Day 41. Sightseeing of Darwin. 21/06/2015

We hit the ground running today with an early departure to visit the attractions of Darwin. 

Our first stop was at the Military Museum that is located in the East Point Reserve. A very lovely drive through an area that had some of the most beautiful homes in Darwin that had magnificent gardens featuring all the very exquisite tropical flowers, bushes and trees. As we travelled along we had the very pretty Fannie Bay on one side of us and at one point we had Lake Alexander on the other side.The lake was surrounded by lush lawns with huge trees shading the many visitors to the lake for picnics, water sports and just sunbathing.

The Military Museum is a fantastic facility that had a magnificent array of artifacts, interactive displays and a wonderful theatre showing a very informative film on the bombing of Darwin during WW11. We even found a display board that featured a story of events after the bombing of Pearl Harbour and Darwin that involved the Minister who had married us, Reverend Christopher Goy who later in life became the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Australia. That was a very surprising discovery for us.
The tour included a fantastic display of military equipment such as guns, vehicles, tanks, gun placements around the area, a section devoted to other conflicts that Australia has been involved in and much more. It was a very interesting display and we learnt a great deal.

We then returned to the city centre itself to do a heritage walk, starting at The Cenotaph/War Memorial set in beautiful gardens overlooking the ocean, Government House and the very lovely Northern Territory Parliament House that is of unusual architecture again surrounded by beautiful trees that had been planted in 1883. We strolled up the Mall and passed the Victoria Hotel that was built in 1894 and has been a survivor of every cyclone and bombing raid in Darwin.

Our next stop was at the Darwin Museum and Art Gallery. Again, we were amazed at the extensive displays including the huge saltwater crocodile named Sweetheart, a fantastic exhibition on Cyclone Tracy that included a small room that was to give you the experience of being involved in Tracy and had actual recordings of the cyclone when it hit.  The room was black and the noise was unbelievable. An amazing Maritime Gallery that house many exhibits of ships including a Pearling Lugger, a number of Indonesian boats, canoes etc.

We left the Museum reluctantly as we still had one more stop before we exhausted ourselves and overloaded our minds with too much culture, and that was Mindil Beach to experience the sights and aromas of the Mindil Beach Markets. We were not disappointed. It was a very vibrant and interesting venue. Wonderful crafts, amazing variety of food stalls and live entertainment all to be enjoyed before the sun went down over the beach. We purchased some snacks and enjoyed eating them as we listened to a solo artist and people watched.

Returned to the caravan park very tired, but so pleased that we had managed to put so much in to our day.
Rest day tomorrow. No blog.

The Military museum at East Point Reserve.

We didn't.

Astounding the number of attacks by the Japanese.

Some personal reports of times during the bombings.

Rev Goy married us in 1966. What a surprise to see his involvement in Darwin during the war.

Viewing plaques of Australian and American soldiers killed in Darwin. 

The gun emplacements constructed to repel the enemy.

How useless they were to an air attack.

The cenotaph/war memorial.

The beautiful Parliament House.

With sweetheart the giant croc at the darwin Museum.

Prehistoric creatures that roamed Australia 100million years ago.

At the Mindil Markets

A magnificent sunset across Fanny Bay.