Things we did in Darwin

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Geo: -12.4613, 130.842

Another scorcher today as we head 15 minutes out of town to Crocodylus Park, boasting more crocs to see than anywhere else in Australia. This park also housed some white lions, tigers, meerkats and the usual suspects you would expect. The croc tour began at 10.00 am and we met some very large and troublesome crocs which had been netted and relocated here because they were miss-behaving. One called Eric had supposedly eaten a person but had missed a lead injection as there was no proof. We got so close to these guys that Deb started to freak out so we moved on to the smaller crocs. The guides told us stories about the cost of Gucci croc leather bags fetching $80,000 but we raised our eyebrows at that, believing it was a pitch to sell their own bags at 2 to 5 thousand a piece.

Next stop was the Military Museum out on the very pretty East Point Reserve. This place bought a mixed reaction from us, while it told a good story of the WWII bombing of Darwin it also had a lot of trashed vehicle relics and thousands of guns. What was impressive was the two large gun turrets that looked out over the entrance to the harbor.

It was nearing 1.00 pm when we decided to take some respite from the punishing heat and headed to Lazy Susan's, a Vietnamese restaurant in the CBD. We had a delightful lunch as we cooled down in the air conditioning then decided to do a 'reci' on the renowned Mindil Beach as we were lucky enough to be in town the only night of the week the markets were on. While there we spotted the Sky City Casino and decided to drop in and managed to pull out a tidy $100 to boot.

Back to the hotel to change, we headed to the Markets for sunset and boy was it crowded. The place was full of interesting and varied food vans but lacked the usual craft stalls we were expecting. I bought Deb a lovely top for mothers day and she purchased some freshly shucked oysters and some prawns at an over inflated price to eat on the beach at sunset. The only problem was that it wasn't setting for another 45 minutes so we got out of this crazy place and headed to the Waterfront and sat in a Mexican restaurant called Hot Tamales, sipping on very nice margaritas as the sun set over the water.

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