Today we arrived in Darwin, which has a harbour three times the size of Sydney’s, but we weren’t planning to go anywhere near the sea – stinger suit or no. Because, as I’ve already mentioned, of the sharks and box jellyfish (apparently they breed off the beach in Darwin) not to mention the tiny blue octopuses that also lurk in the depths. “You will die if you step on one”, our port speaker said cheerily. Nice. Then there are the stonefish hiding on the sea floor. The excruciating pain from their bite alone will kill you, said the port speaker and, should you escape all this, there’s always the mild irritant of the green algae that forms on top of the sea, which can give you skin rashes and chest infections. OK,no swimming then.
Could we maybe just relax on the beach, then? Better idea, but don’t fall asleep or one of the ‘salties’ or saltwater crocodiles may creep out of the shallows and nab you for lunch. All right, we’ll go for a walk in the rainforest. Good, but wear loose clothing, closed-in shoes and beware the killer spiders and two of the world’s deadliest snakes. All this we were told by our Jonah of a port speaker before we arrived in Darwin which made us begin to wonder why we were even going there. To be fair, thought, salties were reported to have been spotted by some of our shipmates from the boat.
But, of course, this being the Australia we have grown to love, we needn’t have worried. There was a lovely big man-made wave pool on the Wharf which looked like a lot of fun, and a huge enclosed saltwater pool which could accommodate serious swimmers and families, both without fear of being eaten alive. As we watched the Darwinians cavorting in the water while sipping a couple of long, cool Cuba libres, in a bar overlooking the pool after a hard day’s sightseeing, it seemed like almost the only other thing to do on this very hot and humid evening.
First, though, while Claudio went shopping, I visited the Darwin museum which is full of aboriginal art (there are more aborigines in Darwin than in any other Australian city), examples of the snakes and the seagoing nasties mentioned above in the natural history section, and another section on the devastation Cyclone Tracy caused in 1974 when 60 per cent of the city was wiped out. So now, only the porch of the old cathedral is left while a beautiful new edifice has grown up behind it.
In fact, almost everything of old Darwin has disappeared because the city was also attacked in 1942 by the Japanese after Pearl Harbour (a little known fact) which means that all is uber modern – like the scenic lift that takes you up to an aerial walkway leading to the main shopping mall, which is set amid wide, treelined thoroughfares and a scattering of skyscrapers and high rise flats.
The only graffiti we saw referred to genocide, which I assume to be with regard to the aborigines, who have suffered greatly at the hands of the settlers. However, there does seem to be some awareness now of the danger of losing their ancient aboriginal culture, and tour guides and institutions such as the museum do acknowledge that this land was inhabited for anything from 40,000 to 100,000 years by these people before the white man came to claim it just a couple of hundred years ago. The Maoris in New Zealand have always enjoyed a much happier co-existence with the white settlers, who seem to take much greater care and a pride in preserving the ancient customs and traditions.
Darwin is small with just 120,000 inhabitants (only twice as many as in Abingdon) even though it does give the impression of being an important city. There are only a further 160,000-odd in the hinterland of the Northern Territories, a region much bigger in area than Britain (which, by comparison, is teeming with some 70 million – the Aussies must wonder why we’re not falling off into the sea). With so much space here, I spotted some glorious sprawling houses overlooking Vesteys Beach (the same Vesteys as the butchers in Britain, by the way). One local, when asked where the outback begins, replied: ” At the bottom of me bick garden!” The downside of all this land and so few people is that the Top Enders, as they are called, say they suffer culturally, with the main Australian opera and ballet companies (let alone those from abroad) rarely visiting them, and there was a lot of excitement when we were there as Elton John was due to pay them a very rare visit.
It was with sadness as we watched the lights of Darwin and, indeed, Australia disappear over the horizon as we set sail for Indonesia. Still, Darwin put on a great farewell show for us with one of the magnificent sunsets for which it is renowned and, during the following day’s voyage in the sea of Timor, which was as calm as a mill pond, Orcas, spinner dolphins and flying fish showed us a few of their tricks to cheer us on our way.
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