Most of the people here in the caravan park are either like us here for a week or two, but the majority are here for months. 4-6-8 weeks. Not sure, but I dont feel Darwin is the place to stay for that length of time unless all you want to do is kick back, go nowhere and sit around the pool. For those in cold old Melb. that prob. sounds like heaven. We took a quick ferry trip across the bay to Mandurah. Not much here, just a pub, a swimming beach (box jelly fish) and some WW2 relics scattered around. It was a nice day, the weather as usual perfect and so off we set. The pub does a roaring trade here. The ferry is 10 mins across, to drive takes 1 and 1/2 hrs. Most of the residents work across in Darwin and also do all their shopping etc. One local lady came from Tyabb (Vic. Peninsula). 30 years ago. No-one was that keen on living in this part of Darwin, they bought 5 acres overlooking the bay, built a house, all up $50,000. Now $1.5million worth. The Govt. are going to build a bridge across in the near future, so you can imagine prices will skyrocket even more.
Lunch at the pub was nice, barra and scotch fillet, overlooking the water, cold beer and a wine. Nice lazy day for us. Took our bathers but couldnt get access to the beach which was disappointing.
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| Darwin from the ferry ride |
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The ferry is the smaller boat, moored in the man made marina |
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| The Pub |
Thursday saw us do the very famous Mindel Beach Markets. Thurs & Sun night markets on the beach nxt toSkycity Casino. Huge market, lots of food mostly asian here. It was a little disappointing for us as we had expected it to be more of an arts/crafts market with lots of home made stuff, and whilst there was a bit there it was a lot of what we had already seen, same stallholders, at the other markets and nothing worth even contemplating buying (except for the food, which was exceptional). People take their chairs/tables/blankets/happy hour stuff and sit on the lawns next to the market. Eat, drink, chat and wait for the famous Darwin Sunset. As soon as it gets close to sunset, the crowd move onto the beach directly behind. I estimate there were close to 500 people just sitting and watching. When the sun set, applause broke out. Crazy. So wanted to buy some stuff before we left Darwin, but so far nothing here worth it. We are staying at Howard Springs approx. 23kms out, so visited the local Nature Park 5kms up the road. Took a bag of Pilchard Bait (thanks for the tip Andrew). Its a very sad park at the moment, no swimming, amenities non existent, water full of algae. You can hand feed big barra here, but whilst there were lots of small fish we only got to see 1 big barra. He was a monster, but stubborn. We tempted him first with 1/3 of a piece of fish, NO. Then 1/2 piece. NO. If it wasnt the whole fish, he wasnt interested. So hand fed 6 beautiful turtles, occasionally giving the barra his fish. He was extremely powerful and the snap as he took the fish was enormous. Quite evil looking as he stared us down. The pond was once brimming with big barras but a lot of them have been removed to the local wildlife park because of the water conditions here.
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