Feb 2007

Oooo, feels like luxury to get all the mod cons back after the outback trip. There's not much to do in Darwin, you can feed the fish and go to museums. It's a pretty small city, with 6 main streets, a few tourist shops, one large supermarket, a cinema, a library, and the smallest botanical gardens. Of 200,000 people that reside in the Northern Territory, 800,000 live in Darwin during the wet season so you can get a feel for how small the city is.

Everything in Darwin is newly built because of the WW2 bombings and the 1974 hurricane Tracey. Also the average age of Darwin residents is 28-35, so a young place too. This means that young people move up the employment ladder faster than usual and have more disposable income and a mortgage pretty early on.

On Saturday I went in to town with Bob, a dutch guy from my dorm. We'd both been given a dinner voucher from reception for the same bar, so walked there together. Dinner was ok and we stayed for a dance but left before the finals of the bikini competion started and the men poured in. There are so many more men than there are women in Darwin and I think it's the cause of a lot of the fighting. After dark there is always a high police presence in the streets.

Every Sunday the hostel has a live band from 3-8pm and is popular with the locals, so it was quite a busy and fun afternoon.

There is a big aborigine community here with groups of them on the streets drinking grog and walking around the pubs scavenging for cigarettes, or taking fag butts out of the ashtrays. It seems they're pretty well looked after by the government, they get a weekly payment, but just seem to spend it all on booze. On the news, the aborigines were being interviewed about getting back in the work place and say 'they couldn't cope with a full time job after being unemployed for 10 years', so the government try to support them by finding them part time employment. The whole thing seems to be a vicious circle and self segregation between the more affluent whites and poorer barefooted aborigines is clear, yet unofficial.

A big source of employment here is barramundi fishing when it's in season - as it is now. Fisherman make their way to Darwin from all over Oz, it makes them very good money. I was seriously offered a job as cook on a prawn trawling boat for 4 months... I don't think so, I get sea sick on the Thames!

The tropical weather here boasts huge thunder storms, the lightning can be amazing, almost like watching a firework display. The rain is so heavy you can't see from one side of the road to the other. For the most part though, it's hot sunshine and high humidity.

I also did do a day trip from Darwin to Litchfield National Park - that was pretty good. The first stop was the jumping crocodiles on the Adelaide River. They hold a pork chop on the end of a rope and dangle it in the river and the crocs swim out for a feed. We were lucky enough to see a 5 metre croc. Back on the bus we drove through Humpty Doo (I love that name) to Litchfield National Park. We stopped at Florence Falls for a swim then Wangi and Tolmer Falls. Finally stopping on the way home to have a look at some cathedral termite mounds before heading through Batchelor and back in to Darwin.

Main Street in Darwin

5 metre croc

Tolmer Falls, Litchfield