Farewell Darwin

We’ve enjoyed staying in Darwin. It’s a small, well cared-for city with enough things to keep us interested for the week we’ve been here – world war 2 oil storage tunnels, the indo-pacific coral aquarium, the museum with its cyclone Tracey display and aboriginal art and Darwin’s many lovely foreshores and beaches.  But now we’re packing up and it’s time to go home.

Casuarina Beach

We caught the bus out of the city to Casuarina beach and walked along the wide and long beach as far as we had enough energy in the building heat of the day. It was lovely to be on a beach again, but swimming is off the agenda due to crocodiles and box jellyfish.

Nightcliffe Sea Breeze Festival

Saturday just happened to be the start of one of Darwin’s festivals, so we thought we go and check it out. It takes place along the foreshore at one of Darwin’s suburbs. It included a wide range of arts from different countries, including dance, music, painting…..Best of all a blues stage; superb while the sun was setting.

Mindil Beach Markets

The Dry season is here! The humidity has gone and the nights are a comfortable temperature. It also means the start of the Mindil Beach markets in Darwin. There are food stalls reflecting the multicultural mix in the city. We tried jack fruit curry from Malaysia – different and yummy, enjoyed while watching the sun set.

Being the first market of the season we were treated to all kinds of music, fireworks and fire eating!

Darwin

Here we are at our final destination at the end of a total of 11 months and 40,000km. The campervan is and our buyer is coming to collect it tomorrow. We’ve checked into an hotel apartment in Darwin for our last week. The apartment has superb views over one of the harbours and we enjoy lovely sunrises while we eat breakfast on the balcony.

Territory Wildlife Park

Territory Wildlife Park was a fabulous day out. It displays and explains the wildlife found in the Northern Territory; all in their natural environments. The rangers gave talks and demonstrations of birds of prey, fish feeding and monsoon forest birds. We found it particularly fascinating as we had seen or heard (at night) much of the wildlife and this enabled us to find out more about it and meet other creatures.

We often hear these barking owls at night and really thought they were dogs at first until we realised the same dogs couldn’t be following us everywhere! We also hear dingoes at night, howling like wolves.

Manton Dam

We’re just pottering about various scenic spots near Darwin. Manton Dam was a lovely spot for a picnic. Had a close encounter with a Golden Orb spider!