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Published: November 2nd 2021
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Today’s our last day in Darwin. This also means that it’s our last day with ready access to a washing machine for quite a while, so I decide to put on a load. The machine tells me that this will take two and a half hours. I ask Issy why it takes so long to wash clothes in a machine when I could have washed them in the sink in a fraction of the time. The look I get suggests that maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
We head off down to the Darwin Waterfront Precinct. First stop is the World War 2 oil storage tunnels. Well first stop for me. Issy decides that maybe tunnels aren’t for her and heads off instead to get her nails done. The first Darwin air raid destroyed most of the harbour's above-ground oil tanks so it was decided to build their replacements underground. Unfortunately by the time they were finished so had the air raids, so the tanks never saw any active service. They’re massive and very impressive. It's ridiculously hot and humid inside. Taking photos is proving a challenge; it’s dark and the lens keeps fogging up.
We have
lunch and then head off out along the Stokes Hill Wharf which forms the outer part of the harbour. There's a good array of restaurants out here, as well as the large ferris wheel we'd seen previously, and more displays about the World War 2 bombing raids. A plaque tells us that twice as many bombs were dropped on Darwin as on Pearl Harbour, which seems staggering.
We head back to the apartment via Cullen Bay, which is a fully enclosed man-made harbour filled with expensive looking yachts and surrounded by fancy waterfront mansions. Issy asks me how much houses here might cost. I think she wants us to move to Darwin. It's certainly a great place to be in the dry, but as I remember it from living here not even the locals want to be here in the wet season; most of them head south for a couple of months.
We head down to Mindil Beach to watch yet another spectacular sunset. A bride and groom are having their wedding photos taken down on the sand. This appears to be causing some difficulties for some of the other members of the wedding party. We come across
an abandoned pair of high heels and some crutches on the path above the beach. They want the gent who's on the crutches to join the photos, but he’s sitting on an esky on the beach and not showing any sign of wanting to move. They retrieve his crutches for him, but using them on the soft sand is looking like a difficult assignment. To make matters worse they’re taking the photos right next to a seemingly unrelated group of beachwear-clad locals drinking beer under a beach umbrella. The second group's got a dog with them and it’s not on a leash. It runs into the water, and then comes back and shakes itself dry all over one of the bridesmaids. Hopefully the marriage will be more successful than the photo shoot.
We sneak into the casino for a quick peak. It feels like we’ve landed on another planet. We wonder what's happened to all the relaxed looking locals that we've seen everywhere else up here. The people in here all look like zombies - most of them are either staring vacantly at a poker machine, or standing anxiously around a roulette wheel willing the ball to drop into
their preferred slot. We were feeling relaxed too until we came in here. We decide to leave quickly in case any of this stress rubs off....
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Darwin
We spent 2 months in Australia but didn't make it to Darwin.... hopefully someday.