No cattle rustling in the street, no 'Drover in sight but still real Aussie (Darwin)

Member Name: catsholiday

Product:	Darwin
Date:	28/04/09 (410 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Real Australia and a great base to explore the northern territory

Disadvantages: Could be too hot and humid for some people and cyclones/storms are frequent

DARWIN

WHERE IS DARWIN?

The Northern Territory is a huge area of 1.35 million square kilometres with a population of only 209,000 and Darwin is the Capital city situated in the far north of this territory. Although Darwin is the least populated of all of Australia's state capitals it is by far the most populated city in the Territory. This part of Australia is known as the Top End and this includes Arnhem Land (which is Aboriginal Land) and the Kakadu National Park (Crocodile Dundee country).

The Stuart Highway starts at Darwin and runs in an almost straight line to Alice Springs (The red Centre) and then continues on to Adelaide in South Australia. The Highway covers a distance of over 3,000 km and no map would be needed as there are no turns to take!

WEATHER/CLIMATE:

This tropical area has only two seasons the wet and the dry. The wet season from Nov-Apr has high temperatures with humidity and often severe tropical storms and this is the reason for the lush green landscape. The dry season is from May-Oct and has warm, sunny and dry days with low humidity. This is the time that many Southern Australians ( The silver haired, non- working ones) come up North to enjoy the pleasant warm climate in the winter - the summer or wet months are less attractive.

HISTORY:

Darwin city is a sea port on Fannie Bay which was originally called Palmerston but was renamed after Charles Darwin in 1911 by I'm not sure why really. The aboriginal people native to this area are the Larrakia people and there are still people of this language group living in the area. Darwin was first settled by white people in the 1860s but about half the present population has arrived in the last forty years and includes people from over 50 different countries.

Darwin city has suffered a lot over the years. Those who have seen the film "Australia" will have an idea of how the city was bombed and attacked by the Japanese in WWII. Indeed Darwin is the only city in Australia to ever be bombed and there were 64 attacks in total and although there was a lot of damage t was not as destructive as Cyclone Tracey in 1974. It is a tribute to the strength of character of the Australian people that Darwin was able to recover during and after the war despite being so damaged and so cut off from the rest of Australia.

HOW TO GET THERE:

You can fly into Darwin from any city in Australia using a number of different airlines. The famous Ghan train (http://www.gsr.com.au ) comes up from Adelaide via Alice Springs I believe twice a week. The train station is 15km from the city centre but there is a shuttle bus which will then bring you into Darwin city for a cost. The Greyhound bus has a number of routes to Darwin; from Broome or Kununurra in Western Australia, from Adelaide and Alice along the Stuart highway or from Mt Isa in Queensland. You can of course drive yourself along any of these routes as well.

MY EXPERIENCE:

The last time I was in Darwin was in 1976 for my Christmas holiday when I was living and teaching in Australia. It was only two years after Cyclone Tracey when almost 90% of the city was destroyed and at that time there was still a lot of evidence of the cyclone. Many houses were just floors and stilts and sometimes people had built a small shelter on this as they did not have the money to rebuild. It was even smaller then than it is today both in physical size as well as population.


When we arrived in Darwin we were given a bit of a tour of Darwin just to orientate us. Although the population is quite small - only 110 000 but it seemed much busier than Perth. We came in along the coast road from the Airport and then into the city. The harbour was virtually empty as most boats are taken out of the water and stored on land for the rainy/hurricane season. It is not a large city, more like a town really but it does have a bit of a buzz about it. There a several large hotels, a small shopping center with Coles and Woolworth supermarkets as well as other shops. There are quite a few pubs and bars and also several restaurants of various kinds - Chinese to Australian as well as two Irish bars - the one we went into even had two Irish people serving behind the counter!

MUSEUM

We decided that we would follow in Bill Bryson's footsteps and go and visit the Darwin museum .Bill Bryson recommended the museum for the stuffed crocodile 'sweetheart', an enormous crocodile which had attacked small boats and was becoming a danger to the people of Darwin. They arranged to have this croc caught and relocated somewhere away from populated areas. During the capture ready for his move 'Sweetheart' had a heart attack and died so they stuffed him and put him in the museum! Also of interest was a tribute display to the people who went through cyclone Tracey. This included recreations of bits of houses, photos and most horrifying was a darkened room where a tape played a recording that someone had made on a recorder the night 'Tracey' hit Darwin, Christmas Eve 1974. Finally Bill suggested looking at a display of 'Animals that could kill you' which included preserved box jellyfish. Just out of interest, Australia has the largest number of animals that are dangerous in some way to humans of any country in the world.

As we left the museum it started raining and we had quite a walk to get to the bus stop so we got out or kagools and then rushed on. We were nearly at the bus stop when we saw the bus coming so we ran and the driver very kindly stopped the bus and waited for us - it would have meant a 20 minute wait had we missed it. Luckily we made it and sat back to enjoy the ride back to the city. The return fares on the bus from outside our hotel to the museum and back was $8 for both of us. Local pensioners travel free.

SHENANIGAN'S:
We got off the bus in the middle of town and found ourselves in 'Shenanigans'' Irish pub enjoying a beer - Coopers Pale ale which was very pale and made with no preservatives. Beer was a bit cheaper here than in Perth $11 for the two - one large and one small. As we hadn't eaten much it went straight to my head so we went for a walk along the Esplanade for half an hour as we could not order food before 6pm. We returned to the same bar for our meal as the staff waiting in had been so friendly and the food looked interesting. Normally we would avoid an Irish pub anywhere except Ireland but this seemed to be Australian Irish despite the real Irish waitresses. My husband chose Kangaroo steak with chips and a salad and I ordered kangaroo, croc and barramundi with noodles - couldn't find any croc in there but there were prawns with the kangaroo and barramundi - very tasty but a huge portion so I'm afraid my husband had to help me out. The total cost of the meal with a beer and a coke was $73 so similar prices to the UK really.

PLACES TO STAY:

We stayed at the Travelodge Miranbeena Resort which I have already reviewed and I would certainly recommend this as a reasonably priced middle of the range hotel. There were a number of hostels in the city and plenty of backpackers around. When we walked along the Esplanade we saw a number of more luxurious hotels but I did not investigate any other places to stay so would suggest that anyone interested in visiting Darwin looks on the internet for accommodation in their price range.

PLACES TO EAT:

There were a huge number of places to eat in the city centre area offering a variety of cuisine. Many of these eating places are along Mitchell Street we ate at one of the Irish pubs, Shenanigan's on one night and then we found a lovely Thai restaurant called Thailicious which was upstairs and you could sit outside on another night. We had Thai green chicken curry; jasmine rice and Holy basil stir fried beef which was spicy and very tasty.

NEAR DARWIN:

Heading south along the Stuart Highway, we stopped at the small townships of Batchelor and Adelaide River.

The Adelaide River war cemetery is Australia's largest war cemetery and a sombre reminder of the Northern Territory's role in World War II. . It was extremely neatly kept and had a section for the armed Services and one for civilians as well as foreign troops too but some of those had been taken back to their own homelands. There were several peacocks wandering round and one was particularly interested in us.

The Adelaide River pub is a traditional outback bar very similar to the one in 'Crocodile Dundee' and we stopped here for a beer. On the bar was the buffalo that starred in Crocodile Dundee called Charlie - stuffed and looking very real. It was a surreal experience to enjoy a drink with a stuffed buffalo and I felt as though we could expect Mick Dundee to pull up a stool beside us at any moment. Just near the pub is a caravan and camping park and this pub served excellent 'barra and chips' so there were a lot of happy campers eating there. (Barra is of course the local tasty barramundi fish)

SUMMARY:

Darwin is a really Aussie city; it still has the laid back, casual attitude but has embraced tourism in a big way. When I was there in 1976 it was a government town really but now tourism has brought in a variety of job opportunities and the town has expanded rapidly.
It is really a base from where tourists move on to explore The Kakadu National Park with jumping crocs and Yellow waters as well as the Nitmiluk National Park with Katherine Gorge and Edith falls. Nearby is pine creek and of course it is the start of the Stuart highway south to Alice and then on to Adelaide.

I plan on eventually doing reviews of these other places in the Northern territory so keep your eyes peeled! Thanks for reading and hope it has been interesting and even useful to some of you.
This may be published on other sites under my name.

©Catsholiday

Summary: A real Australian city with plenty of restaurants & hotels - good base to explore NT