There is a common misconception about Australia: that it is always sunburnt, always dusty, and always thirsty. For six months of the year, in the country’s northern third, that myth drowns in a deluge of tropical thunder.

“You don’t live in Darwin for the Build-Up,” says Marcus, a fourth-generation crocodile tour guide. “You live for the moment it breaks.”

Cyclones are the dark heart of the Wet. These spinning beasts (Category 4 or 5) remind everyone that nature is not a postcard. When Cyclone Marcus hit in 2018, it stripped trees of bark and tore roofs off like bottle caps. But even then, the response is stoic, almost ritualistic: fill the bathtub, tape the windows, boil the kettle, wait.