10 Things I Have Learnt Since Moving To Townsville

1. I don’t know how to pronounce the name of my suburb.

But that’s okay, because apparently no one else does, either. It’s spelt I-D-A-L-I-A, and I’ve been saying ‘id-arlee-ah’, but I’ve heard a whole host of possible interpretations. Since nobody seems to have agreed upon a standard, I’m just going to interchange them constantly. My favourite thus far is ‘eye-dar-ya’.

In fairness, though, there were a lot of suburbs in Canberra that I didn’t have a clue about. I was able to legally drink before I knew how you said ‘Bonython’, which I had merrily been pronouncing ‘boney-thon’ before being gently corrected by a co-worker. Given the existence of Swinger Hill, I don’t think my reasoning of it being another vaguely orgy-themed suburb was necessarily too far off the mark.

2. Leaving a pack of cigarettes outside while a mosquito coil is burning makes them taste like incense.

It’s not so good.

3. Cane toads are neither as big nor as ugly as I was led to believe.

And I’m genuinely disappointed. They just look kind of like constipated frogs. Which, by the way, brings up this image when Googled:

 http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2008/10/21/constipated-frog-2/

4. There are vinegar dispensers along the beach so if you get stung by a jellyfish you don’t have to pee on yourself.

Actually.

5. Townsville is apparently a tropical savannah climate, and the Köppen climate classification for that is ‘Aw’.

I don’t know what that is, but all I can picture now is a cyclone made of kittens. Wearing mittens. Which is silly, because it’s fucking hot up here.

6. It’s fucking hot up here.

And you can’t swim at the beach except in these little netted areas, because stingrays and sharks might eat you. And people just stand on the highway and fish in the river, which, by the way, also has sharks in it. And you can’t buy alcohol at the supermarket; you have to go to a whole separate shop, which in turn does not sell cigarettes. And you can’t drop your hat in the water anywhere, because there will be a weird ‘glop’ noise and when you turn around something has eaten your hat. Admittedly, that last one didn’t happen to me. It happened to a tradie named Gary who came to my house, but he seemed trustworthy enough to take him at his word. Gary’s biggest concern was not the ravenous hat-eating probably-a-Kraken behind him, but rather the fact he got sunburnt.

7. Geckos are straight-up adorable and they make the cutest noise ever.

Like baby birds, but not scrawny and all neck and at 4 o’clock in the freaking morning.

8. Job hunting sucks…

…but not for the reasons I thought it would. As I sit here, trawling through employment websites and lining up interviews, I inevitably think about not getting a job and how constantly being weighed and measured and potentially found wanting is going to force me to deal with my issues with criticism, at which point I mutter to myself ‘I just don’t think I could take that kind of rejection’ in Marty McFly’s dad’s wheezy nerd voice.

Then I obviously have to consider how much my life could be improved by the presence of a flux capacitor, and whether every decision I’ve ever made has led up to me not being the person who discovers time travel, and whether or not I could get bored enough in Townsville to do it, and where I would find a DeLorean at this time of not-the-eighties. And about how cool Michael J. Fox is, and I wonder what happened to Biff? I read somewhere that he teaches primary school now, which seems not only utterly bizarre, but unfair on him since he comes with a built-in poo joke. And how weird it is that they never addressed the issue of Jennifer just suddenly changing actresses. In a long-running soap, or with Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies, it makes sense that you would just ignore it, but a series of films about time travel? YOU HAVE A BUILT-IN EXCUSE. ALL THE CHARACTERS LOOKED DIFFERENT EVERY TIME SOMEONE SO MUCH AS SNEEZED. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK. It’s not Elisabeth Shue’s fault. It’s sloppy storytelling.

Then, of course, I realise that thought patterns like this are distracting me from applying for jobs, and now that I’ve remembered I have to do it, I don’t want to. I just don’t think I could take that kind of rejection.

9. I think about really weird stuff when I’m by myself.

I’m reasonably sure I’m not alone in this. However, I am alone physically throughout most of the day, and I think that has amplified just how far down the garden path I am capable of leading myself without the promise of interruption. No one is going to show up to distract me with a bottle of dusty Bacardi they brought instead of wine because one time a daddy-long-legs landed on her shoulder in her dad’s wine cellar and she’s never going in there again. I am entirely at my own mercy, and while so far it’s not led further than talking to the dog in different accents to see if he’s racist, I can’t help but wonder what kind of light there will be at the end of this bizarre tunnel, and whether or not there will be the mental equivalent of cake.

10. It’s really, really fucking hot.