Settled in Darwin

We arrived in Darwin on Friday, set up the caravan and went straight over to the golf club and joined up. The weekend of course was devoted to golf comps, so we didn't get to actually start to look around until Monday. Whatever wasn't bombed into oblivion during WWII was torn apart by Cyclone Tracey in 1974, so one of the defining characteristics of Darwin is its newness. It is also green and lush, which I guess is to be expected deep into the tropics.

We had planned to stay in Darwin for 9 weeks, basically spend the Southern Winter here, but the caravan park we are staying at would only allow us to make an initial booking for 4 weeks. Having now arrived here and settled in we decided not to try and push them to extend - it is quite a cramped park, the ensuite bathroom is not very nice and we seem to be under the flight path of the airport 10km away. We tried to evict the resident frog from the ensuite, but he kept coming back so now we just leave him be. He spends the day in the corner of the toiletries shelf looking quite dowdy (first picture below), then turns a brilliant emerald green when he comes out to hunt in the evening. He does have an anti-social habit of pooing on top of John's elbow cream tin, so we are making sure everything stays firmly closed. We are now booked into a different park for the second half of our stay here, and have updated the itinerary below. We'll only spend 4 weeks at the second park and not 5, as we have added a few extra stops once we leave Darwin so will be leaving a week earlier than we originally planned.

Given the length of our planned stay here we aren't rushing into the tourist things, however we have had a look around the city centre, including a tour of Parliament House which is quite an impressive building (that's not it in the picture above, that is the remains of the old town hall). Because it is only a small city you can easily walk around and have a look at everything, including quite a few war memorials, mostly related to the bombing that the Japanese did during 1942 and 1943. We'll still do occasional blog updates diuring our stay here, as we experience more of the delights of Australia's only tropical capital city.