Darwin!

We arrived in Darwin, in Australia's "Top End," around 1:00am Thursday night. We got to town, checked into one motel, slept a few hours, checked out, checked into another hotel and then went out for breakfast, all by around 10:00am. (We bounced from one hotel to another to save money -- it's a long story. We have to switch hotels one more time before we leave Darwin late Wednesday night.) :-)

The crazy thing about arriving in Darwin, by the way, was having to set our watches back half an hour. Isn't that wild?! I had never heard of time zones differing by 30 minutes before.


Having breakfast at Ducks Nuts on downtown Darwin's main thoroughfare, Mitchell Street.

Darwin is hot. It's been well into the 90's the entire time we've been here. This makes it a little difficult to do much stuff outdoors. Nevertheless, we rented bikes and rode through the Botanic Gardens to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. This was a great little museum, with a cool exhibit on Cyclone Tracy, which essentially destroyed the entire city of Darwin on Christmas Day 1974. The museum also featured the preserved 17-foot body of Sweetheart, a large saltwater crocodile who attacked several boats in the 1970's and was eventually captured but was accidentally drowned when the captors were trying to pull the massive croc out of the water. (Apparently, the capture was not particularly well thought-out: the team didn't realize that the sedative they planned to use would shut down all of Sweetheart's involuntary life functions, such as breathing, nor did they have a plan for how 4 men were going to lift a crocodile weighing nearly 1,800 pounds out of a river and into a boat.) In addition, the museum had a whole room of stuff found all over Australia that can kill you: box jellyfish, cane toads, snakes, plants, sharks, rays, etc. It was awesome, but since no photography was permitted, I don't have any pictures to show you. :-(



Another fun thing we did in Darwin was take a dinner cruise in Darwin Harbour aboard a 100-foot schooner, the Alfred Nobel. The dinner was great, but the sunset was totally spectacular. So much so, that I sort of went crazy taking photos. You'll have to indulge me here -- it was one of the most picturesque sunsets I've ever seen!

Christine and me at our table on the Alfred Nobel.

Me posing on the back of the boat -- I don't think a human foot is supposed to twist that way...

Christine at the back of the Alfred Nobel.

A view of the Darwin "skyline" from our cruise. All the way to the right, you can see the Parliament House, a really beautiful example of "tropical architecture" (I didn't even realize that was a design category) and the home of both the Northern Territory legislature and the public library. (The library, incidentally, offers free internet access and has views over the harbor. I've spent a good amount of time there, and am, in fact, sitting in that building right now, updating my blog.)

Me on the dinner cruise.

All of the remaining photos were taken during the Harbour Cruise. I wouldn't ordinarily include so many pictures of a single sunset, but I just couldn't help myself...

Not a shabby view for the chef, huh? This is what he gets to stare at each evening while he cooks up dinner.

View from the prow of the boat just after sunset.

Me on the prow of the boat.

Snapshot of the other diners. Is that a crazy sky or what?!?!

As we returned to the pier, a gorgeous crescent moon was rising in the sky. Of course, my crappy little digital camera couldn't quite do it justice, but I included it anyway...

Next up, a day excursion to Litchfield Park!