Darwin daze

We have taken a couple of days to have a rest and do an accumulated ton of washing in Darwin. Which has turned out well because we haven’t found a lot of other things to do.

Much of Darwin’s tourism seems to revolve around crocodiles and visits to national parks outside Darwin, neither of which fit our agenda. Darwin itself is a pleasant country town with, at the moment, nice weather – but there’s not a lot to it.

There is some interesting frontier settlement history, but it is plagued by abuse and discrimination which is either glossed over or normalized. There is Cyclone Tracy – about which we saw an interesting exhibit in the museum yesterday – but the rebuilding basically means there is no physical traces of that devastating event.

The other big thing, and the one I chose to delve into today while Jennifer did meetings, is the WW2 bombing of Darwin. This looms large in the town’s self-image with plaques and tours everywhere.

I started the day in the old fuel tunnels. These were a pretty well messed-up project to store fuel in Darwin safe from Japanese bombing. Groundwater leaks, soft rock and a bunch of other problems saw the project blow its budget and never really do any good. Now they are opened as a tourist destination, but it’s pretty much a big concrete tunnel. Luckily I got free entry as I was prepared to jump over the flooded entranceway.

I then walked the waterfront with pretty views over the pale blue sea and checked out the various historical plaques. One interesting factoid – the Japanese group that bombed Darwin were the same people that bombed Pearl Harbour. While the event was huge for Australia, the pilot in charge of the attack was underwhelmed saying that never was there a truer example of the saying ‘using a sledgehammer to break an egg’ and that the whole thing was beneath the significant force amassed to undertake the task.

A quick stop to see fish feeding was a reprieve from thinking about bombing – a subject that feels a bit real given the news at the moment. I was taken with the birds watching the fish being fed.

To complete my WW2 dive I went to the War Museum. Lots more info on the bombing but nothing terribly exciting other than the breathless story of one of the survivors seeing a man with no clothes on as she ran for cover.

With this, I think we’ve covered Darwin for the moment. Tomorrow we drive South to Katherine.