This is a companion piece to my first story, 'Map of Tasmania', and is also an Australian travelogue, but set in the deep tropics of Australia's remote Top End. It's got more sex in it than the other story, generally in the 'Erotic Couplings' realm but with other elements as tagged. I'm also entering it in the Summer Lovin' contest. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope you enjoy it. Please vote and comment.
All participants are over 18, legally able to drink in Australia, and fictional.
Part One -- Introduction to Darwin
It wasn't the heat. It was the
humidity
that hit me as we walked out of the terminal and into the blazing sun of a Darwin afternoon. Coming out of Melbourne's dry heat and into this was like throwing a bucket of water onto hot coals in the sauna.
"Oh my God!" I said to the others. "Are we sure we want to do this?"
Lucy, our host, laughed. "You'll get used to it quickly enough, Ciara. And your skin will love the moisture."
My skin. My skin was seriously at risk here, and Lucy would never really get it, with her beautiful olive complexion. In fact, five out of the six of us were going to be fine like that. Nadia had classic Malaysian skin, smooth and coffee coloured and no doubt well looked after with expensive product: her family were loaded. Tim's Taiwanese features were a bit lighter, but still with a fair bit of colour in them. Adam and Luke were both Caucasian, but seemed to tan just fine, despite Adam's blonde hair. But me? Curse my Celtic ancestors, I am a redhead, and my skin just burns.
Okay, so let's just get this out of the way. I'm
the
redhead of the story: you'll very rarely find more than one. I'm the one usually added when there's too many brunettes, blondes, and buxom black-haired beauties to be sustainable, and you need to tell us all apart. Because of the burning skin thing, I'm probably wearing a hat and sunscreen for much of the story, even in moonlight. More than likely, I'm also the one in this story that suffers the 'carpet matching the drapes' joke, although (
spoiler alert
) none of my co-stars here, and almost nobody in the story, is stupid enough to make that joke in my hearing. See if you can spot one coming though: you can never let your guard down too far. And don't forget I'm the narrator, so if they weren't stupid before they opened their mouth, they will be by the end of the scene.
With six of us plus gear, we had to work a bit to find a maxi-taxi at the rank, but soon enough we were off on the 10-minute drive to the Darwin suburb near the coast where Lucy's parents have their house.
You will understand, I hope, that I've changed some names in this story in order to protect her family's sensibilities. Because while it was certainly true that she and her five very nice friends from university had every intention of doing a good job looking after her house while they were off in Turkey, I'm sure that there were expecting us to be a bit more monastic than we were intending to be.
We had all been second-year residents at one of the University of Melbourne's colleges this year, studying different subjects, but drawn together through social connections. Adam, Luke and I were from country Victoria, Nadia and Tim from overseas, and Lucy had grown up in Victoria but had moved up to Darwin with her parents soon before she entered university. So, she was kind-of local, but not really. She didn't have any old school mates to catch up with Darwin, so she had hatched the plan of dragging us all the way north with her for an exotic tropical adventure during the Wet Season to keep her company during the long summer holidays. Airfares were dirt cheap during the off-season for tourism and none of us had been to far northern Australia, so here we were. As I was thinking through this, the penny dropped.
"Lucy," I said, as we whizzed along. "Why does everybody fly
out
of Darwin at this time of year? Is it because of the heat and humidity?"
She had the grace to look a little embarrassed. "Well, yes, plus visits to family over Christmas. And often it's raining so much that you can't really go anywhere. But we're lucky that way: the monsoon's late this year, so instead of floods, we've only got the heat and just the odd thunderstorm."
"Terrific," I said drily.
The taxi driver had been listening to this and laughed at me. "Don't worry, lass. Within two weeks it will be raining so hard you won't be able to see past the end of your pretty nose. Enjoy this heat while it lasts."
"Wonderful," I said chillingly, and he wisely fell silent in order to contemplate his winning ways with young women.
We pulled up at an inviting looking house, elevated with a large wooden deck, and with extra living quarters below. Lucy had explained that there were three bedrooms with double beds up top. These would have been a bit squeezy in themselves, particularly since none of us were paired up, but the space below was set up like a den with three single mattresses, a big air conditioner, furniture and an extra beer fridge. We hadn't explained this to the guys, but we were intending to relegate them down there, at least for sleeping. We might let them up for meals and if we wanted the pleasure of their company. Out the back was a sizable yard with a large saltwater pool, and a gorgeous tropical garden, although the grass was very long and there were palm fronds on the ground everywhere.
"The folks have been away a few weeks now," explained Lucy as she fished under a pot plant for the spare keys. "So it's a bit overgrown, but we'll whip it into shape."
We piled upstairs with our stuff for a look. It was tastefully decorated inside with bright tropical themes, and some Aboriginal dot paintings. The floor was polished, there were big fans all over the ceilings, and the walls consisted largely of glass louvres, which had been closed tightly. Against one wall of the main room was an upright piano next to an entertainment system. Tim, who had been cradling a violin case as part of his cabin baggage, exclaimed, and hurried over to play a chord, eyebrows raising in appreciation at the sound.
"They have to keep it tuned or I won't visit," said Lucy.
The kitchen was open and modern as well, with a funky slate benchtop. Lucy got us to open the louvres while she switched the fans on to get the air circulating, and then she headed back downstairs to open up the den.
After a minute, I heard a loud "Oh, crap!" from below, audible over the rapidly building noise of the ceiling fans, and we all went down to look.
And for us to smell. Urgh.
The news wasn't good. The den hadn't been closed up properly, and to make matters worse, there had obviously been a flood from one of the drains outside during a storm, with the floor covered in thin sheen of mucky water, the mattresses on the floor soaking wet, and the musty, icky smell of mould permeating the space.
"It isn't so bad," Luke said heroically.
Nadia, the only tropically raised amongst us, laughed at him. "You're sweet, Luke, but none of us will be staying in this room. The mattresses will have to be thrown out, and probably the furniture too, and the whole place scrubbed with bleach several times probably to get the mould under control. And there will be cockroaches, too, nice fat juicy ones. We'll do our best to restore the room, but we're all sleeping upstairs."
We three girls looked at each other, and I jumped in with "Let's worry about that after dinner. Shall we go through the fridge and work out what we need to get now?"
"Sure," said Lucy. "Now, I know we agreed that you and Nadia would lead the meal logistics, but I'd like to shout us fish and chips tonight while we watch the sunset at the beach. And don't forget that we've only got two nights here before we go bush for a few nights, so don't plan too far ahead."
For the rest of the afternoon, we worked on the house stuff. Luke and Tim were delegated to getting the disgusting mattresses out into the trailer to be thrown out later, and to do the first round of cleaning and bleaching of the den. Lucy started working on the pool, announcing later that it would be ready for swimming tomorrow. Adam, a farmer boy through and through, got the lawn mower working and started the yard clean-up. Nadia and I agreed a basic meals strategy and wrote our lists. Nadia also went down to check out the garden for edible plants, and was excitedly calling me down a minute later. She held up a flat, green broad stalk to me, and said "Sniff this, botanist!"
"Botany
student
. Mmm, that's nice. Lemon grass? What do you use it for?"
"Lots of things, Ciara, and even a rich kid from Malaysia like me knows how to cook her birthright dish. I'll do a beef rendang tomorrow. We should be able to get fresh tamarind here, and some galangal. Lucy said there's a food market near here on Sunday mornings."
"Yum. Looks like there's lots of plants here that I don't know. I'll take some photos and see what we can use that won't kill us."
By late afternoon, we were exhausted, but the house was looking tidy. We piled into the old Toyota Landcruiser that Lucy's parents were allowing us to use, and she drove us the short distance to a park on the foreshore, where we ate fish and chips and drank crisp white Australian wine while watching the sun set in a ball of fire over the Timor Sea. In the distance to the south, a thunderstorm was arcing high into the atmosphere, with thousands of lightning flashes and a constant dull rumble. It was still humid, but it was a magical scene. I was feeling better about this place already.
