We flew via Kununurra to Darwin and arrived late afternoon (winding our clocks forward 1 1/2 hours). The apartment we'd booked online was a ripper - 21 floors up - with a magical view of the city, and there was just enough time to put our bags down before standing on the balcony and watching an amazing sunset. I'm sure it was made all the more magical due to the recent volcanic eruption in nearby Java.

As a small girl, we'd lived in Darwin for around 18 months when my Dad was transferred from Melbourne as a promising young accountant with Coopers and Lybrand to help run the Darwin office of the firm. I don't really remember very much about it, except for the heat and humidity. The original posting was for 3 years and for some reason we left after 18 months - I think Dad either got a promotion or got sick of the heat - but luckily we left when we did as our first floor unit in Rapid Creek was flattened by Cyclone Tracy.

Downtown Darwin is a vibrant small city. The total population is around 140,000 - smaller than Geelong - but had heaps of great restaurants, good cafes and loads of touristy things to do. As we had a few days to kill before Paul and Andrew arrived, the girls and I booked a seat on the Hop-On-Hop-Off double decker bus and set off to see the sights. I can highly recommend the Museum & Art Gallery of NT with its Cycline Tracy exhibit complete with a very disconcerting sound booth with a recording of the incredible noise of scraping metal and moaning winds. The girls stood in the doorway not prepared to come any further. They were also horrified by the pictures of the sad little kids - mainly as I pointed out that the Cyclone had destroyed all the presents left by Santa. There was also a great exhibit showing the Wallace collection - a contemporary of Charles Darwin (he would have been more famous than Darwin if he'd published a little earlier) and a stuffed 5.8m crocodile called Sweetheart. We also visited Doctors Gully for the daily fish feeding at high tide (I was keeping a fairly close look out for crocs), Crocosaurus Cove where Matilda swam in a tank next to crocodiles and the girls fed young ones with fishing rods, WW2 Oil Tunnels, Mindil Beach Sunset Markets, Military Museum, and the terrific waterfront with wave pool and lagoon (2 visits here). The girls were thrilled to catch up on a movie in How to Train Your Dragon 2. I caught up with a colleague I'd worked with for a long time who'd recently been transferred up to Darwin - he loved it so much, he and his family had already bought some property to build a house and were selling up in Melbourne. Despite being surrounded by water, there weren't all that many waterfront properties that I could see - big tides and extreme weather being the main reason I suppose - but it sure is a nice place to visit.
Now we are back in Broome, preparing for the month-long trek home. Originally we'd thought to head back the way we came, but the girls have had enough canyons and desert for the time being, so we will head south tomorrow via Exmouth (hopefully to dive with whale sharks), Monkey Mia (see the dolphins) and through Perth before crossing the Nullabor and arriving in Melbourne in the dead of winter. Brrrr. It got down to a chilly 14 degrees last night - the first time I've put on a long sleeved top in weeks!