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Published: July 25th 2009
Museum Displays
These displays are so well done, all the perspex mounts for the exhibits are cut to shape!DAY 258
The morning light was seeping through the mosquito netting, this signalled our last day in Darwin, thankfully when we awoke Andy said he was feeling a lot better. His temperature had completely gone, he said he felt a bit washed up, but a cup of tea and some toast soon aided that feeling.
I had wandered off for a shower, however when I got there a lady said to me, test the water before you get in, people are saying there is no hot water, I did just that and sure enough there was no hot water. Sometimes in this hot and humid climate you don’t mind a cold shower, but it was still the coolest part of the morning, so I gave up I would shower later when the gas was replenished.
So today we set about doing some of what we wanted to do yesterday but could not because Andy was unwell. We could not spend all day out, as we needed to pack a few bits up ready for our departure from here in the morning. Also Miriam and Dave had returned from their Indonesian trip in the early hours of the morning,
as we were looking after a bulk of their gear while they were away, we had arranged for them to collect their stuff from us at 2.00 this afternoon.
On the way into Darwin we stopped at the end of the airport runway to see if any of the military jets were going out, we drove up the track at the side of the airport, I noticed a white pick up truck was driving around the inside perimeter track of the airport, it looked strangely like Military Police (MP), sure enough the truck pulled up alongside us and the window opened. Inside were two MP’s, one man one woman. The guy driving said to us, “Are you here to see the jets?” We both replied “uh, yes!” to which he told us the best place to park up and see them “Will you be taking any photos?” “uh, Maybe?” To which he responded “Great, but please only take photos when they are in the air, and don’t take pictures towards the installation when they are on the ground, it would be a matter of security.” “Ok, no problem.”
We chatted for a while longer, they told us that
the best time to see them would be at night when they take off, it’s a good show of fireworks with about 60 feet of flames from the engines and off they went. We waited for about 10 minutes, saw one of the tankers fly off, but none of the F18’s flew so off we went.
We drove toward Darwin and soon we were turning off for Bullocky Point and the NT Museum and Art Gallery, it is in a beautiful spot of Darwin overlooking Fannie Bay, the building itself is not overly impressive but when you walk inside you do get the feeling that this is going to be a good museum.
We first walked up the ramp to see “Sweetheart”, how lovely I can hear you all say, well it would not be so lovely if you bumped into this huge monster of an Estuarine Crocodile when it was still alive. This thing was huge, it has been preserved for all to see. We watched a film about its capture, it was to be removed for public safety but unfortunately when they captured it, something went wrong and the crocodile actually drowned. Sad, but true, the
This Would ruin your day!
5.1 metres in length and 780kg. people that captured it did nothing wrong, it was just unfortunate.
We moved on into a large room to find the transformations exhibition, this explained a proportion of evolution, including the Devonian Reef, you may remember us mentioning the Devonian Reef when we were at Windjana and Geike Gorge which formed part of that reef.
The exhibits were superb, a lot of thought, time and money had gone into this, there were exhibits of Australian wildlife that you would expect to see, particularly in the Northern Territory, not to mention of course some of the spiders and snakes that you may expect to see, shudder! Actually not so much a shudder on the snakes, as long as they are not poisonous.
The next part of the exhibition we went into was about Cyclone Tracy, a very unpleasant yet in some ways important part of Darwin’s history. Up to 1974 they had enjoyed very laid back living in this tropical climate, as such the houses were quite flimsy fairly open plan but perhaps for large expanses of windows or louvers to keep the tropical rains out in the wet season, sadly they were not able to withstand the
force of Cyclone Tracy, the city was devastated.
We stand in a room that has the actual recording and some simulated sound of what the people of Darwin would have heard of Cyclone Tracy, the noise was quite unbearable, the immense sound of the wind as it whistled then tore up corrugated roofs and twisted steel girders. In fact they don’t know exactly how fast the wind speed was as the measure at the airport broke at 300mph and the airport did not take the full brunt of Tracy, not like the centre of Darwin.
There are lots of pictures depicting the before and after Tracy, many locals were forced to move away, while they got Darwin back on its feet. Today it is a thriving modern city, the only good thing to come out of Tracy is that they take cyclones into consideration with new buildings.
We saw some of the maritime exhibition and of course the indigenous art, it was time for a coffee, but when we saw the queue we thought better of it. So we headed back to camp for some lunch.
After lunch we started to have a tidy up, pack
stuff away, I did one last load of washing to make sure I had most things clean dry and packed away. All of our water carriers are sterilised and contain fresh water for the journey ahead of us.
We had to throw some water away whilst we were in Kakadu and we refilled with some water at the Merl camp ground, the water was safe to drink, but it tends to taste a bit earthy, that was not really too much of a problem as there was not much left, however it left a taste in our bottles and water containers which in turn made our fresh water taste earthy.
So several sterilising tablets later we were happy that everything was as it should be clean and fresh.
Richard arrives with Dave and Mirjam in tow, they had not hired a car as it was too expensive, Mirjam is only 21 and as such that pushes the price way too high, so Richard is kindly driving them around while they sort out a replacement vehicle.
We had made a shopping list, went to Woolworths to stock up on food for getting back on the road, and
Jelly Fish
These ones are not good, stay out of the water! realised when we got there that we forgot the list, so we did our shopping from memory. When we got back to camp I found the list and realised that we had only forgotten to pick up 2 items so that was not too bad.
Andy got chatting to a couple opposite us, they were from Victoria, they were telling Andy that one night when they were at home, the dog would not settle, he had his own kennel outside, even when they went out to find out what was going on the dog just carried on barking, eventually they looked in the dogs kennel and they found a Wombat huddled up in there. No wonder the dog was upset, I would be upset if someone had nicked my bed!!
Andy said the guy was a retired science teacher and they had been talking about Tidbinbilla, Wee Waa, Parkes and the fantastic evening we had both had “Star Gazing” in Coonabarabran, the guy told Andy about a computer program called Stellarium, and all you have to do is put your origin in and it will show you all the stars you will expect to see in the night
sky in real time, depending on the coordinates you put in.
As soon as Andy had finally come back from talking he was uploading the computer program, as we have a love of the night sky and all things celestial.
The sun had now moved round giving us lots of natural shade from the trees, so we now had to take the awning down (it is so much easier to do it the night before and not on the morning), let me tell you there was a huge amount of cr*p on it and I am not just talking about the bird stuff, where the birds and the Possums hang around in the trees, there are bits of everything on it, berries you name it. So we brushed it down then got some water and brushed off the unpleasant stuff. We laid the awning out to dry.
Finally we both managed to get a shower, the water was now hot, we noticed the BOC truck come in earlier in the afternoon to replenish the gas.
We finally sit down and have some dinner. Then Andy says shall we pop out to the airport and see if
we can see any jet activity, so off we go to the airport. When we arrived there were quite a few people waiting already, we wondered if they were chancing it like us, or did they know something that we did not?
I was sat in the Patrol typing the blog and doing some emails, it was not long before the car started to shake and this huge noise above reverberated around us, one F18 had returned and flown overhead. We both jumped out of the truck and in the distance we could see 2 bright lights in the dark skies coming towards us, within minutes the ground trembled as the F18 flew overhead, followed about 26 seconds later by another.
We have been told that these things can fly from Darwin to Katherine in 8 minutes, not far you might think if you looked at the map, but you are actually talking about 300 kilometres.
One after the other came in, we see 12 jets land in all, plus 3 refuelling tankers and one Hercules General transporter It was soon bedtime so back to camp and straight to bed after an exciting evening.
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