Darwin trip

I've been up to Darwin a few times now, and it's a really cool little city.

I had a mate, Limmy, who was doing a four-month stint up here as a physio. To farewell him we had a bit of a lads weekend in Darwin.

We drove up on Friday after work, but there will be no photos of our activities here. Needless to say it was a good night.

It was, however, very difficult to get up in time to make the 7am fishing charter we had booked. The only saving grace was that we knew they were going to have bacon and egg rolls for us on arrival... gold. It was a half day trip, just around Darwin harbour.

It was a slow start, and the other fellas were pulling them up in dribs and drabs while I looked on forlornly. But soon, it was on.

Now much to Limmy's disgust, I caught the biggest fish of the day. It was a beautiful snapper. But Limmy, being a little bit petty, decided to crop the photo. Okay, so it's not a monster or anything, but catching anything is fun.

I caught five I think in all, and the other fellas caught a fair few too. We were staying at a backpackers right in town which had a barbecue, and decided to cook up the fillets for tea. So while all the other backpackers were eating tinned soup and sausages, we cooked up fresh fish marinated in chilli and garlic, asian greens stir fried on the barbecue, which actually worked really well, and chips.

It was awesome.

One the way back we decided to go via Litchfield National Park, which is maybe 80 kilometres off the highway back to Katherine.

We went to Florence Falls, which is the closest attraction. You have to walk down a heap of steps to get there, but this is the view from the lookout at the top.

It was a beautiful spot to swim, and we managed to climb up under the waterfall. There was also a great ledge to jump off into the pool. Apparently that's a bit of a boy thing to do, but it's always so much fun!

We stopped quickly at the magnetic termite mounds on the way out. This photo doesn't show it too clearly, but they're only perhaps 10 or 20 centimetres thick, and they all line up almost exactly north to south. If you think about it, it's pretty freaky that termites know how to do that. But apparently it's about the direction of the wind in the valley that the termites live in, and this is the most aerodynamic way to build them. Pretty clever.
So all in all, a pretty darn good weekend.

Darwin

If you could swim at the beaches with only the normal probability of death, Darwin could well be paradise.

I've been there twice now, once for work and once for a weekend. The weekend I went up was for an exhibition match between the Queensland Reds and the ACT Brumbies, but I decided to make a touristy trip of it.

The game was Friday and I went out for a few beers with my boss afterwards, and stayed in a backpacker on Mitchell Street, right in the middle of the city.

Saturday morning I needed breakfast, and found this great Turkish place! I had the 'Turkish Breakfast,' which was kind of a breakfast antipasto platter, a pile of olives, feta, tomato, cucumber and an omelet - delicious!

I thought I would be adventurous and order a Turkish coffee... the little old lady who was behind the counter, who I can only describe as a nona (I don't know the Turkish word) kind of looked at me doubtfully, and tried to talk me into having a flat white. But I persisted, and it was... well... perhaps I should have taken her advice.
After breakfast I headed to a crocodile park. They get the salties (the ones that will kill you... just to watch you die) to jump out of the water for bit of chook, it's pretty amazing to watch.
But they're only the smallish ones (they'll still kill you though). The really big ones are kept in breeding pens and there are duckboards over them. So you get to see them pretty close.
But wait, there's more! You get to feed them (hopefully not your arm). They give you a bit of chook on a rope on a stick, and you dangle it over the edge until they jump for it. They might be a meter and a half below you, it's certainly not far, perhaps two metres at most. The trickiest thing is to not move the chook when they jump for it - which is pretty much the exact opposite of my natural instinct. It was an interesting experience.
And then you get to wrestle with a saltwater crocodile! Of sorts... There's been a bit of reptile wrestling of late, but I will save that for another post.
After all the excitement of the morning I needed some lunch, and headed to the wharf precinct. You can get some really amazing seafood there, and a nice glass of wine, and the view ain't half bad either. This was when I started to think that perhaps Darwin may be paradise...
This is the view from the wharf looking back at the city. The plaques are tributes to the wharfies who died when the Japanese bombed the harbour in World War II. There's a lot of war tributes in Darwin, and a special museum dedicated to the attacks on the city. I didn't get there on this trip, but it's on my to do list.

This is the view looking out into the harbour.

After that I went for a walk around the city, and then drove up the headland a bit and watched the sunset over the Timor Sea. It was pretty special, but after visiting the croc farm I kept a respectful distance from the water!On Sunday I went to some awesome markets and had crepes and coffee for breakfast. I also managed to buy Thriller by Michael Jackson and Boy by U2 on vinyl. It was a really cool vibe and confirmed my suspicions of Darwin being a pretty cool little town.

On Sunday arvo I headed to the Darwin Museum. They have this stuffed croc there, 'Sweetheart'. He was 5.1 metres long and killed a number of people... I suppose the name is ironic?

The museum also has this really interesting exhibition about Cyclone Tracey. There's this one little room you can step into that's pitch black and you hear a recording of the noise from 1974. It's pretty intense, and quite scary even though you know it's not real. One shudders to think what the real thing would be like.

They also had a touring exhibition about ACDC. My Dad, being a nerd, didn't really get into them much and therefore it's a bit of a blackspot in my musical knowledge, but that was interesting.

It's about a three hour drive to Darwin, so very doable for a weekend. I think what I like about it is quite similar to what I liked about Newcastle - it's got most things you might want but everywhere is 10 minutes drive. The humidity, however, is pretty confronting, and you can't really swim at the beach and expect to come out again.

But yeh, it's a great city and I'm looking forward to more touristy weekends!

I went back last week to do a four wheel drive course, which I think will come in handy. I now have no excuse for stuffing the ABC car though.

Work is going well, I'm finding some stories and making some contacts, and I continue to meet people socially. So far it seems like moving to Katherine was a good call!