Mindil Beach Market

Mindil Beach Market is a famous Darwin attraction, and a must see on every visitor's list. It runs from 5:30 on Thursday and Sunday evenings, although reportedly the Sunday market is a much smaller affair. Mindil beach faces due West, so part of the experience is watching the sunset over the sea. However, last night the beach was so crowded we decided we would come back on a non-market evening for this experience.

There were literally thousands of people there last night. Luckily the car park is about the size of the MCG, but bizarrely it has only one access road, so the queue to get in was breathtaking. Once you did get into the car park there were no marshalls or marked spaces, it was a free for all in a huge grassy paddock, the dust raised from the huge numbers of cars had to be seen to be believed. When we left a little after 8pm there were still cars trying to get in, people had parked along the access road reducing it to one lane, the word chaos sprung immediately to mind as a stream of cars leaving competed with those trying to enter.

The market itself was an interesting mix of standard market tat and unique top-end stalls. Many of the usual suspects were there (herbal soap anyone?) but you could also get crocodile leather whips, aboriginal bark paintings and didgeridoos. The huge number of food stalls are the real attraction. Superficially these resembled those in any market all over the world, but look closer and you see that the burger stall sells crocodile, barramundi and buffalo burgers, the sausage stall (called Road Kill, motto 'you kill it, we grill it') sells wallaby and possum sausages, plus crocodile and camel skewers, and the range of Asian food includes Filipino and Timorese (the Timorese chilli beef was particularly tasty).

Not being good shoppers, we inspected every stall and bought one fridge magnet, but we did enjoy sitting on our camp chairs getting stuck into the top end tucker.