Darwin – a break from traveling
We arrived in Darwin on Wednesday afternoon and set up camp in Doreen & Dave’s driveway. We had promised Sarah to go to the Royal Darwin Show the next day because she had been talking about it since we first mentioned it. But knowing that Friday would be a public holiday and a lot of shops and attractions would be closed we decided to do a bit of sightseeing and shopping on Thursday and visit the show on Friday. Sarah wasn’t too disappointed because we went to the Fish Feeding where hundreds of Mullets, Milkfish and Catfish come into a little bay. The entrance fee ($15/adul, $10/child) gave access to a tray with slices of white bread for the fish and Sarah ran about 50 times from the water to the trays to get a little piece for her fishes. She wasn’t afraid at all and hand fed the mullets that were swimming over and between her feet. She loved it!
After that we went to the CBD for some lunch and a hair cut for Martin. Sarah and I went down to the Waterfront for a swim at the artificial but stinger- and crocodile-free beach. A crowded and loud shopping center visit got us all hyped up again and we tried to get out of there as soon as possible. At least Sarah got her new swimsuit and Martin a new shirt and shorts. We’re just not used to those crowds and loudness any more… it’s so nice and quiet in the outback!
We spent the evening at the Mindil Night markets. A lot of food stalls right on the beach and a lot of other stalls that we didn’t see – one of the first stalls was a juggling supply stall and Sarah took the opportunity to show off her hula hoop skills whilst trying out all the different sized hoops. We also enjoyed some street arts – first we watched a flea circus then a monkey puppet show for kids and finally a pretty good fire juggler. Luckily Regine found the time to take some pictures of the spectacular sunset.
It’s showday 24/07/15
It’s Darwin Showday and we promised Sarah already a day ago to check it out. We must have arrived at peak time as the queues to the entrance were pretty long, however it didn’t take long to buy a ticket and get in. Here we’ve just arrived to see the Monkey show we’ve already seen the night before at the markets. Next we checked out the main arena, but apart from a couple of horses doing show jumping there wasn’t much on. So we went to see the animal sheds. First we found some birds and right at the back the snakes. Sarah had no hesitation to hold and pet the good sized python.
Next was the chooks, goats and bunny shed. Sarah was getting really attached to the little bunnies and it was hard to get her out of the petting zoo. (Rabbits are illegal in QLD, so Sarah never had a chance to hold one before)
We saw the main parade, which wasn’t that big but had some big cattle and little kids, visited the few cattle (which reminded her of Gotte Ang), cats and fire-engine and finally watched some piglets racing and jumping into a pool. :-)
We stayed a couple more days in Darwin, mainly to do some shopping, cleaning caravan and car, washing, sending parcels of stuff we don’t need back home and to figure out where to go next.
Sunday we went to the local park down the road – which turned out to be a fantastic water park with huge slides for the big kids and a lot of smaller slides and water features for the little ones. It was also end of the holiday, so they had a clown animating children, a DJ playing music and a jumping castle. Sarah was in heaven and we spent pretty much all day there (instead of doing sightseeing in Darwin). The highlight was certainly the hula-hoop competition where a certain 3-year old girl stole everyone else the show with her tricks. So she got a couple of lollypops for her efforts.
On Monday Dave showed us Darwin. The wharf, the town, the beaches, the museums, the navy base and everything else we’ve missed so far. It was really interesting to hear some of the stories he told us and we’ve seen Darwin from a completely different angle. It’s funny how one paints a picture about Darwin in the head, without knowing anything about it. It’s a pretty and green place, but still - I wouldn’t want to be here during the wet and summer. Temperatures rose easily to 33 C and humidity picked up as well around 70%). So it was time for us to say goodbye and a big thank you to Doreen and Dave and head down South again.