Darwin Trip: Part I

Saturday June 27th

Flew to Darwin in the arvo, arriving at about 3:00pm. It's bloody hot here, like over 30 degrees Celsius. We took a quick shuttle bus into the city which dropped us off right at our hostel, Melaluca on Mitchell. The hostel was amazing, it had a large deck on the second floor with a bar, patio tables and chairs, and two interconnected rock pools along with a 'hot tub' with a two storey waterfall flowing into it. Pretty cool place. A lot of backpacker partier types but the hostel was right in all the action downtown so that was nice.

We went exploring and walked along the Esplanade. Pretty boring because you can't really see the ocean from there. We stumbled upon the Wharf Precinct and wandered out to the end where all the restaurants and food stalls are. It was pretty cool; a lot of fish and chips and assorted seafood items. We split chilli mussels and sat at a table next to the water. It was gorgeous eating there while the sun set in the background.

Sunday June 28th

This morning we went back to the wharf precinct and lazed around at the manmade beach (you can see it in my photo album). The water is nice and warm, like being in a bathtub. Around noon we headed back into the city to get out of the sun and ended up at a great little pub called Shenanigans to watch AFL (Geelong beat Port Adelaide!). I guess I've become a bit of a Geelong fan by default. Cam's favourite team is Geelong so that's pretty much the only games I watch.

In the evening we walked to Mindil Beach to check out the sunset markets. Our navigational skills were a bit off so we ended up taking a very scenic route and about 20 or 30 minutes longer to get there. The market was quite large with a huge variety of cuisines from all different countries and of course the requisite 'local' crafts and souvenir stalls. The best part by far though was the food and music. We ended up getting a crocodile kabob (yummy!) and some Japanese soy wasabi and ginger oysters (even tastier). Watching the sunset from the beach was a pretty cool experience. There were heaps of people all over the beach just sitting and watching the sun go down, it was packed! We also saw a great band called EmDee playing a set. It was made up of two Territorians from a nearby town called Humpty Doo - seriously, that's the name of the place - with one guy on drums and the other playing like three or four didgeridoos. They were really, really good. A group of little indigenous girls showed up during the set and danced for the crowd, so cute!

Monday June 29th

We picked up our rental vehicle today. It took ages! There were heaps of people there to pick up there Britz or Maui or Backpacker campervans. We finally got ours, and after a few little kinks (namely the aircon was leaking all over my feet but luckily the mechanic said it was just too much water that had frozen around the aircon unit and it overflowed instead of draining out nicely. He gave me a rag to keep at my feet in case it leaked more fluid. Let's just say the rag was soaked through the entire trip. I guess it's understandable because it was over 30 and sunny every single day and kind of unbearable during midday actually. A good time for inside activities and/or shade.

We loaded up the esky (or cooler as we call them in north America - esky is short for Eskimo something or other which I guess is related to snow so it kind of makes sense… maybe) with food and it the road after finally finding the right road. I won't get into that.

We drove from Darwin along the Arnhem Highway to Jabiru which took about 2.5 or 3 hours before stopping at the local Visitor Center. We picked out a campsite in Jabiru after finally finding the town. Somehow we ended up at a Uranium Mine after missing the turnoff. We were going to go see Ubirr which is an indigenous rock art site but on the way there realised we didn't have enough gas. Not the most productive of days but the campsite was nice and had a huge pool area and bar.

Tuesday June 30th

Drove to Ubirr and Nourlangie today, both indigenous rock art sites that are thousands of years old. It was pretty amazing to see. At Ubirr we caught up with a local ranger talk and learned about the Rainbow Serpent whom according to the indigenous people is the Creator who came through the area during Dreamtime paving out the valleys and mountains and creating man. The view from the top of Ubirr was fantastic because it really gives you a good idea of just how diverse Kakadu really is. Standing atop the rocks you can turn 360 degrees and see forest, floodplain, rocky hills and plains. It was amazing! Nourlangie was also quite beautiful but it's hard to believe that this art has been on these rocks for such a long time.

We stayed the night in Cooinda at another extremely nice campsite with bar, restaurant, two pools, gas stations… I wasn't really expecting the campsites to be so nice considering we are basically in the middle of nowhere.