3 Berry Place, Darwin, Australia, 1983
This is a quixotic post, more personal than I usually do, and really, it’s just a signal sent out into the void, hoping for contact with anyone who lived at 3 Berry Place in Darwin, Australia in 1983. I lived in a tent in the back yard for 3 months, I forget which three but it was the dry season, and slightly into the build-up. I met Mark Dearden there by coincidence. He had been an exchange student at Mamaroneck Highschool in 1977. When I told people 6 years later that I was going to Australia, they joked about my saying hello to him. I had a hilarious conversation about rimming with a woman who lived in the house and hated Americans, Lynn. She had friends who brought hash in from Bali in condoms they had swallowed. She shared with me the rhyming slang her parents used and said that during the Depression they smoked cow shit rolled in newspaper. Then there were Roger and Elizabeth. Roger was French, Elizabeth was from Canberra originally. She dressed up in a giant bird costume to entertain children. Roger played backgammon naked, and a French card game related to bridge, Tarot. Kingsley was from Yorkshire, England and made tuna casserole on his night to cook. Boofah, or Steve, was a marvelous man from Melbourne with a big head. Jason was from Kenya originally. I ran into his brother 6 months later in Singapore, another coincidence. Tony and Mary were the house mother and father I suppose. They were building a sailboat with Little Tony, a man who could build a boat with only his eye for a measure. Tony (not little Tony) used to sneak off to buy pies and pasties without Mary’s knowledge (she didn’t approve of meat). Who else? Well, I can’t say exactly. Shelly and I paid a pittance to sleep in a tent and then, eventually, we moved into the house. The water was heated with a solar heater, and was stored in cisterns. We went to a Fassbinder film, Fox and his Friends. A couple of blocks away was a strip mall with amazing Sicilian style pizza, and a small farmer’s market. Jason kept a bantam chicken in the backyard which laid tasy little eggs. We had paw paws, guava, banana, lemon grass and other fruit growing around the house, as well as the best weed I have ever smoked. There were louvered windows without screens. The giant cockroaches and grasshoppers would fly into the living room and strike you on the forehead, to everyone’s amusement. I loved living in this house. One other person renting a room was Paul, an American. He was older than the rest of us, in his mid forties. Very tall and thin, with a beard and long hair. Paul was a Quaker and owned a share in some cooperative land outside of town, where he kept a trailer. We stayed with him there and swam in a billibong where water buffalo came to wallow and watched flocks of sulfur crested white cockatoos and black cockatoos with scarlet crests roost in the naked trees. We had dinner with friends of his who kept wild black pigs they had captured. Paul had been in The American Friends Service during the American Phase of the Vietnam Wars. He went a virgin and, while on leave in San Francisco in 1968, lost his virginity and tried acid. He returned, met and married a Vietnamese woman whose father worked for Shell Oil. They left Vietnam under threat of execution and he gave up his US citizenship to live with her in Australia. When I met him he was divorced. We used to swim with him in the late afternoons. We’d drive to the Casuarina Beach. The coast there has mile upon mile of deserted, white beaches. The water is gentle and quite shallow. We would wade a quarter mile out and only be up to our hips at low tide. The water was warm and pure. Paul always drank a little, saying it had all of the minerals you needed. He was a gentle, intelligent, powerful man, good humored and so kind. Life in Darwin was good. I have no idea why I left. I would love just to say hello to anyone who was there at that time and remembers me and Shelly.
Dear Jon, Your blog link was sent to me today and I have instantly replied. I introduced you to Mark Dearden or should I say re introduced him as he was my bf at the time and thought he might know you because he had been on student exchange to NY where you had come from. I now live in Perth Western Australia. Moved here in 1992 to complete an MA in Fine Arts. I remember you and Shelley very well – your poetry and Shelleys drawings in response to your poetry. You introduced me to Lou Reed (?) chairman of the board, and Prince
Yes the best dope was had there…..Greeting to you. Lynnette (alias Lyn) not to be confused with another Lyn who also lived at Berry Place and was a fisherwoman. She still lives in Darwin and heads up the Fisheries Dept. Kingsley was in Perth too but I only saw him once. Roger is still in Darwin I believe.Mary and Tony split up many years ago. Elizabeth is a journalist for The Australian (she could be freelance) her family are in and around Canberra. Paul remarried and maybe still lives in Darwin but I dont know much more. thats it bye for now
Dear Lyn,
I feel pin pricks all over my skin. Thank you so much for replying. It’s great to know that you remember that time. Really, I joped someone out there would find that post! If you ever see anyone who lived there, please say hello for me. Shelly and I split up years ago. I’m remarried. Shelly and I had two kids, and have three more. Shelly just got her MFA, and I’m applying to get one next year! Good luck.
Dear John Its early afternoon here in Perth and almost springtime. so nice. I was lollygaging (or even procrastinating if I were honest) around listening to Georgie Fame and you came to my mind:wondered if you had received my response.Went searching for link of your blog that was sent to me: you’d responded! You have lots of children or is it Shelly who has lots? no matter mazel tov to having children it happens to the best of us. Then I see you write crimes novels. Am I right about that?That is very brill.my favourite genre.Fondest Regards from Lynnette Voevodin
This PS is the result of my reading “about you”- my apologies for the crimes fiction genre I put you into last letter. Low Tech Noir is more apt. There is nothing worse than a jump-to-conclusions-person.As for poetry I love DHLawrence and Keates.once again sorry from Lynnette
Dear Lynnette,
Oh, DH Lawrence was my first literary love, in high school. I read everything I could. Then for 30 years, nothing. Recently I reread Sons and Lovers and The Rainbow and fell in love all over again. Keats is also a poet I love, when I read him I always feel like it’s the first time. So few poets are like that.
Shelly and I had two kids together. the other three I have with Maja. We are still together.
I think about Australia all the time. I want to drive from Darwin to Perth, camp along the way, swim and hike. Maybe one day. I’m not naive enough to think things aren’t fucked up there, but it can’t be worse than America is these days. I thought when I was there in the 80’s things were dark, and it did indeed feel like the world could end any day. But that would have been with a bang. We’re living through the world ending with a wimper.
Thanks for writing! Maybe we will meet again someday.
Was there a lady called Betty or Elizabeth from England? She would have been around mid to late forties?
hI lOOPY, tHERE WAS AN eLIZABETH, BUT SHE WAS FROM cANBERRA, AND In her late 20s. Kinglsey was English. Jason from Kenya, I think.Are you, were you, there?
Hi ….. I do feel like an intruder in this conversation, but would like to pass my regards to Lyn. I knew Lyn in her early days in Darwin when she was known as Lyn “Peel” …. Lyn was studying education at the time when I was studying accounting. She drove an old VW, wore her long hair in plaits wrapped around her head, a gorgeous natural oil as perfume (the name of which escapes me) and had a very placid demeanour. If you happen to see this post Lyn, I look forward to conversing, Kind Regards
Oh great! Just what I hoped would happen.
Be Well, Karon. Hi Lyn.
Jon
Hello Lyn Voevodin, (Peel) I’m the man that traded you a new canvas and frame for a picture of four aboriginal figures you were about to paint over. This was 1988. I think you were doing an arts course at the NTU, now Charles Darwin Uni. You lived on Vanderlin Drive, Wulagi and had a bath in the middle of the back lawn. No tropical greenery, just a bath you filled with a garden hose. Then jumped in starkers.
I spent a lot of time at Berry Place.
I am still living in Darwin in the suburb of Karama.
I am still in touch with Kingsley, also Jason and his mother Trish.
Talk to me.
Jim.
Hi John.Yes! I rember you and Shelly well.I was one tent down(only 2 tents in the back garden)I came to your assistance and found you half out of your tent late at night.You had been attacked by the Berry Place ghost(a sick bastard Soul)When i was the only tent there,I was allso attacked.After confronting afew house menbers,they told me that a not to nice chap had died there from an overdose.Some time later they were Playing with a weegie board and this chap,pops up and they could not get rid off him .So they decided to keep quiet about it.I bet youve never forgoten him. As i never will!(what a shit he most off been)On a much happer note.My mate in Darwin(Jim)sent me this Link,so here i am.Iwas speaking to Jason afew days ago,hes in Tasmania, his mum Trish was visiting him from S.A.They spent some time with me last year in Denmark W.A.were i have been living for the past 10 years.A little about myselfe.I am now 72. have 2X wives,4 grown up children,4grand children(3 who are grown up)+ 1 great grand child born last year. Along way from Berry Place ” A ” John.If you ever get this way,Please look me up. Much and Light KINGS
Kingsley! Hello. Best tuna casserole ever, on your cook night. I don’t remember being dragged out of the tent by a vengeful junky ghost, must have repressed the memory, but I do remember some gigantic mosquitoes dragging me out. Did I say I have 5 kids and one grand? I will certainly look you up in denmark. After 33 years of raising a family and working, going nowhere at all I am traveling again. I just love that you can send a message out into the ether and one by one messages come back.
Well damn, what a nutty world. Who would have thought all those years ago we’d communicate like this?! The lunatics have definitely taken over the asylum;) But we’re all sane aren’t we? I wonder if Lyn V still has that canvas called “lone sheep got big ball bag hangin dan�
Hi Jason! Isn’t it weird we are finding each other like this? I must visit Australia again one day. I don’t know if you knew this but after leaving Darwin Shelly and I went to Southeast Asia and ran into your brother somewhere, I think Singapore. But then, In Darwin, Lynn’s friend Mark Dierden had been an exchange student at the high school i attended. I hope you bare well!
i hope you bare well, of course, but meant ‘are’
Hi John, are you still there? I was never a journalist for the Australian. I did work, for a short time, as coordinator of Muse, the a community arts magazine with perhaps the smallest budget of all magazines in the world (a fitting climb from wearing a giant cockatoo costume). Eventually, I finished a PhD in philosophy and am now an academic. This is a great relief, as the headgear for being a cockatoo was very uncomfortable.
Hi John, I didn’t work for the Australian (I don’t know where Lynette got that idea). But I did work for Muse Community Arts Magazine (a magazine with the smallest budget in the world) in Canberra – a fitting climb in the world for someone who once dressed as a giant cockatoo for a living. Eventually, I did a PhD in Philosophy and now lecture at Monash University.
PS – I’m sure Roger was wearing a sarong.
PPS Love to both you and shelly. I have some of her drawings somewhere, and one I did of you…