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Published: July 29th 2012
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Day 16 – Sunday 15
th July – Darwin
Once again we were treated to a peach of a sunrise and Mark got some great shots of the early morning sky, complete with mist on the horizon. For Ros, Dave, Meg and Em it was time to pack up all their camping gear and fly back to winter in Melbourne L. At 11am we headed off in convoy to Darwin airport. Dave unloaded all 13 bags of gear from the roof and packed them onto 4 airport trolleys and we waved them off….We had the afternoon to explore Darwin and started out with the World War 2 museum at East Reserve Point. It explained the role of Darwin in WW2 and graphically showed the effect of the Japanese attacks in February 1942. Very interesting for us new Aussies to understand a bit more about the recent history of our country!
From there we went to the highly recommended (and free) museum of the Northern Territory in the botanical gardens. We spent around 45 mins learning about the flora and fauna of the Territory and experiencing the horror of Cyclone Tracy which devastated Darwin on Christmas Day 1974.
Our master of planning had worked out that our flying visit to Darwin coincided with the annual Beer Can Regatta on Darwin’s Mindil beach. So we mooched on over to the beach and caught the tail end of this big event. Some of the boats were quite serious pieces of engineering and evidently you can use other materials as well as beer cans to construct the boat. The beach was full of people trying to empty enough beer cans to provide the materials for next year’s competition. Just back from the beach the famous Mindil markets were going on. Due to the Regatta the market had been running all day, instead of opening at 4pm as usual. We did a bit of souvenir shopping (bought a floating dragonfly, necklace each for Anna and Hazel, tiger shark teeth for Luke and a couple of presents for friends) then perused all the food stands trying to decide what yummy food to eat. The kids plumped for spiral potato on a stick (basically a large battered spiral chip but very good) and Mark and I tried the Sri Lankan curries.
The sun had not set yet and we still had time for
a quick drive through the centre of Darwin and the waterfront precinct, and to hunt for Phil’s ice cream shop (our friend Phil has been in Darwin for work this week and missed us by a few days. He kindly put $50 dollars behind the counter at the Tasty Tropical Treats icecream parlour and managed to leave his glasses there in the process). So we found Tasty Tropical Treats and claimed our ice cream from Phil (thanks mate!) and reclaimed his specs. A successful mission!
Back to the tent for an early bed as a long drive is planned for tomorrow to get as far past Katherine as possible, towards the famous Bungle Bungle.
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