Days 39-43: Darwin

Stayed in a service apartment, restocked, got a new windscreen and planned out the rest of the trip.

Fireworks over the harbour for Kindness Day, at the end of Pride Week, in Darwin

A sleepy town with not much happening. We walked around, saw some sights, ate out a bit and slept in (camping normally means going to bed after sunset and waking up before sunrise). Michele went to "Crocasaurus" while I caught up on some emails - not sure which I would have preferred.

Michele got to pat a baby crocodile

We did see where they laid the undersea cable that, in 1871, connected Australia to the international telegraph system (and in 1872, it connected Adelaide to Darwin - a lot of our traveling has included the old telegraph line, which was often next tot he old Ghan line). That was a pretty incredible feat in those times, to cut months off the time taken to get message to and from the Northern hemisphere.

A picture of the workers holding the undersea telegraph cable in 1871, superimposed on a phot of the exact site from now.

We went to he Mindil Beach markets (twice), where you can buy roadkill burgers and other stuff you don't see at Paddington markets, like whips and biltong (South African style dried meat). I bought so much biltong - it is great stuff - much better than jerky, more like flavoured meat as it is not as dry and hard as jerky.

We also went to this really cool store, the NT General Store, which has everything you need to equip you for the outback. We bought a cast iron camp stove (basically a big pot that cooks under coals / embers), a foldable shovel, a toasting rack for the burner, and a cool ammunition box to store fragile stuff in the car. We bought some oats and will try to make apple crumble in the pot when we next have an open fire.