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| Kate & Jumping Saltie Croc |
We have a photo album of our Darwin adventures you may want to visit.
Darwin was one of the few places in Australia that we had yet to visit (although we had tried). In March, 2011, we had set out to drive the 4,000km+ from Perth in Western Australia (WA) up to Darwin in the Northern Territory (NT) at the very top end of Australia (see the photo album of that trip) but we only got as far as Broome, WA -- the wet season flooding at Fitzroy Crossing in the NT had closed the only road through to Darwin. The flooding lasted for months!
This trip to Darwin was a more leisurely affair - a flight from Saigon to Kuala Lumpur and then a second flight to Darwin .... the bad part was we spent the better part of a day in transit (with a long layover in Kuala Lumpur at the not very nice airport) and only got into Darwin at 4:00am on the Monday morning.
The cab ride from the airport to our Quest Apartments Parap (that's in the village/suburb of Parap, midway between the central business district and the airport), was a welcome relief from the crowded streets of Saigon. At 4:00am, we were pretty much the only people on the street! This turned out to be the norm for Darwin -- it's not a very big town and March is the end of the rainy/hot season so there aren't many tourists visiting the city. There's lots of room in the NT and lots of room in Darwin.
Staff were at the Quest to greet us (or at least let us in) at 4:00am and we were given a "bachelor" styled apartment on the second floor, as we had reserved. In the morning we switched to a larger one bedroom unit (quite big really) with a patio area beside the pool and internal court yard. We had a few lunches there, enjoyed the rain a few times and I even cooled off in the small pool. I don't think Kate even tried the pool -- she likes to do lengths and one or two strokes would cover the length of the pool. Nonetheless, it was a well equipped unit with a good kitchen, two tv's, a comfy lounge area, etc. It was air conditioned but seemed to be struggling to keep up. We ended up buying a fan to cool us down a bit more.
Our first day we took a short cab ride into the city and explored the "Inner Harbor" area. There's a secured swimming area with a beach, wave pool and break wall. It's "secured" in the sense that the water will have no sharks, crocodiles or poisonous jelly fish -- it's fed by seawater but not connected directly to the sea. You can't swim in the ocean in this part of the world -- it's far too dangerous. The crocodiles seem to be the big issue. On a harbor cruise one day we were shown a crocodile trap on the shoreline and told that about 150 crocodiles are captured in the NT every year (14 in Darwin alone -- see Crocodile Captures in NT). It's a sprawling city with a lot of water front, but gosh that's an awful lot of crocodiles to try to avoid.
While crocodiles are endemic in the NT -- even far inland -- the other important water hazard is "box jellyfish". I've never seen any in all the times we've been in Australian tropical waters. But you don't want to have a run in with them either.
We did go swimming a couple of times in the protected area. I enjoyed the swim; however, Kate found it too warm for doing "lengths" or "laps". One of the swimmers told me to listen for the "clicking" sound of crabs feeding under water. Yup, I could hear them plainly when I lay on my back floating in the warm water. Didn't see them and can only take his word that it was the crabs making the noise.
The inner harbor has condominiums, several hotels, shops and a busy restaurant/night life area by the sandy beach where you swim. We're not night people and it was off season so fairly quiet . There wasn't see much going on there. Beyond the break wall that separates the inner harbor swimming area from the ocean, there's two piers with a gap in between. The one pier is where tour ships dock -- the "Norwegian Princess" was in town for part of our visit. The other, Stokes Hill Wharf, became something of a favorite hang-out for us.
At the end of the Stokes Hill pier there's a large building with a couple of nice white table cloth restaurants and a interior "mall/arcade" with several take away restaurants. We often ended up having fish and chips (Kim's Fish and Chips for $10 was the best) on the pier with a bottle of wine ($20) and enjoying the spectacular end of day views of the ocean to the east of us. Tables, chairs and umbrellas are provided so you're pretty comfortable. The clouds were always towering and slowly evolving while in the distance you could see lightning storms flashing and rain falling. All the while we're enjoying our dinner and the cooler sea breezes. Sometimes large fish could be seen near the water surface as people tossed bits into the sea for them to eat. It was always a nice place and a great way to end the day (or at least when it wasn't raining).
There's also a museum/attraction on the pier: Two Iconic Territory Stories -- The Royal Flying Doctors Service and the Bombing of Darwin Harbor. The Flying Doctors should be well known -- there was a airplane you could explore (a flying ambulance/hospital). The geography of the Northern Territories is quite large, the population quite sparse. Without the Flying Doctors there would be no emergency health care! The bombing of Darwin Harbor on February 19, 1942 was only the first of several bombings by the Japanese during World War II. It was, and remains, a defining moment for Darwin and all of Australia. The exhibit had lots to see and enjoy but the most interesting part was a virtual reality experience of the bombing. You felt like you were right there during the event -- you wore goggles and the scenes you experienced were very real and quite dimensional (e.g. you could turn around and look behind you). We did it twice as recommended by the guide at the door. The second time through you had a better understanding of things having explored the other exhibits.
For ocean views at sunset we went to Mindil Beach one night; another time we had more fish and chips at Cullen's Bay; and one evening we caught the sunset at Northcliffe. There's a picture in the album of a couple who have set up some lawn chairs, a table and a couple of bottles of wine to enjoy the sunset at Northcliffe -- typical Australians. You're not supposed to have alcohol in public places but it's never enforced when you're well behaved (affluent and white).
We rented a car for most of the time we were there. Car rentals around Darwin all seem to run about the same. The nasty part is you can't get a car with unlimited mileage -- they're all a reasonable base rate with very limited mileage. Distances are huge once you leave the city so it is a bit of a scam.
We took a cab out to the airport to pick up our rental (and dropped it at the airport when we left Darwin for Melbourne). From there we drove out to Litchfield National Park which is on some higher table land about an hour and a half out of Darwin. Most of the territory around Darwin is very flat low land, almost swamp like. The table lands are a bit higher and there are some spectacular water falls, especially during the rainy season. All of the pools, below the many falls, were posted for salt water crocodiles (salties) and our friends from the area told us to take the postings seriously (see Crocodile Leaps at Tourist, 2012). The only place you could safely enter the water was a small water feature at a place called Buley Rockhole. We did take a dip but weren't cooled very much. It was a stinking hot day with intense sun.
Another feature in the park was the giant termite mounds. These are grass termites and the mounds are the huge colonies they build. We'd seen these before in Western Australia and on our long drive across the continent back in 2004 but nothing like the one we saw in Litchfield.
One day we visited the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin on Fannie Bay (sic!). We had a nice lunch at the museum restaurant on the verandah overlooking the bay and a tour of the exhibits. There were, of course, lots of Aborginal works of art and museum exhibits. At the museum entrance there was an outdoor display where an Aboriginal artist painted on large automobile parts, As for art work I was particularly impressed with some of the photos on display in the "EX!T ART, 2016 Year 12 Student Exhibition".
The museum had a huge (I mean really, really, really big -- 5.1 meters) stuffed crocodile on display called "Sweetheart". It had been causing trouble back in the 1970's and was captured live but drowned in an attempt to have it relocated. There was also an interesting wing/exhibit hall on boats and small ships over the ages.
But the most interesting exhibit was on Cyclone Tracy which literally destroyed the entire city on Christmas eve and Christmas day of 1974. The city at the time was made of lightly built tropical homes built to let the air through. Louvered walls, light corrugated metal roofs, and homes on stilts (for cooling) -- that was the norm. None could stand the prolonged cyclone which lasted from Dec 21 to the 26th! Even stone buildings, like the old town hall, were demolished by the winds. Since then building standards are much better and hopefully the city will survive the next serious cyclone which is sure to arrive (when we left Darwin a cyclone was bearing down on the city but thankfully it veered off it's projected course).
We made a couple more car trips out of town on the road towards Kakadu (that's a big, important National Park some distance to the south and east -- basically a day trip to get there). We went to the Fogg Dam Conservation Area and were able to take a lot of very good bird pictures. The dam that was part of a failed agricultural project (see the Humpty Doo Rice Trail (sic!)) is all that remains of a project to make rice growing into a major agricultural export commodity in the NT. The dam was built during that project to control water flow to the rice fields which are now long gone. What remains is an important preserve for birds and other fauna .... e.g. you weren't supposed to walk on the dam as there are aggressive crocodiles, and then there's the snakes too. Anyways, we visited a couple of times and really liked seeing the birds. And really liked not seeing any crocodiles!
Back in the city we did a harbor tour one morning and learned a little about the harbor history. Pearling, as in Broome, remains an important venture. Originally the pearling was to harvest mother of pearl from the shells which was then used to make buttons. That folded with the invention of modern buttons. What remains is cultured pearls where the oyster is tricked into making a pearl. It's still an important business in Darwin -- see Paspaley Pearls. There's lots of development around the harbor. One area is all fill from the cleanup of the city after Cyclone Tracy. Stabilising that area to allow for building will be a challenge. Our guide showed us the mud flats and mangrove groves which border the area.
We returned to the area of the Fogg Dam to take a boat cruise on the Adelaide River to see jumping crocodiles (see The Original Jumping Crocodile Cruise) one morning. It was a small boat and you were definitely up close and personal with the crocodiles. Kate wrote about this:
We went on a river cruise to see jumping crocodiles today (and we did - close up and personal). As we were starting, the skipper was giving the safety talk and told us where the life jackets were because they were legally obliged to do so (they appeared to be under some bolted down flooring that would take a screwdriver to open. But then he said, "If we tip, the last thing you want to do is put on a life jacket because they are red and crocs are attracted to red. So if we end up in the water, all you need to do is swim away from the old man in the orange shirt (i.e., Reg). Reg was pretty pissed about being called an old man -- I was more worried about whether I would be one of the rats swimming away from the old man in the orange shirt!There were only a few of us on the cruise that day. Several were young kids, just a bite sized snack for some of the bigger crocs! I found it a little frightening, they were that close and really can jump awfully high.
After the cruise we stopped at the "Window on the Wetlands" on our way back to the city. This is a museum on a bit of high land with panoramic views of the surrounding country side. During the wet season the land is often flooded, in the dry it's dry and parched. There's quite a bit of farming in the area but it is challenging. e.g. crocodile captures are often because they are harassing the cattle!
Our final adventure on the Saturday was a walk around the historic down town area with a tour of the NT Parliament. The parliament building is called the "Wedding Cake" -- it's tiered and looks a bit like a white wedding cake but others tell us it's called that because it's "full of fruits, nuts and a bit of rum"! The guide for the day was a nice older retired lady, Jenny Armour, who had worked in the State/Legislative Library which is housed in one part of the parliament building (a wing originally set aside to be the Senate of a bicameral house). She was very knowledgeable and helped acquaint us with the NT flag, the NT Coat of Arms, the politics of the NT, the construction of the building (opened in 1994 and designed to withstand the next Cyclone Tracy) and much more. One of the interesting items in the library is the Darwin Commemorative Quilt -- it's a very large patchwork quilt with nearly 2,000 names of people who had spent time in the Northern Territory (NT) during the war years. Patches were signed by people attending the 50th anniversary celebration of the Japanese bombing of Darwin in 1992. The patches were assembled into a huge quilt on display in the State/Legislative Library. Kate asked who made the quilt (thinking that it might have been some local Women's Institute or the like) and Jenny informed us that she had made the quilt!
Our last night in Darwin was a nice dinner at a Thai restaurant in the CBD not far from the Parliament (we couldn't have fish and chips every night!). While there the clouds opened and a huge deluge followed. We were getting out of town in advance of the next cyclone of the wet season.
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