Not far to drive today, looking forward to seeing Skye soon, but as we were leaving Katherine I looked at my phone to see she is fogbound at Dubbo airport and probably miss her connection, fingers crossed she’s on the evening flight and we don’t lose too much time with her! Flouro signs everywhere advertising fireworks for sale on Sunday- my favourite was the music shop selling pianos dedicating floor space to the Territory Day cause. Our campground getting full and probably be at capacity this Territory Day weekend, a big4’ish resort style place with three pools, bistro bar etc.
So after a hot setup kids glad to hit one of the smaller pools near us while I knocked out a load of washing.
We drove in for a look around the city, can’t miss the airport bang in the middle next to a massive RAAF base, I wonder if Grandpa was stationed up here at all.
Like all good tourists we headed for the wharf- you actually park on the wharf which was an interesting experience in tight corners and no guard rail into the water save a 20cm high one. We started to find out about the bombings of Darwin and I am ashamed to admit I hardly knew anything about them even that there was more than one bombing. They dropped more here than Pearl Harbour, and although the official death toll was around 400, apparently 1000 was more accurate. Together with Cyclone Tracy they have devastated most of the city buildings twice over, with the Victoria Hotel being one of the only buildings to survive both. We had a look around the memorials and restaurants and drove around a bit more getting our bearings and finding a cool playground in the process. Promising to come back to the wave pool and Inflatable World at the foreshore, we drove back and had dinner at the camp bistro settling everyone in for a warm night. I set my alarm and tried to get a bit of sleep before heading to airport to meet Skye, very excited!!