But the next morning we went for a stroll, looking for a breakfast spot. Lonely Planet recommended a few spots nearby but we had a hard time getting our bearings. People don’t post street numbers often around here. Finally we stumbled into the place! (The Roma cafe) An excellent place for breakfast. I could tell because there were about a dozen bicyclists sitting around eating. You know they go where food is good and relatively cheap! I had the banana pancakes which were excellent.
We had lattes there too. A word is in order about Australian coffee. Latte’s and cappuccinos are very common, and about the same cost as regular coffee as far as I can tell. A “Long Black” is similar to an “Americano” at Starbucks. Also, regular coffee is often not great, kind of like Denny’s or Carrow’s.
We spent much of the day walking along the Esplanade which runs along the Harbor. Darwin has a huge harbor. Unlike Sydney’s, Darwin’s harbor was virtually empty.
There’s quite a lot of WWII history around here. We visited the area where Catalina Flying boats were moored. Also, there are numerous placards describing the Japanese attacks here. (Darwin was bombed 64 times!) The USS Peary lies at the bottom of the Harbor.
We left the Esplanade and found a large water park which included a wave maker! Apparently, there are enough hazardous creatures out in the Timoor Sea that people prefer to swim in a more protected area.
We then got directions to the Botanical Gardens, which were an easy walk from our hotel. It was getting late so the only things open were the trails themselves.
Dinner was at Tim’s Surf and Turf. A funky little place which served crocodile. Of course, we had to try some. We had the croc appetizer, breaded and fried with a sauce on the side. It tasted, I swear, just like chicken. I went to the bar to pick up a couple of beers, there on the bar was a baby croc in an aquarium, It made me feel a little funny.
Both Shelly and I enjoyed Darwin, it was a comfortable size and seemed to offer a lot. We would have liked to spend more time there, maybe next time!
Had to leave the hotel at 5:40 the next morning for our flight to Cairns. Getting up that early would have been a problem had we not been all jet lagged anyway. A few hour’s of flying and we were in Cairns, we then transferred to Hinterland Air for the flight to Dunk Island. We boarded a smallish Cessna Caravan for a 30 minute flight.
Dunk Island is 4.5 kilometers off the coast, you can easily see the coast from there. It consists of a large resort and a National Park. The resort is pretty luxurious, with 2 pools, 2 large restaurants, a jetty with watercraft, sports courts, and lots more. We found racquetball courts there!
Many of the activities were quite expensive, so we were able to eliminate a lot of them! But we played racquetball, bocce ball, and hiked around the island. We did a little snorkeling, but that wasn’t as nice as in Hawaii. It took us a little while to get used to Resort life, but we got the hang of it, and wished we had a few more days when we had to leave.
Back to the mainland, we spent a day in Cairns. This is another nice town, lots of tourists and beach bums around, kind of like Southern California. Walking around, we came to some large trees, with lots of screeching coming from them. What we thought were birds turned out to be bats, hundreds of them!! They looked just like the ones we saw in Sydney. A sign posted under the tree said that this was their mating season, hence the noise. We snapped a couple of shots and got out of there!
Walking along the beach, we discovered one odd life form, there are weird fish(?) which crawl along the mud on their front fins! They looked like giant tadpoles, I can’t really say if they were fish of amphibians, they looked like one of those animals illustrating evolution from the ocean! We tried to get a photo, but I don’t think they came out very well.
Click for pix for Darwin, etc.
Next day, it was to the airport, and on to New Zealand!
I'm glad you're home safe and sound! Looks like a fantastic trip!
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