Thursday May 31

As unbelievable as it seems, our week in Darwin is almost over and a wonderful week it has been!  Unlike our last visit, when we concentrated very much on the ‘natural’ environment, this time we have enjoyed much more of the social, culinary and artistic life of Darwin and spent time exploring the ‘built’ environment.  Having said this however, the somewhat odd caravan park in which we have stayed has provided large, grassed sites under beautiful big old trees, which are full of all sorts of birds which we can hear but rarely see.  There are some which shriek at random times during the night and although I don’t like my chances of success, I will ask about their identity at the office.

We have managed to visit a wonderful range of galleries and seen some absolutely superb Aboriginal art.  Unfortunately we haven’t yet had the phone call from Tattersalls informing us of the big win which would enable the purchase of some of these treasures!

Another interesting experience came with our, in retrospect, very foolish excursion to the Casuarina Shopping Centre to do a bit of shopping.  The place was full of screaming teenage girls besotted by some young man called Reece someting or other, who was making a special appearance and our lack of knowledge of the centre meant we had to make our way through this throng several times as we tried to complete our purchases - was only our well-honed persistence that saw us complete the job.  Small children and oldies such as us were not entirely sure that this was a wise way to be spending our time!

After an excursion into the city in the morning, Murray and I checked out the Parap Market on Saturday on the strength of what we had heard about the range of fabulous food on offer and we were not disappointed – enjoyed a fantastic laksa.  It brought home the ethnic diversity of Darwin.

Sunday was designated as the day we would get the barra and chips from the ‘best fish and chip shop in Darwin’ for lunch and eat them on the wharf.  They weren’t quite as good as last time, but still something which has to be done.   We did feel we had done some work to deserve such a treat as we had at least taken a bit of exercise by walking through the rainforest and community gardens sections of the Darwin Botanic Gardens. 

We were then sufficiently good tourists to visit ‘Crocosaurus Cove’ to see some very large crocodiles, impressively large Barramundi, fascinating Fresh Water Saw Fish and a fantastic display of reptiles.  Even though it did seem somewhat bizarre to be looking at such creatures in the middle of Darwin, we did learn a lot.

 Sunday night was spent at the Deckchair Cinema, also down by the wharf.  Reclining in deck chairs under the stars and indulging in home-made mango ice cream whilst enjoying a film is pretty hard to beat!

On Monday evening we went to East Point Reserve and watched the sun set across Fannie Bay.  The clouds meant the colours weren’t quite as impressive as they might have been, but it was still pretty good.  We were very jealous of the tour group supping champagne nearby!

On Tuesday we spent the morning exploring Parliament House and the Supreme Court.  The Parliament, built in 1994, is described in the Lonely Planet as ‘garish’, but we found it anything but as it seems to us that it ‘fits’ the place, the climate and the geography very well.  The interior makes beautiful use of native timbers such as Sassafras and polished stone from both the NT and SA.  The coffee in the little café is pretty good too!  The NT Library is also in the Parliament building and it is excellent.

Across the way the Supreme Court building has a superb display of Aboriginal art work – paintings and magnificent memorial poles, a huge floor mosaic based on a painting called ‘Milky Way Dreaming’ by Yiwarra Jukurrpa and a large rug using a painting by an Aboriginal artist, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri, which was the subject of the first case which found that such art work is the intellectual property of the artist and cannot therefore be used without permission.   Fascinating to see the origins of some of th\ese landmark rulings.  Are you impressed Kate?

Government House, which was built in stages from 1870 and is in close proximity to the Parliament and court, is a beautiful building and its ‘whiteness’ stands out against the blue sky and tropical greenery with aplomb.  Looking across the gate made it easy to imagine the white-suited colonial administrators and their ladies strolling around the gardens.

Wednesday saw Ian and Sue and Murray and myself make the trek to the Darwin railway station to see The Ghan depart.  It certainly was an impressive sight and couldn’t help but get one’s imagination racing - more plans!!!!!

 From here we went back to East Point Reserve, where much evidence of Darwin’s wartime history survives.   We visited the Military Museum and reading survivors’ accounts of the Japanese bombing of the harbour and city and sitting through the re-creation of the bombing created a very real understanding of the huge devastation and loss of life.   I must confess to a real lack of knowledge of this aspect of WWII – 64 air raids over almost two years.

Today was spent catching up on the last few things we wanted to do before leaving Darwin.  We also needed to finalise the purchase of a couple of lovely pieces of art work for Kate and Derek – when we arrived in Darwin we had no idea that we were about to embark on a short but interesting career as art brokers! 

Next stop was Myilly Point Heritage Precinct to have a look at four heritage-listed homes which are wonderful examples of early European tropical architecture.  The louvered walls in each of the houses were amazing and custom-designed to allow for maximum air flow in the wet.

We then had lunch with Emma, who is the daughter of some friends from Balnarring and is also a friend of Kate’s.  Was fascinating to hear about the work she and her partner Blake are doing here in Darwin.

After lunch we made a quick trip to the wharf to buy some of the prawns we had heard a bloke at Cullen Bay Marina talking about – Murray couldn’t possibly pass up the opportunity to buy 3kg of fresh prawns for $30!  From here we got back on track and visited the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.  Saw some more stunning indigenous art work and the extremely interesting Cyclone Tracey exhibition.

Mindil Beach Sunset Market was the perfect final event for our visit – a wander through the stalls, tea on the grass and more sunset photos.  From there it was back to the van to sort out a few IT issues and start packing things away ready for our departure tomorrow morning.  Our next internet access and blog post will probably be from Kununurra, WA so stand by . . .