Darwin 14.9.09

A quick note on photographs before I start telling you about Darwin, reading the next couple of posts I refer to photos that aren’t there yet, that’s because I haven’t taken them, but I will, all the Darwin photos will be on by Friday night. Also you’ll notice no photos of the kids, this is because we are a little reluctant to put them on the net as both sites are public and it just doesn’t sit with us. However, photos of the kids are on there, if you want to see them you need to start a flickr account (it’s free and easy, use your own name) then using your new account look me up and mark me as a friend or family, then I will accept and you can see the family photos. It may seem a bit extreme but it’s not that difficult and we just feel better about doing it that way, hope you enjoy my Darwin experience.

Of course we actually arrived here in Darwin on Thursday, 3.9.09 and as usual I am way behind in updating so again I will start from the beginning but try and keep it a bit short.

After leaving Litchfield, taking an extra hour or so in the car due to our previously documented misadventures, we arrived in Darwin a couple hours early for our meeting with the owners of the house we are staying in. Thinking to pass some time we decided to drop in to Howard Springs and have a bit of a dip. Howard Springs is one of the local areas star attractions and not to be missed, apparently. We got there very keen to have a dip in the springs but oh how naive we were. See the springs have had some kind of an algae bloom that’s harmful to humans for the last two years that hasn’t made the tourist brochures, making them un-swimmable. So instead of a refreshing swim we nearly got carried away by the worst mozzie swarm I’ve seen anywhere, anytime. As we got out of the car and were collecting our gear to make lunch and a cuppa the mozzies attacked, hundreds of them, biting through our shirts and everything. I was slapping myself all over, nearly doing contortions trying to reach them; I quickly smothered myself and the kids in a herbal “repellent”. I hate herbal insect repellents, as far as I’m concerned they do nothing except to the weak and scared mozzies, well, I swear I heard the Howard Springs mozzies laugh at me and say “oh good he’s putting on sauce.” As soon as we realised that we couldn’t swim at the springs we made a hasty retreat, fighting the mozzies as we ran, once in the car we spent the next 20km swatting mozzies in the car.

After being chased from Howard Springs we decided to look for the water fun park that had come highly recommended by some Darwin ex-pats we know in Cairns. We couldn’t believe it when we saw the place, driving in we could see three very big waterslides and I mean proper waterslides (check the photos), the kids were mucking about in the back and hadn’t seen the slides yet. Belinda and I couldn’t quite believe we were at the right place, it looked to good to be free, but we were and so we let the kids know we had arrived. Lachlan nearly blew a fuse, he was so excited, yelling and shouting, cheering and laughing, clapping and singing, it was nearly worth driving all that way just for this one moment. I won’t try and describe the park here, rest assured we had heaps of fun, the red slide is pitch black, the yellow slide is the fastest slide I’ve ever ridden and the blue ones quite slow; kids were in heaven for the afternoon.

We had to meet our home owners at 5.00 so we spent a couple hours playing, cashed in Lachlan’s Man of the Match award at McDonalds and headed to our home for the next two weeks. We spent an interesting night getting to know Ian and Meg who’ve gone off to Brissy for two weeks and needed someone to look after their pets, two dogs, Roxy and Oscar, the turtle, Xena and the six gold fish she lives with. There is also Mickey the crazy cat (truly psycho but nice and fun) and as an added bonus, Cooper the eleven week old Chinese Sharpei, funny dog that loves to slobber on you – walks around behind you putting his great slobbery snout on your calf all the time. It’s gross but he’s very cute. Meg and Ian are a very nice young couple who even put a fresh cake of soap in the shower before they left and changed the sheets at 3.00am, I couldn't believe 24yr olds could be so thoughtful; it was much fun to get to know yet another couple on our journey.

I took our new friends to the airport at 4.00am Friday after a terrible sleep because of the noisy dogs, both Belinda and I were thinking we had made a terrible mistake but they’ve been good ever since. We spent the first couple days cleaning out the car and trailer and culling some gear, with a few little expeditions out into town checking out the markets and stuff. We decided we’d attack Darwin properly on Monday. I don’t intend to bore you with a day by day account of our time here but I’ll share some highlights.

Our first Sunday night we gave the Mindil Markets a test run. These are much hyped and I doubt there’s a tourist who comes to Darwin without going there. Much of the markets reputation is rested on the variety and quality of the food available there, and they didn’t let us down although like all things anticipated and built up with the hype they weren’t as good as hoped. I’ll put that down to very high expectations rather than poor food, I had some Philipino food (thinking of sister in law Venus), Lachlan had Butter Chicken, Zali (pretty ordinary) Honey Chicken and Belinda had a Green Paw Paw salad that she’d been waiting for since the day we left Cairns. She got a medium spicy and nearly got chilli blisters on her tongue it was so hot. As far as markets go the merchandise is not that much different from the stuff you get in any other popular market except for the Zebra Stone jewellery. A Zebra Stone can only be found in the Kimberly Mountain Range and when polished up are absolutely stunning, like no other rock I’ve ever seen. Mindil Markets biggest drawcard for mine is the unique setting. To correct myself the markets are actually Mindil Beach Markets and the location is second to none, including the Port Douglas market. They are held from 4pm to 9pm so they are the sunset market, and the sunset is the drawcard. Sunsets here are those amazing types only found on TV and photos; you know the ones, the big orange ball sinking below the horizon (check photos). We wandered over to watch this most famous of sunsets on the beach (with our friends from Mataranka we happened to bump into) and I was blown away, not by the sunset (admittedly it was very impressive) but by the people on the beach. There had to be close to 1000 people sitting there on the sand watching the sun go down! Imagine trying to get a unique photo with 1000 other cameras pointing at the same thing, I didn’t even bother but started thinking, I hope you like the results.

Tuesday morning saw us hit the Casino for the buffet breakfast. Sitting 40m from the beach on a beautiful morning (the sea was a truly paradise turquoise blue, just like the brochures) it cost $30 for the whole family to eat as much as possible, with a great variety of food which is all delicious. Our only mistake came back to haunt us, or more accurately haunt Lachlan, today. We met up with our friends from Edith Falls a few days back and had a BBQ at East Point with them, while there we talked up the buffet brekky and convinced them to come and partake with us this morning. Unfortunately we also talked up Lachlan’s very impressive eating performance within his hearing, get this for a 25kg seven year old boys breakfast; 1 bowl Bircher Muesli, 1 bowl Nutra Grain, 1 plate Bacon, eggs & hash browns, 1 plate with two pancakes, 1 plate with Danish’s, croissant and a muffin. Include with that about 5 glasses of juice. So Lachlan heard us talking and laughing about how much he could eat and so had to live up to the hype today and decided to show off a little, we had our friends there and didn’t monitor his intake too closely, it all ended badly with the poor kid on the beach throwing up his breakfast, enough to fill a small backpack. I’ve never seen it happen before, but my boy ate until he was sick, I was awestruck.