Darwin: crocs, fish and swimming (but not all at the same time)

What a great place Darwin is! Lovely beaches, great wide roads, all modern facilities....... we decided we could happily live here - except for the slight snag that (one) you can't swim in the sea most of the year and (two) it's so b*** hot! There's no way I could manage a domestic routine here - ie go shopping, clean the car, do the housework etc - and in particular I could NEVER have managed with three pre-schoolers in this heat. And that's based on the (supposedly) coolest month of the year! Of course just because we were here Darwin was having an unusually hot period for July - with daytime highs of at least 35 degrees and overnight lows of about 28 degrees. And that doesn't happen until about 5am. Now those of you in Adelaide/ England/ Scotland might think that's pretty good, but believe me it's not when you are trying to cook/sleep in a caravan. We relied on the airconditioning - leaving it on all night most nights - and the CP pool, which was great - especially late at night, provided you had lots of Aeroguard on.

We arrived early, because we'd only come from Litchfield, and scored a site at the Lee Point CP while it was apparently "still warm" from the previous occupant - ie about 11am. After setting up, doing a bit of shopping and making dinner arrangements with Andrew's ex-business partner Peeky and my cousin Chris from England (whom I haven't seen for at least 20 years and just happened to be in Darwin when we were!), we headed down the road to the Leanyer Recreation Park - an amazing place with three waterslides, a water-soaked playground and massive pool, that is completely free! A great place to cool down. I wasn't so keen on the waterslides, though - especially the two-seater where you travelled most of the way down in complete darkness.

We had a lovely dinner with Peeky, Louise, son Mason (who at four and a half plays under-10 hockey) and Chris - but it was amazingly hot, even after dark.

The next day we checked out Crocodylus Park, where you can feed the 4m+ crocodiles (but only the males - if you feed the females then the males are likely to attack them. One "wife" had been bitten in half when her partner got annoyed with her!). There were something like 10,000 crocs there altogether - mostly being bred for their skin and meat. The girls got to "cuddle" a couple of small ones that had their jaws taped shut. Saltwater or estuarine crocodiles (the bad ones) are called "ginga" by the local Aboriginal people. We learned to tell the difference between them and the "freshies" - that you really don't have to worry about. Mind you - if I was swimming somewhere and saw a croc, I don't know that I'd hang around long enough to check which type it was!

Later that afternoon we drove down to Mindil Beach, where they have the famous sunset markets - and we did the traditional tourist thing where you eat your dinner on the beach and watch the sun go down. Despite it being really corny and VERY crowded, it was still absolutely beautiful. When the sun went down in front of us, a full moon rose behind us, which was even better. (The prawn kebab was pretty good, too!)

On Monday we fitted in a bit of shopping and plenty of sight-seeing despite having to chase after another part for the van and having a chip in our windscreen fixed. The highlight for the girls was probably the wave lagoon - a special pool down by the harbour where they generate waves for 20 minutes out of every 30 and you can "ride" them on inflatable rings or boogie boards. Tahlia practised her surfing (with lots of help from daddy). It's an amazing facility - like Leanyer, it just seems too good to be true. My theory is that they have to have things like this to stop people being tempted to go and swim in the sea - and also to help the integration between whites and aborigines. The highlight for me was the Cyclone Tracy room at the Darwin Museum, which presented a very moving and graphic account of the cyclone and its aftermath - including a "sound room" with the very frightening noise of the cyclone - or more accurately the noise of thousands of pieces of corrugated iron being blown around. The museum had lots of other great stuff, too, but unfortunately we had to cut it a bit short. Definitely somewhere to go back to "next time" (!).

At 5pm, which was high tide, we went down to the beach just below the city to feed all these big fish that come in specially every day. You have to pay about $30 for a family - which is a bit cheeky when all you get is an unlimited supply of dry bread - but I suppose they have to stop too many people doing it. The area is a reserve where you can't go fishing so the fish have it pretty good - even if bread isn't the best food for them. After that it was home for a quiet night before packing up and heading out for Kakadu in the morning. In the heat, it felt like we'd climbed Uluru at least twice that day!

Captions for photos

- Fun at Leanyer Rec Park

- "Cuddling" a baby saltwater croc - this one is about a year old (Croc Park)

- Feeding a massive croc at Crocodylus Park

- Sunset at Mindil Beach: this was as clear a picture as I could get as it was wall to wall people

- Beautiful north Darwin beach - shame you can't swim in the sea

- Pool at Lee Point CP - at least you can swim here!

- Feeding the fish at Aquascene