Blogs from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania - page 73

At 5.00 on Sunday morning Jez woke us - the first of 9 days of early rising. Once we'd packed away the tents and swags and shocked Jez with the amount of luggage we expected him to stash somewhere on the truck, we said our goodbyes to Wal and the workshop and headed into Broome to collect the passengers. We first picked up a Catholic Priest called Dean, who we were expecting, but we were not expecting the average age of the remaining passengers to be 41 - only our ages brought this average down somewhat as the majority of the group were aged somewhere between 55 and 68! Great - a SAGA break - even Jez was a bit bemused! At Cable Beach Backpackers, our collection point, we said a fond farewell to our beloved ... read more

When you come to Darwin ,the museum is a must.It has so much to look at and best of all its free. There is alot of aboriginal art ,all sorts of animals ,mammals,insects,and snakes that are stuffed and look very real .Plus there is a short movie on cyclone tracey ,with loads of info,on how the cyclone destoyed Darwin, a dark room which has sound affects of the cyclone and how loud it was,that was pretty scary.. We spent a good hour at the air conditioned Museum and we had to go back a second time just so we could feel we had done the exhibits justice as they had obviously put in a lot of time on designing them. Another great free activity to do at Darwin, apart from watching the human circus that ... read more

Darwin seemed as familiar as Perth had been and largely unchanged from 2002. The weather is still hot and humid and the party continues on Mitchell Street. It was the Darwin Festival - we'd missed the big horse race and the Port Adelaide AFL game transferred up north, but there was plenty of music events on the go. The title of this page was borrowed from a band we went to see - changed slightly originally to avoid possible censorship - but changed back in the unashamed bid for hits. A confused 4 piece Australian rock band featuring Billy Idol on drums, a reincarnation of the B52s former frontman and none other than Egyptian Rick (moonlighting from his day job abd football commitments in Loughborough) on lead guitar. The track to watch out for is Stuck ... read more

Well here we are in very sunny and warm Darwin. Wes is prancing around like a spring lamb just because he can now wear his shorts full time (although he has been able to do that since Katherine - it obviously takes a while for him to trust that it’s not going to get cold again!) For the 10 days we are here it ranged between 30-35° and the minimum night temp was 15° with most nights being 17°. The locals thought that 15 was freezing!???@#** And if I thought Wes was a blanket hog when it was cold, then the heat has uncovered a whole new dimension to his sleeping habits…the total bed hog. He spreads out trying to get cool… bare bum and all. Oh I’m sure that goes into the “too much information” ... read more

Alas, it is the end of our 4 week tour of western australia and northern territory and we have now said our goodbyes to the fantastic 007 wicked campervan which we have lived in for the last 28 days and travelled 6,500 kilometres! (that's approx 3,900 miles!!) this week... left the exciting turkey creek roadhouse aka "Turkey World", stocked up on beer in kununurra, crossed over the western australia border into northern territory. passed katherine - just really stopped for supplies and tourist info before hitting the road again douglas hotsprings was amazing. it has 2 streams - one of which is about 60 degrees and the other is really cold and there is a point where the two meet and you can regulate the temperature you would like to laze about in - fantastic but ... read more