Travels with Charlie in… Beers in Pacific Cities that Start with “D” for 200, Alex: Part 2
Travels with Charlie | Charles Rudish
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Bicentennial Park hosts many of Darwin’s monuments, those great, often grey, stones of permanence set down: bolted physical recollections. Initially the cenotaph, a Commonwealth memorial for war dead constructed (I think uniformly) after The Great War (in which, of course, Australians fought so valiantly alongside their Kiwi brothers in Gallipoli and other theaters), caught my interest. That cenotaph, much like its brother in Whitehall, survived bombing in the Second World War, two of very few to have done so.
Darwin, you see, was the site of a Japanese attack on February 19, 1942. The city, and its harbor, were of great military and commercial importance: as I understand it, the Japanese wanted unimpeded, unthreatenable, and secure access to the oilfields of Java. Darwin, a few hundred miles away, was to be neutralized. Thus, not only was Darwin devastated on that day, but the Japanese sunk an American destroyer, the USS Peary, which had been sent to protect the city. Dozens of servicemen drowned with their ship, whose final resting place remains the seabed at Darwin Harbor. A harborside gun, salvaged from the wreck, points South.
I walked through the well-manicured and empty (it really was too hot to be walking at that time of day in the direct sun but, please, forgive me; I had but a single day in Darwin (which reminds me: I’ve not told you, oh kind and gentle reader, why I was in Darwin at all. I fear boring you, blessed child, with the vagaries of Pacific airline holiday schedules; suffice it to say, in order to get where I was going (more of which in a subsequent edition of Somewhat Rudish and Travels with Charlie (so do subscribe, and follow and like on LinkedIn)) I needed a night in the Little D (as which, I’m sure, Darwin is not referred) and was desperate to make of it what best I could)) park and looked out across the verdant cliffs to the sea: it was all so beautiful up on those heights. I was reminded (who wouldn’t be?) of Henry James’ revelation on his walks through Rome: how even here, in a distant corner of oh so distant Australia, layers of life, human and, in Darwin, natural, are built upon the corpses of the past.
I needed to cool off; by this time, every part of me was dripping in sweat. Another beer outdoors before a slowly oscillating fan and, after the short walk to the hotel, some AC, did the trick. I changed into the bottom half of the Top End uniform: I wore shorts. The sun was creeping down: it would be cool (ish) soon. And time for a final Darwinian beer and some dinner.
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About Travels with Charlie
Name a country, city, island, restaurant or ballet performance and you can bet Charles Rudish has been there. Follow along as he documents his adventures around the world with this ongoing series. Charles offers a humorous and insightful perspective on travel, culture and exploring the world around you.
