Darwin NT

Our first outing in Darwin was to drive into the CBD and find the Information Centre to gather some information on what were the best tourist sites to see.
We drove out to Fanny Bay, where the water was a gorgeous tourquise colour, and had a visit to the Gaol - which was closed down a few years ago and is just a museum. After that we cruised around looking for a tyre place - Dick needed new tyres for his truck, Rick had a few running repairs to do to the caravan and truck, then  we stopped at the local supermarket for supplies

Next day we drove into the CBD again and walked around the Esplanade from where we could see the"Dawn Princess" in the dock - it was only there for the day,and we saw lots of passengers doing a short visit to Darwin before the ship sailed at 5 p.m. for Singapore - some said they were onboard for 103 days,going "right around".  We then drove along the beaches and had a visit to the WW2 Memorial museum and after that had lunch at "Casuarina Mall" which is Darwin's biggest shopping Mall - it was huge !!!

It was our Wedding anniversary the next day,unfortunately I wasn't well,so we just stayed around the caravan all day, reading and relaxing.

We had been watching a group of F18 Hornets zooming through the air on a couple of mornings, so we went to the Heritage Airplane Museum and had a guided tour of the huge hanger which housed a B52 Bomber as well as many other airplanes,which was very interesting.  Whilst we were there the F18s flew over and the guys all ran outside to watch them.  We went back to the caravans for lunch and in the afternoon went into town again and drove to the Mindil Markets which had been suggested to us.  There were many stalls with food of all kinds, plus many jewellery stalls and other "stuff".  We had decided to split up and meet at a designated place at 6pm to have dinner and go onto the beach to watch the sunset,which was gorgeous - the sun sinking into the sea with it's reflection on the water.

The F18s had been flying overhead around 10.30 am each day, so we decided to go to the airport to see them on the runway - we waited for some time in the departure lounge and were disappointed that the planes were not flying again until next week.We drove down to the East Point wharf in Darwin and walked along until we found a coffee shop and sat over looking the water to enjoy it.. After that we went through the WW2 Oil Storage tunnels under the city before going into Smith Street Mall for some lunch. We then walked to Parliament House and looked around in there- a huge celing, outside a lovely water feature and it all looked over the bay. Almost next door was the Library,so we looked through there,there was a huge quilt  on the wall with yellowish coloured bricks with the names of the people killed in the WW2 bombing of Darwin.. We sat in on a Court session of the Supreme Court for about half an hour, where the guilty man was lucky to be given a very light sentence - no gaol, but a fine for using Cannabis ( growing it himself for his own use).