Day 1 - Darwin: our first "real" day in Darwin started at 00h44 with Olivia waking up from jetlag. We had slept 6 hours already and our body thought it was 16h14 so I felt as awake as Olivia. Hanne didn't but it's one room so one person awake means 3 awake. We played for a few hours, Hanne fell asleep and after quite some efforts Olivia and me as well... in that order. Lucky Hanne. Next memorable moment of the day was at 11h30 when the cleaning lady woke us up. It felt like we hadnt slept at all but we decided to hit the town.

Darwin is advertised as the smallest and most Northern of Aussie capitals. While that is true, there is much more to say about this cozy tropical coastal city.

Some history for those who are interested (all others can skip to next paragraph): the Larrakia Aboriginal people lived here for thousands of years. First attempts to settle in the Top End were mainly due to British fears that the French or the Dutch would get a foothold in Australia. They established 3 forts but all were short-lived. In 1869 a first white settlement was established, called Palmerston. (Only in 1911 it was renamed Darwin. We still need to find out why this city was named Darwin and not any of the other the Beagle had travelled to.) In the 70s gold was found and that meant an influx of Chinese and islanders. Though the gold findings were minimal, the digging unearthed a wealth of natural resources that would lead to mining becoming a major economic presence. Still today Darwin lives on mining and tourism. Since then Darwin has been the scene of two types of events: destruction and Aborigine conflict. Concerning Aborigines, they seem to live here normally amongst white people, east Timorese, Papuan and a lot of Asians. No more physical conflict today but the Aborigines in the city seem to live in conflict between their own heritage and the city life. On the destruction side: in WWII the Japanese dropped more bombs on Darwin harbor than on Pearl Harbor (!!). It was the first time Australia got attacked. 243 people were killed by a convoy of Japanese fighters led by the same guy who levelled Pearl Harbor 10 weeks earlier. Even more impactful was the stationing of 32,000 soldiers which followed the Japanese attack and fear for Japanese invasion. More physically damaging was Cyclone Tracy which effectively ended the existance of Darwin by levelling 10,800 of the 11,200 homes (!!) on Christmas Eve 1974.

The town got entirely rebuilt and therefore has a very 70/80s building style. The centre doesn't look very nice except the outside mall and at the coast where we visited the multi-million dollar project "Waterfront" which my hairdresser (when abroad, go to a local hairdresser, it gives a great feel of a city) called "the only concrete that made the city look better than before the concrete". And he was right. We spent the afternoon with Olivia in and around a semi-pool/semi-Indian Ocean and had a Mojito. Simply brilliant place. In the evening we went a bit further towards the water, onto Stokes Hill Warf where they turned the old harbor into a cozy warf filled with eateries. We both had a salad, sitting on the "pier" right next to the water. Holidays at its best! Earlier in the day, we had a much needed breakfast (at Roma Bar) which proved that we weren't feeling like crap because of the jetlag but simply because we hadn't eaten in over 15 hours. We did some shopping and walked around town, feeling like we could have spent another day here.

We won't though because we have a bunch of amazing things ahead of us still that require us to move on. Starting with stress number 2: the motorhome. Hanne is stressed about feeling cramped into a place that is way too small. I feel stress about deliberately driving on the wrong side of the street, which is the correct side here. Yes, we already reached the point where we call that stress :-)

Olivia is feeling great so far: eating and drinking well, walking around all the time, smiling, talking and singing and starting to mess with her parents. No means no, except occasionally apparently, when it means yes to her. And we had our first kaka-pamper-from-hell when coming out of the water: a 2 person job.

That was it for today. Ciao mates!

Ps: no running yet. Still 30 to go.
Pps: Hanne added a second "goed voornemen", eating healthy. Hence the salad this evening! And the bag of chips while writing this...