Every time I use a public bathroom, I wash my hands afterwards and then put them under the electric dryer. I try waving my hands sideways underneath it; up and down; and from left to right. I turn the unit off and back on again at the wall. I sometimes perform a little dance in front of it to surprise it. Nothing happens. As an option, some places also have paper towels, which I prefer. But I don’t enjoy stuffing these in amongst other wet used paper, in a waste bin that is usually overflowing onto the floor. Other bathrooms have those towels on a roller which you’re supposed to pull down to get a dry section. But what happens when the roller runs out of towel? I usually come along, that’s what happens.
It went much the same way when I used the bathroom at Brisbane Airport. The dryer refused to start, even though I waved my arms around like one of those giant air-inflated figures used outside car-parts stores to attract customers. There was no alternative, so I wiped my hands furtively on my jeans and headed for the door. As usual, the dryer roared into life as the person behind me walked within a couple of metres of the thing.
I was at the airport because I was off to Darwin in the Northern Territory for a holiday. It was hard to know what to expect. Darwin is the most northern city in Australia. From the heavily populated east coast cities, it is around two thousand kilometres across mostly empty desert, bush and savannah country. I had visions of a tough frontier town. Perhaps the pubs would be fitted with wild-west louvre doors that swung open violently as people were forcibly ejected. Maybe I’d be beaten to a pulp if I accidentally crossed someone’s path, or looked at their drink the wrong way. I wouldn’t have felt any better if I’d known Territorians’ idea of a seven course dinner – a pie and a six-pack.
‘People can be a bit irreverent in Darwin,’ a girl who’d moved there from Melbourne would later tell me. ‘They don’t necessarily like to follow rules and they certainly won’t do something just because the rest of the country thinks they should.’
On the other hand, two of my work colleagues had been there recently, and both said it was very enjoyable. ‘It’s got a lot of history. Everyone knows Darwin was bombed during World War 2, but did you know it was bombed 64 times? In the first attack, Japan used 188 planes. We only had a few Wirraways, which were crap, and the US had ten Kittyhawks there. The Australian Government has never wanted people to know how badly Darwin was damaged, nor how badly some of the leaders based there reacted. Hundreds of people were killed and the place was nearly flattened.’
I climbed onto the plane. It was about nine pm. Many of the flights to Darwin are scheduled to fly at night for some reason.
When I arrived, after four hours flight, Darwin’s airport was packed with people waiting to catch planes in the middle of the night. It seems that the airport runs twenty four hours a day. So does the supermarket in the city.
I walked outside, expecting to be narrowly missed by mud-encrusted utes sporting large spot lights and “I shoot and I vote” stickers.
Instead, a line of hybrid Toyota Prius taxis waited in the comfortably warm air. Being June, it was Darwin’s winter, so the heavy humidity and vicious temperatures of summer were absent, happily for me. In fact, it felt a lot like springtime would in Brisbane. I climbed into a taxi. The driver had dance music blaring and he looked like he’d be happier enjoying a good coffee than going pig shooting for the weekend. The taxi slipped almost noiselessly from the kerb, running on its electric motor. ‘So where to, mate?’
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