Darwin

Everyone was looking forward to Darwin as we had decided that as we were putting the caravan in to be serviced we would be staying in an apartment for 5 nights.

Darwin was only 90mins away and there was great excitement as we drove into the biggest city we had seen for ages. We had an apartment at the waterfront development next to the artificial swimming beach and with ocean views. Really nice place and very convenient. More of a concern was the caravan service. A real backstreet operation that did not inspire confidence, but too late now. What’s more Monday was a bank holiday. We decided that we should extend the darwin stay for another night to make planning easier. I went off to replace the caravan tyre, while Edwina took the kids swimming.

First day Edwina went for a haircut and I took the kids to a great playground with an amazing slide and equipment. The locals were all complaining about the cold weather snap and we did need jumpers. Late afternoon went to the market at the beach which was great, lots of food vans of varying quality, but nice sunset over the beach.

The next day the car had it’s own service and we went to botanical gardens and to the waterfront beach. Unfortunately the wave park was shut as the tiles were falling off the walls.

Saturday The temperature had well and truly picked up and definitely no need for jumpers now. We went to the Museum of the Northern Territory, with interesting images of cyclone Tracey in 1974. We then went to the Greek festival for lunch which had lots of food, most of it very good and we all over indulged, especially the desserts. Back to the pool and a family movie night with pizza, although the movie Prince of Egypt was a bit old testament fire and brimstone for the girls.

Finally on Sunday they opened the inflatable water park which we all went to. The bouncing pillow catapulted Robbie way into the sky and I think kind of frightened him, but he was alright.

Finally on the Monday we went to another of the free water parks (3 in total in Darwin) which had a toddler’s park and 3 waterslides, one of which was in total darkness. All for free and not even that busy. Was really very impressive. That tired them all out so had dinner in and another movie. Nanny McPhee this time and now we keep threatening her on our kids.

Picked up the caravan having been unable to contact them for the last 5 days and they had only done the wheel bearings, although not entirely convinced they did that. Any way off we go again. As we left we went to the WW2 underground fuel storage tunnels as they were next to the apartment. Enormous tunnels 190m long designed to store fuel after bombing of Darwin.

Overall everyone really enjoyed Darwin.