Adventures of Beth and Dan: “We travel not to escape life, but for life to escape us.” Anonymous

Darwin was our first Australian port and it was very hot there and humid. They say it is ridiculously hot and humid and the hottest place they say we will visit. Some of the tours they have here include one called the Jumping Crocodiles. It’s about an hour bus ride and then a boat ride with lunch at a local bar. There is a wildlife park with a Tram. Of course there are highlights tours which bus you around or a harbor cruise which they say sells out with a land and sea tour. They have a place with termite mounds and they say they are spectacular in an area called Litchfield Park!!

They just keep telling us to stay hydrated here and don’t overdo or take on a tour that you can’t handle. We have a tour to Litchfield National Park which lasts for 8 hours. There are about 147,000 people living in Darwin. The weather is to be very humid at 93 degrees and partly cloudy. The town was named after Charles Darwin but he never sailed there. Three cyclones have hit here over the last 100 years and they have had to rebuild after each one. The Japanese also attacked them during the war in 1942. It was bombed 6 weeks after Pearl Harbor. It was a center of action in those days. They actually built oil tunnels under the city to store oil there out of harms way from the Japanese. They were never used but you can tour them. Our guide on the bus told us he picked a pad lock on the tunnels and he and a friend camped in their for a week back in the late 1970’s! Ha ha. They would put their own lock on to secure no one finding them. He also told us a US battleship named the SS Peery (sp?) was bombed while in port here and 88 sailors were killed. It took 30 years to find the sunken ship. 100 years ago many people living here were

Chinese and there is a China town.

They have spectacular lightening here!! The ship will provide a free shuttle to town. Their tourist maps here are in the shape of a fan so you can be cool when you aren’t using the map!! The town is clean and lovely with huge shade trees and tropical palms and flowers. There used to be 147 trains per week coming into Darwin around the war times due to the port. Now many rails have been removed and turned into bike trails. Much of the rails were built by the Chinese hauling materials in and out in baskets!!

Darwin shares their airport with the military and they have no curfew so you can fly in and out 24 hours. It is a very busy airport.

They call their semi’s “road trains” and say it is common to see them haul three to four trailers on the hiway. They also say that folks are using containers to live in!! They clean them up and make them very nice inside with plumbing, heating and AC. Their population is booming and housing is hard to find. Electricity here is very expensive and people see a huge return on installing solar panels. A thousand dollars a month for electricity is the norm!!

As we were leaving the industrial zone we saw Kmart, McDonald’s, Woolworth, Dominoes, Camping World, and lots of other fast food establishments that we have in the US.

Darwin has a very large industrial area because they serve an area of almost 2000 miles!!! Houses are built to a level 3 for cyclones but Cyclone Tracey was a category 4-5 so they wonder what will withstand the next cyclone which is due to hit about every 40 years and that is now.

They have beach alerts for box jellyfish and salt water crocs as this is their summer so no one swims in these beaches.

They have a lot of wildfires here and all along the hiway are old air strips from the war. You can still land a small plane on them and they are free of trees and shrubs. The majority of trees are eucalyptus which can burn to the ground and then resprout! Mangoes grow everywhere but need to be hand picked and they can’t get folks to do it.

Bower birds are here and they are thieves!! They build unusual nests with all kinds of things. They like colorful things like broken glass, sea shells, ladies jewelry! They have even taken silverware. The male bower bird builds the nest. After he gets the nest built he shows a female the nest. If she doesn’t like it she may trash the best and he has to rebuild it! After they mate he kicks her out and she has to build her own nest and raise her young as a single mother!!

They have the cathedral termite which can build up to 20 ft tall and the magnetic termite which builds more of a tombstone mound.

Two common crocodiles are here... the freshwater and saltwater. The freshwater are more mild and not as aggressive. The saltwater can be up to 20 ft long and are aggressive and thrive in both salt and freshwater. They are dangerous. They are very territorial and are expanding their territory here. They are survivors and can hide and not be found. They can stay under water for up to 8 hours. In 1973 they became protected. In about 2002 the cane toad arrived here. Lots of freshwater crocs went belly up because they ate the frogs and they are poisonous to them. Saltwater crocs are now populating places where the freshwater crocs once were found. In the Katherine river the saltwater crocs are everywhere. They are trying to prevent crocs from expanding by putting in metal water guards but during the wet season when things flood its difficult to stop them from moving in.

They now have the royal flying doctor services that recently opened to serve the outback and emergencies. They have a visitor center that you can tour. Jail is spelled gaol and pronounced that way in Australia.

You can also travel on the Ghan which is their passenger train. It takes 54 hours to travel across the country from Darwin to Adelaide and also goes from Perth. It used to be called the Afghan Express named after afghan camel drivers. It is expensive to ride this train!!

They have beautiful red orange blooming trees here called the Flame Tree. Someone said they have those in Arizona so I will have to research that.

Lunch was so so. An outback outdoor hot area where we had a buffet of fish (with bones) chicken, lettuce, water, a strange potato salad, beets, cucumbers, tomatoes, watermelon, bread, and some kind of pasta salad. None of it was very good and no one was there but us!! I wouldn’t recommend it if you come to Litchfield National Park!! It was called Litchfield Cafe. They have been rebuilding it since 2005!

After the termite mounds we left for the Wangi ( wang I) falls. The clouds became darker and more heavy with rain. It is very hot out and with the humidity and the insects you just don’t want to be out much. Then on to Tolmore Falls. The walk was very hot and coming back a climb. The falls were small and nothing spectacular :(. Several folks didn’t even get off.

Next stop was Florence Falls. You can swim there but it’s 140 steps down to the pools and the back up!

The falls were ok and you didn’t have to walk too far to see them but once again it was stifling hot and all we did was walk there, snap a photo and then back on the bus.

They say when we leave Darwin we take on the barrier reef pilots traveling to Cairns. We will see wonderful images as we pass through this area around Cape York.