Day 22 - The Last Capital

Arafura Sea from Bicentennial Park in Darwin

 Today we made it to our last capital city of Australia - the only one we had not previously visited - Darwin. And it took us quite some time to reach 21 days and about 7000kms. We decided to do some more gravel driving as the Finnis River was open and so we traveled from Litchfield to Darwin by Berry Springs. Once we got settled we went in search of what to do in Darwin.

Oil Storage Tunnels from WWII

 We spent the afternoon at the Museum with an excellent display on Cyclone Tracey but no photos of this unfortunately. The destruction was phenomenal but when you consider that most of the domestic buildings were constructed from fibro sheeting and corrugated iron with no cyclone rating, it is not surprising. After the museum it was in to the city centre for the Heritage Walk. There are some buildings that managed to survive WWII and cyclone Tracey. We also came across the oil storage tunnels shown above but the funny thing is that they were constructed after the bombing of Darwin and were never actually used. Another of the points of interest was the submarine telegraph cable from Java which then linked up with the Overland Telegraph Line which we have come across a number of times on our journey up from Alice Springs. It is quite amazing to think of the undersea cable being laid from Java to Darwin in 1871!

LNG ship at Wickham Point terminal - especially for Michael

As we were walking back we spotted the LNG ship at the Wickham point terminal so decided to include a photo for Michael - the competition. This gas comes from the Timor Sea.

Tomorrow we will head to the cathedral for mass and visit the military museum, the Botanical Gardens and the twilight Mindl Beach markets.

So far we have managed to find our way around quite successfully without a map - not something we would attempt in any of our other Capital cities. Darwin really doesn't feel like a capital - just a big country town.

Love to all
S & E