Blogs from City of Darwin, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania - page 3

A beautiful day “down under” awaited our arrival! A very warm welcome for our first visit to Australia and Darwin. Darwin is a resort town that had been destroyed a couple of times over due to World War II and a cyclone that hit there in 1974. Fortunately it has been rebuilt and is modern, clean and attractive. We walked around the town park and then boarded an amphibious vehicle for a short tour around town and the harbor. The best part of the ride was meeting some Darwinians who were very friendly and asked lots of questions about New York. One guy wanted to know if we received a pension or had a self-made pension. I replied that we had both and wondered about him. He said that he was on a disability pension and ... read more

We arrived in Darwin in torrential rain and its rained on and off ever since. Apparently the wet season has started later than usual this year and is now making up for lost time! We arrived at 06.00 so the first thing Brian wanted was breakfast. I wanted sleep. I found the overnight flight very tiring and not something I would do again. Anyway sftrr breakfast and sleep we took a stroll in the wrong direction! I thought that the taxi driver had said turn right out of your hotel band its a short walk to the harbour. We should have gone left! You know how there are some parts of every city where you don't take visitors.. we eventually found the city centre. It's a small city with just over 100,000 population. Lots of history ... read more

September 5th - Today we rose at 4:30 a.m., stumbled aboard ‘Jack’s Bus’ for the three-hour ride to the Sydney Airport, and boarded an airplane for the four and a half flight to Darwin, or as it’s known in Australia, ‘The Top End’. As we arrive at the airport the weather was not just warm, it was hot! This is the Australia I’ve always heard of!! We ended the evening watching the sun set into a beautiful blue sea from our balcony on the 16thfloor. Our first full day in Darwin was a busy one. In the morning we visited the 130-year old, George Brown Botanical Gardens. A beautiful retreat in the city, this garden has a variety of indigenous tropical plants and trees as well as many others from around the world. How I envy ... read more

Saturday, 26th July 2014 On our third day, we shifted somewhere closer to the city centre where the url=http://www.tripadvisor.com.sg/ShowUserReviews-g255066-d256363-r218196073-Mantra_on_the_Esplanade-Darwin_Top_End_Northern_Territory.htmlMantra On The Esplanade was located. This was a hit-and-miss affair even though our spacious bedroom came with a fine sea view overlooking the longish Bicentennial Park. Within the park grounds, there was a mini beach and an impressive Memorial dedicated to the USS Peary, the American warship that sunk off Darwin Harbour by the Japanese bombers in February 1942. We spent most of our day at Bicentennial trying very hard to catch the sea breeze that would start sending our kite to the skies. This was a relatively futile attempt even though we had some fun out of it. Since our new room no longer came with an attached kitch... read more

Wednesday, 23rd July 2014 Our journey to the city of Darwin started on the night of 23rd July 2014. It was 10 years back when I last visited Australia and I decided to give it another go given the long weekend ahead. For the first time of my life, I was a bit apprehensive with our flight journey given a slew of horrible air incidents that plague the travel industry recently. Before our flight, I had to assure my parents that everything was going to be alright. Of course, we were really quite comfortable with Jetstar given that this was a subsidiary of the Qantas Group which had maintained a good safety record since it started operations 10 years ago. So H and myself assembled at Changi Terminal 1 at 10.30pm tonight in preparation for our ... read more