BootsnAll Travel Network



Doing Nothing in Darwin

I’m beginning to really like Darwin. For a town of only 120,000 people, there is a lot to do here. I’ve been told that Darwin and Palmerston are the fastest growing cities in Australia and it’s easy to see why.

I spent most of my first two days here doing nothing but lounging around by the pool. But last night I met up with Kellie, a girl I met through Couchsurfing.com. She gave me quick tour of the town and then dropped me off at Mindil Beach. Every Thursday during the dry season is the Mindil Beach Sunset Market, a large open air market with lots of arts and crafts and tons of food. Last night was the opening night of the season and there were thousands of people there.

The highlight of the market was probably the food, which I partook in heavily. (Is partook a word?) Anyway, I started the night off with a half-dozen oysters (didn’t get enough of those in Bluff…) topped with salmon, cream cheese, and dill. Yum!! After that was a skewer of Crocodile Satay. After chilling out on the beach for a while, I went back for a mango & passion fruit waffle cone and topped the night off with a cold ice tea. (Did I mention that I really like Darwin?) It’s easy to see why they do the market a night, because the sunset is easily one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. But it’s after the sun goes down that the crowds really appear in anticipation of the evening fireworks show. While I’ve seen much better fireworks displays, none of them have been in such an awesome setting.

After the market I walked back to the hostel and capped the night off with a couple of cold beers on the pool deck. About midnight I called it done and headed back to my room to get some sleep. I’ve been really lucky here in that I’ve had the entire six bed dorm practically to myself with the exception of one Scottish girl my first night here. I’ve been able to sleep really well, and sleep in too. However, there was no sleeping in this morning as we were all awakened at 9:00 AM when the fire alarm went off. We all stumbled out to the pool deck and after a few minutes everything was clear and we all went back in. I never did figure out what tripped the alarm, but I suspect it was someone’s breakfast burning on the grill.

Since I was already up, I decided I should the most of it. I went and got some coffee and walked up the street to Aquascene, a wild fish preserve where at high tide the fish all come in for feeding. For $8 you can go out on the platform and feed bread to the fish. Although they are wild fish, they are used to being fed and will swarm around the platform. You can actually reach right into the water and the fish will take the bread right out of your hands. There are several varieties of fish, as well as stingray and jellyfish, but mostly what I saw were catfish, mullet, and milkfish. I got there pretty early in the day and the tide hadn’t completely come in yet. Apparently, once the tide is completely in the water is much clearer and there are more fish around.

On the walk back to the hostel I cut through the park along the Esplanade, but eventually had to cut over to the shady side of the street since the Darwin sun was starting to fry my pasty white skin. While walking along the sidewalk, I happened to glance down just in time to see an 8 inch lizard right in my path. I damn near stepped on the poor thing, but managed to sidestep him just in time. he scurried off the sidewalk pretty quickly but stopped long enough to check me out and see what I was up to. It was pretty cool watching him, and when he finally ran off I had to laugh because it looked like he was standing up and running with only his back two legs. For some reason I got a good chuckle out of that.

I spent the rest of the day doing some shopping, picking me up some small souvenirs and a kangaroo leather bush hat. I wore one of these hats for a couple of days while working with Habitat in NZ, and decided I really liked it. I figured not only would it make a good souvenir, but also would come in very handy to keep the sun off while climbing mountains and going on safari in Africa.

After I finished my shopping I went back to the hostel to do some laundry and relax for a while. It’s really nice to be able to sit around the pool and do laundry at the same time. I had a light dinner at the bar and the plan was to have a mellow evening since I had to leave for the airport at 2:45 AM for my flight to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. So instead of spending my last $20 AUD on beer at the hostel, I decided to take in a movie instead. Darwin has this really cool thing called Deckchair Cinemas, which is a lot like a drive-in theatre, only you walk in and sit in deck chairs to watch the movie. The movie that was showing was an Aussie film called “The Proposition” starring Guy Pearce, who is probably best known for “LA Confidential” and “Memento.” It was an old-timey Aussie western flick, and turned out to be quite good. The theatre did have a licensed snack bar as well, so I did end up enjoying a couple of beers after all. Now it’s almost midnight, and I’m going to catch a couple of hours of sleep before heading to the airport for my flight to Singapore.

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Ahh, the Melaleuca Pool Deck

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Mindil Beach Sunset Market

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Aquascene

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Larry the Lizard

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One Response to “Doing Nothing in Darwin”

  1. Laura Says:

    so would I be guessing correctly that you have your camera with you at all times???

  2. Posted from United States United States