Many Australians consider Darwin to be a bit odd and the locals even odder. Maybe it's just us, but we found the place - and the people - to be refreshingly normal.

We felt quite at home to see a mix of races and colours on the streets - most seemed to be from Asia, which isn't surprising given Darwin's proximity to that continent. It was also good to see Aboriginal Australians working and shopping quite normally, rather than wandering the streets in a state of exclusion.

One very obvious benefit of the high proportion of people from overseas was the impact on the local cuisine. We wandered into a shopping centre one lunchtime and were confronted by a food court offering Indian, Thai, Chinese and Italian dishes. After a couple of months of your basic Aussie grub, we felt like we were back in Richmond. It was hard to choose, but we eventually settled on noodles on the grounds that we can make rice or pasta quite easily ourselves.

It was the same when we headed out to Mindil Beach, where there is a market every Thursday and Sunday evening. As well as stalls selling arts, crafts and souvenirs (ranging from bullwhips to Kangaroo leather pouches), there must have been 50 food stands.

As expected, there were many types of Asian cuisine such as Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian and Sri Lankan (which is where we eventually ended up). For the more stolid tastes, there were Aussie burgers and snags (sausages), roasts, baked potatoes and of course pizza and pasta. And if you wanted something a little different, there was the Roadkill Café - motto "You kill it, we cook it".

This delightfully named establishment sold skewers of meat such as emu, kangaroo, camel, crocodile, wallaby (much to Katy's disgust - see previous blogs) and buffalo. It was hard to resist, so I didn't and had an emu skewer and a camel sausage. The emu was very strong and gamey while the camel tasted pretty much like any sausage really.

After that, we headed off for the highlight of our visit to Darwin, a trip to the Deckchair Cinema. Although not that old, it continues the tradition of open air cinema in the city that stretches back to the days of silent films. The only novelty is that most of the seats are deckchairs. Well, sort of deckchairs. They aren't individual seats, but in fixed rows which means you can't adjust the angle. This was a real pain - and I mean a real, genuine pain - because they were bloody uncomfortable!

We should have realised when we saw people in the queue carrying pillows and cushions, but there were also a couple with blankets so we thought they were just to keep warm. Oh dear how wrong we were. When we sat down, we were tipped backwards until our heads rested on the cold metal frame and our spines seemed to be grazing the gravel. Luckily Katy saw a box of cushions supplied by the cinema and two each helped a little; I fetched another one each, and with three cushions the agony started to ease off.

Unfortunately, just as the film started, an elderly couple came and sat next to us. Immediately, there were small cries of anguish and the man went on a cushion hunt, only to return empty handed. Stricken by guilt, we gave up one of ours each and risked a herniated disc for a couple of hours. Fortunately, we got away with it.

What did we watch? Mamma Mia!

For me this was both the third and the first time I had seen it. My first encounter had been with a pirate copy which was so bad it showed only about 40% of the picture. My second was on a flight, on a tiny screen with bad sound. This time, however, I got to both see and hear the whole thing. I have to say it's a very good film, with the knack of keeping you smiling for almost its entire length. I don't know who had the idea of casting actors not exactly renowned for their singing in a musical, but it worked fantastically well.

I would like to point out that Katy only wore two layers of clothing that evening - or indeed any evening in Darwin. This should give you an indication of how warm it is up here - in the low 30s in the day and balmy 20-something after darkness falls. Katy says it's her ideal sort of temperature, especially as it's the height of winter here. On the other hand, it's meant to be pretty hellish in the local summer - the temperature doesn't rise much but the humidity, which is high even now, becomes almost unbearable.

Speaking of unbearable, our camp deserves a special mention for being a bit crap. It's the only one we've been to that charges to use the barbecues (many towns have them free on their beach fronts or in parks) and the 'kitchen' consists solely of one BBQ, a fridge and a lone table. When we arrived, the fridge was filthy and clearly hadn't been cleaned for a couple of weeks. To be fair, that was remedied within an hour of me complaining though the staff haven't been back to the kitchen again so you can imagine the state of the table and the BBQ.

Just now, we went to cook dinner to find that there was no electric, meaning that the light didn't work and the food in the fridge was nice and warm. It was after office hours so I rang the number on the notice board to point out the problem. Instead of an apology, I was met with a heavy sigh and a grudging promise to send someone down. When that person arrived, his first words were to absolve himself of all responsibility - this was probably a good idea given that the only impact he had was to remove the power plug from the caravan adjacent to the kitchen.

When we refused to let the matter drop, they eventually found someone who might know what he was doing. The fridge turned out to be broken, but he eventually managed to get the light back on so we could see what we were cooking. And throughout this hour-long ordeal, not one person said sorry to us for the inconvenience we were suffering. The first guy apologised to the second guy for having to call him in, but to their paying clients not a word. What made it even more galling is that this is the second most expensive camp we have stayed in, not some grotty hole for $10 a night.

So, as a measure of revenge, we advise anyone reading this to avoid the Shady Glen caravan park in Darwin. So there!

We haven't done a huge amount in the four days we've been here, not tourist sort of stuff anyway. We had to take Ramsey to a garage because his electronic immobiliser had been playing up for a while in that sometimes it took ages to activate before we could start the engine. It was probably a loose connection inside because it usually just needed a bang or a jiggle, but that was no good to us. If it failed while we were in the middle of nowhere, we would have been well and truly stuck. So Ramsey's immobiliser is now… immobilised.

On the general topic of automotive locomotion, I have to admit to something shameful. For the first time in my life, I waxed a car! I know, I know… I have always hated washing cars, let alone waxing them, usually falling back on the excuse that a former BBC science correspondent once told me it was bad for them. (Honest, his name was David Wilson and he swore it was true.)

Katy, however, is of the other school of thought and I had to admit that Ramsey looked like he'd spent a few hundred miles on a dirt road in the back of beyond - which wasn't surprising, because he had. She said she would perform the cleansing and polishing all by herself, but she needed my extra height for a couple of parts and in the end I was overcome by guilt so joined in.

I admit that Ramsey looks very clean and shiny now, but the problem is that Katy says we have to do it again after we're done the Gibb River Road in WA… then in Perth… then after the Great Ocean Road… And of course just before we sell the car… Will this nightmare never end???

Richard