Day 332 – Darwin, NT (11 August)

Did a heritage walking tour today around Darwin city and learnt about the Darwin bombings in 1942, the impact of Cyclone Tracy, the Port of Darwin and visited Parliament House.  I didn’t realise that Darwin was bombed 64 times?  It was a very interesting tour and we both really enjoyed it was a 2 hour walk and the guide was so informative that it ended up being 2.5 hours.  A town is so more interesting when you know its history and a local can point out historic places and places of interest.  Parliament was sitting today and we sat in the public gallery for a short time and watched proceedings.  Here is a link for more info on the Darwin bombings.   We then visited the Darwin Museum which has a great display on Cyclone Tracey which was also very interesting with audio accounts from actual residents who lived through the cyclone, pictures of the devastation and an enclosed sound booth that depicted the noise and feeling of what it would have been like to have gone through the cyclone, scary stuff.  There was also a great display of the fauna and flora that live in NT.  The mangroves, the reef, crocodile stomach contents, birds, box jellyfish, sea life etc, shells, butterflies to name a few.  The nice thing about this museum is that is focussed on the NT not general as a lot of museums are.  Well worth a visit.  There is also an indigenous art gallery.  The indigenous art here is quite different to other parts of Australia.  A piece of trivia is that the didgeridoo is not a tradition common to all Aboriginal tribes, it is only traditional to the NT Aboriginals with other tribes picking up the didgeridoo over time.  There must be a colony of bats nearby as every night at dusk heaps of bats fly overhead to start their night of foraging.  Lovely to see.  There is a bird called the Curlew that sounds like a child crying, quite an incredible sound and these birds come out at night and start their calling.    The weather has been perfect, a constant 32 during the day and down to about 17 at night which believe it or not it a bit chilly!  The cost of living here is quite high compared to other parts of Australia and housing is very expensive.  Unable to buy anything for under $500K and that is a fairly average house in an average suburb.  Rents are very high and very few available.  Similar to north WA the demand exceeds supply and hikes up the price which makes living here very difficult for those people who earn a low salary to survive.  In saying that it is very easy to get work here and businesses are ok if workers only stay for a few months at a time, I guess as it is such a transient town they have had to adjust accordingly.  We voted today at an interstate polling booth, so that is one less thing we have to worry about, who knows where we will be on the 21st!