top End Greetings to you Mum and Dad, and also to anyone else who reads this letter. Not another letter, we hear you cry! Don’t worry though, we’re sure the novelty will wear off very soon, and you’ll be blessed with a simple phone call. But in the mean time, here we go again…How are you going? We hope your throat has improved Mum, and that you are not over doing it. Christmas at Debbie’s sounds like the ideal place to be, we’ll be thinking of everyone… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 4 - The Darwin Letters No. 5
Tuesday 17 January 1995 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff NT 0810 G’day Mum and Dad, Sorry we missed you on Sunday, Mum. How did you and Deb do at the Markets? Is this the first time you have sold stuff there? I can’t remember if we ever did get around to going to the Cannington Markets, I know we had intended to. How do they compare with other markets? Greg’s going very well at work. His bosses seem very impressed with him so far. He’s also in the process of applying for his boss’s job, which he has to hand in by… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 5 - The Darwin Letters No. 6
Monday 13 February 1995 20/288 Casuarina Drive Nightcliff 0810 ” HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUM! “ G’day again Mum and Dad. We enjoyed our chat with you both on Saturday. Hope you’re still going good. But rest assured, I won’t let the mundane get in the way of me telling a story or two We’re both slowly recovering from this wretched flu virus. We thought we might be able to get out and do a few things this weekend, but as it turned out, we were basically just lounge lizards. Greg’s been boning up on the college that he’s going to in… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 6 - The Darwin Letters No. 7
Tuesday 21 March 1995 20/288 Casuarina Drive Nightcliff 0810 G’day (hopefully) Mum and Dad, We hope you are both well. We’re pretty good, and we’re looking forward to your visit. Well this letter has taken considerably more effort to write than any previous one to date, that’s for sure. Mind you, it’s not for want of trying on my part. Our computer is trying my patience just a tad. I think that it wants to be superseded. This letter has been created and typed six times, under six different names, in six different formats, and they have all subsequently disappeared into the ether. The computer… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 7 - The Darwin Letters No.8
A note before Tren starts: There is about a 4 and a half month break between the following letter and the previous one. I suspect that there wasn’t one written in that time. That period includes a lot of “The Dry” when we were way more active, but during this period my parents visited and Trenna’s sister Barb visited. Our friends Lorraine and Neil also arrived to live in Darwin, Lorraine had landed the job as my boss at NTU. We were involved in settling them in. Trenna also had a short-term contract to work at the University. So all… Read more: The Darwin Letters No.8 - The Darwin Letters No. 9
Tuesday 26 September 1995 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 G’day once again Mum and Dad, How are you both after your trip to Kal? We hope you enjoyed it. Did you see some interesting sites? How did the local bus route and service compare with Darwin’s? Isn’t it around this time of the year that Kal has the racing round? We are well, although we both feel that the cancellation of our Tassie holiday has taken some of the shine off our life in Darwin – we were ready for a break! Greg has many work responsibilities weighing him down at the moment, but these should be alleviated… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 9 - The Darwin Letters No. 10
Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this post may contain an image of a dead person (I don’t know if it does or not). Tuesday 5 December 1995 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 Dad , “ H a p p y B i r t h d a y t o y o u . . . ” Howdie Dad and Mum, We hope you, and the rest of the clan are well. We’re both fighting fit. Its good to hear that you are doing so well at all the art & craft stalls Mum. Don’t over do it though… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 10 - The Darwin Letters No. 11
[GM: Warning: This post does mention suicide.] Tuesday 13 February 1996 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 “ Birthday Greetings, Mum! ” G’day folks, How are you both? Staying out of the hot sun no doubt! Sorry we missed you on Sunday, Mum. We’re well, although leading relatively mundane lives at the moment. Notwithstanding Greg of course being extremely busy at NTU with enrolments – he’s at work by 8.00am and doesn’t get home until gone 7.00pm on some nights. It’s the inauguration of the computer system he’s been working on over the past year. So, he and his staff are experiencing the usual… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 11 - The Darwin Letters No. 12
Saturday, 4 May 1996 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 G’day folks, How’s life down there in sunny Perth? We hope you are both well. We’re just spiffy. It’s “The Dry”! There have been a number of unequivocal signs to verify this. Firstly, on Thursday evening 21 March our balcony was engulfed in a hovering swarm of dragon-flies which according to Margie is – a sure-fired sign that “The Dry” is on its way. Then, I bumped into the first couple of enthusiastic, straw-hatted, sneaker wearing, camera toting, ‘visiting parent’ types, keenly climbing our apartment stairs, breathlessly chirping about how lucky we were… Read more: The Darwin Letters No. 12 - The Darwin Letters No.13
Friday, 9 August 1996 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 G’day Mum and Dad, W ell, how are you getting along down there? We hope you’re both fighting fit. We’re fine. Thankyou for your letter of 21/7 Mum. It sounds like you’re getting some interesting items through your shop. Mum, keep your beady eyes off our breadmaker, we intend enjoying it’s yummy results for many years to come. Of course Dad if you haven’t bought one by the time we return to Perth, you can borrow ours to see if you like using it. This time it’s our turn to be impressed by the TV News… Read more: The Darwin Letters No.13 - The Darwin Letters – The Final Letter, No. 14
Tuesday 5 November 1996 20/288 Casuarina DriveNightcliff 0810 G’day Mum and Dad Nov 96 Greg has accepted a job offer at Murdoch University, and has agreed to commence working there on Monday 2nd December 1996 – less than four weeks from today – YIPPEE!! So we’re packing our bags, and aim to fly out on Saturday 30th November 1996 – 2 years, 2 weeks, and 2 days after the day we first arrived in Darwin. Although we are very keen to return to our home in Kensington, we reckon that our time up here, although perhaps a tad too long,… Read more: The Darwin Letters – The Final Letter, No. 14 - The Green Salad Sandwich Maker, and Other Darwin Stories
By Greg Introduction I think Trenna’s Darwin letters to my parents convey a lot of the colour and light of our two year stay at the top of Australia. If you haven’t caught up with them I suggest you start them HERE. There were a few stories from that period that weren’t covered by Trenna’s letters, so I thought I’d cobble together a bunch of them in this post. Decision to Go We moved to Darwin so that I could take up the role of Manager, Student Administration at the Northern Territory University (NTU). It had been quite a good… Read more: The Green Salad Sandwich Maker, and Other Darwin Stories - Funny and/or Clever Newsletter Titles
A Darwin Letters Extra If you haven’t read The Darwin Letters yet, what are you doing here? The Darwin Letters start here. Introduction Once Trenna arrived in Darwin it became apparent quite quickly that she wanted to write to family and friends to tell them of how different it was to Perth, and to tell of the adventures we had undertaken. These days you would use Socials to get the word out, but of course in 1994 that wasn’t an option. At first she thought she could use our PC to write and print a newsletter to post to people… Read more: Funny and/or Clever Newsletter Titles