On my morning run/walk, poinciana flowers were drenched flames strewn across dark pavement, and a black lab romped through pools of water adjacent to the path, enjoying the residue of last night’s downpour. The sun was hidden by a blanket of dark clouds slowly lifting, still brooding above the city and its guardian, sawtooth ranges of hills. In Bicentennial Park, I marveled at shade trees mulched with broad rings of bark 2-3 feet deep, which I assumed protect the trees from the ravages of heavy rains, as well as cooling the soil, and conserving moisture.

At the Johnsons’ home on Monday, Chris mentioned that the Townsville area receives essentially no rain for 10 months of the year. Robyn added that the downpour which coincided with our arrival was the most precipitation (206 millimetres¹) ever recorded in Townsville during a twenty-four period in the month of December. Somewhat surprising to Vilis and me, Chris explained that native plants don’t grow much during the lengthy dry season because, “They need both – the heat and the rain.”

Vegetable gardens, on the other hand, apparently grow best during the cooler winter. “Nothing’ll grow now,” Millie told me when I asked her about the best time to plant a garden. “It’s just too hot. If you want to plant some lettuces and tomatoes, you could start them in March… We get eight months of real nice weather here, and four months of not so nice weather when it’s like this, hot and humid.”

Millie went on to tell me that, in the 39 years that she and Barry have lived in Townsville, they’ve noticed that the Wets now aren’t like they used to be. “It used to rain from January through March. We’d get our shower or thundershower nearly every afternoon or evening. It’s not like that now. You never know when the rain’s coming. It’s that climate change, I suppose.”

Beside Lindsay Street, the Townsville Golf Club stretched wet and lush with trees, but only four cars in the parking lot indicated it was too damp for most golfers. Graceful apartment or “unit” complexes painted blue and green and landscaped with palms looked out onto the course from across the street, adding a warm elegance to the neighbourhood. Above the golf course, a dozen or more little corellas screamed, swirled in flight, and landed in its trees, where the parrots perched like lush, white, elongated blossoms.

Townsville is, as we have discovered in our explorations of various suburbs in search of a house to rent, a sprawling collection of primarily one-story homes and businesses, with exceptions including downtown’s towers and eclectic collection of shops along Flinders Street, some of the newer upscale homes climbing the walls of Castle Hill or overlooking the river, and various schools, complexes of units, and professional buildings. Many of the houses are high-set, built before the dam on the Ross River drastically reduced flooding. Vilis and I speculated that basements do not exist here. The river, which once ruled the city, meanders through its southern suburbs, angling northeast until it empties into Cleveland Bay east of the dockyards. Ross Creek, which on a map looks as if it were once a major branch of the river now blocked from it by Bicentennial Park, follows a parallel, northeast pathway until it flows into the bay next to the Western Breakwater sheltering the Port of Townsville.

Driving within the city is fairly straightforward, with major arteries providing smooth traffic flow through the suburbs, and with numerous roundabouts serving the dual function of eliminating the necessity for traffic lights or stop signs at many intersections, and moderating the speed of traffic at these same intersections. Yesterday, I drove the Camry for the first time, steering it along various streets and through intersections with Vilis as my navigator. Although I had driven a right-hand-drive auto in New Zealand ten years ago, I repeatedly reached for controls on the wrong side of the Camry.

“I could tell you were improving,” Vilis encouraged me after we returned to Richard’s home. “At the end, you didn’t turn on the windshield wipers instead of the turn indicators.”

This afternoon, after we purchased a dark blue 2001  4WD Kia Sportage, I returned the Camry to the airport without turning the windshield wipers on once.

Reference:

1. Jessica Johnston. Deluge smashes monthly record. Townsville Bulletin, January 1, 2010. The North Queensland Newspapers Company Pty Ltd ©  January 2007. Accessed 24-Nov-2010. http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2010/01/01/104615_news.html