Buley Rockhole at Litchfield National Park
I’ve got to skip the rest of my Darwin posts for now, hopefully I’ll get to post them at some point. After a couple of wonderful weeks in Darwin we made our way south to spend the night in Adelaide River. We wanted to visit nearby Litchfield National Park and this was a good base for doing so. We spent the night at their showgrounds, which honestly look like they haven’t seen a show in some time. There was a small pool and we enjoyed all the large toads we saw that night. Showgrounds are often cheap places to stay and aren’t the greatest, but at this one the amenities were clean and the grass was nice and green. After we arrived and unhitched we immediately headed to Litchfield for a swim at Buley Rockhole. When we arrived it was very crowded, we weren’t even sure we’d find a parking spot. Lots of people coming and going. We realised it was Sunday afternoon. Ooops. We know better than to visit a place like this on the weekend but we’d forgotten what day it was and only planned to spend one day here, so Sunday it would have to be. There were groups of people all up and down the pools, some with their music on and their grog in hand.
The main couple of pools at the bottom were too deep for TurboBug to play in on his own, and the rocks above were too slippery to easily move around on. So after we’d both had a swim we sat down to enjoy a snack. You can see the lovely dental work he had done in Darwin, he had to have a filling right on those front teeth. Hopefully when he’s older and willing to sit still in a dental chair they can make it look a bit nicer. He did great, sat on my lap and opened his mouth when they asked, but he is only two and though he walked into the room willingly he pretty much froze when he saw the room full of dental equipment. They worked as quickly as they could which means a not-so-nice looking spot on his teeth.
Before long the crowd started to thin and we moved up to the upper pool where it was even less crowded. There was a good swimming hole here that wasn’t too deep at the edges. Other kids were jumping in and ours didn’t hesitate to join them.
These next two pictures made me laugh. Here’s SkeeterBug (10) doing a lovely dive into the pool. So graceful, right?
The very next pictures on my camera were of JitterBug (8) leaping in. Not so very graceful! Why dive when you can launch yourself off the side?
Complete with a gigantic splash!
We took our new snorkels with us and had another go with them. The kids took turns dropping things into the water and diving under to get them. Endlessly fascinating for them! I love watching them play in the water. They’ve had so much time in the pool lately and they are all like little fish now.
Further up the creek was a lovely little waterfall but we didn’t see anyone swimming up this way.
At the top pool we found a good spot for TurboBug to wander around in. The edges of the rockhole created a shallow entrance into the water so he could get in and out as he pleased. LadyBug set up a little picnic area and we enjoyed all sorts of pretend goodies she gathered.
I wandered around for some more views of some of the middle pools. You can see Dad holding TurboBug with LadyBug next to them in this first picture, that’s the pool they were jumping into.
On the way out I admired the palms as I do everywhere we go!
TurboBug was happy to find a bridge where he could stomp his feet and make a great noise. Which he did over and over again. It was difficult to convince him to leave and I was carrying too much stuff to do a grab-the-toddler-and-run. 🙂
Eventually he followed and by the time we left Buley Rockhole was not crowded at all. A great swim on a hot day. There are other waterfalls and swimming holes in the park but we chose not to drive any further in. You can only see so much and we can’t swim in them all! We did make a couple of more stops in the national park, post to come.
Defence of Darwin Experience
Okay, this roadsign says wallabies but I think they got the silhouette all wrong. :) This was in Darwin, on the way to East Point to visit the Defence of Darwin Experience and the Darwin Military Museum. First is the Defence of Darwin Experience which is an interactive exhibition/museum. LadyBug(5) had the camera for a bit and she always takes pictures of the poppies. This display was in the foyer and provided faces for some of the names inside the museum.
When you enter you are invited to take a little card with a picture and name and find their story inside. I asked LadyBug to take a picture of her card and this is what ended up on the camera. 🙂
There was a lot to look at here, heaps of information that anyone would be hard-pressed to take in all at once. It was a pretty contained area so we all wandered around to what interested us and took turns keeping track of the toddler.
There were many multimedia experiences. Maps, videos, audio stories. This is an interactive table that gives you an aerial view of the harbour. You can see where the ships were, where the bombs were dropped, and read individual stories from the day.
Plenty of memorabilia from the bombings in Darwin. This is a bomb fragment, there were several around the museum; some large, some small.
This gavel and Bible came from the courthouse. Court was in session when the air-raid sirens sounded. Everyone headed for the trench out back to take cover. The trench had been completed the day before. After the attack there was no need for civil law chambers as most civilians had been evacuated.
These came from the MV Neptuna which was sunk during the attack. Forty-five men died on board.
As the crew prepared to abandon ship the cargo of explosives went off sending smoke and flames 100 metres into the air. Part of the wreckage still remains in Darwin Harbour. [This image is from Wikipedia.]
This is a Japanese drop tank. It was an extra fuel tank that helped them fly further, the tank was then dropped after use and was designed to be expendable.
I loved this feather painting. It’s gorgeous and so fragile, it’s amazing it is still around. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one before. The ship it portrays is the MV Manunda, known as the hospital ship. Before the war it had been a passenger liner and thus there were many souvenirs of the ship.
This was in the ‘Build Up to War’ section, where you learn about how Darwin prepared for war and the ‘growth of Japan’s aspirations’ in the years before.
I remember pointing this out to the kids, if I recall correctly it’s a piece of the underwater telegraph cable that connected Australia to the rest of the world. It went through Port Darwin and was connected in 1871.
In the Bombing of Darwin Experience Gallery they show a 12-minute movie complete with sound and light effects. It invites you to imagine a peaceful morning suddenly shattered by an attack by 188 Japanese aircraft. We watched it twice, it was really well done.
I found this sign with information about the government of the NT, interesting to me since I’m not familiar with the history. (Honestly, many Aussies are probably not familiar with the history, either!) Originally the Northern Territory was under the control of South Australia. That had to do with John Stuart being the first European to explore the area and claiming it for SA. They were happy to claim it with the success of the Overland Telegraph but not so happy as the NT proved to be unsuccessful in other ways. The Federation was created in 1901 and SA was finally able to hand over the NT to the Commonwealth Government in 1911. As of 1978 the NT is self-governed but remains a territory. Just a few months ago we read news headlines that the NT will become a state in 2018.
Of course there was much more in here than just what appears in my pictures above. After a good wander around we headed outside to the military museum. (Next post!)
Fogg Dam & Another Darwin Sunset
While in Darwin we chose to go on a jumping croc cruise. We loved it. I’ll post about it later after I’ve had a chance to go through the video we took that day. On the way home from that fabulous jumping croc cruise we drove through the Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve for a quick look. After our hot morning we weren’t in the mood for any walks but you can see plenty from the road. Apparently even turtles, though we didn’t see any that day. What we did see were lots of lily pads and plenty of birds. The wetlands are a haven for birds.
We drove through Humpty Doo and saw the Boxing Crocodile, but viewing it through the car window as we drove by was as close as we got.
That night we watched the sunset from Cullen Bay. There’s a lovely grassy strip at the beach which is a popular spot for sunset viewing. There’s also a lovely fish and chips restaurant there which we chose to indulge in. We couldn’t remember the last time we’d had fish and chips! Always enjoyable and always incredibly greasy.
It was another of those nights where we weren’t sure we’d see much of a sunset, but then the sun peeked below those clouds and it was gorgeous.
I found this cool rock and you need to take a picture of it and I’m going to look all serious.
I know, I’m totally hilarious. Did you see what I did with that serious face? Funny. There was another little boy at the beach that night wearing the same shirt, TurboBug noticed it and pointed it out to us. ‘Dinosaur shirt!’ I don’t know why they bother putting these silly sayings on kids’ shirts, he’d be happy with just the dinosaur!
I love it when you can see how far the tide comes in because of what it leaves behind. So many beautiful rocks and shells to pick through. LadyBug (5) had a collection of pure white shells that she brought up to the grass, the white was so striking against the green.
Look at that toddler just wondering the beach on his own. Where on earth are his parents? 😉
Museum & Art Gallery of the NT
What a fabulous free museum in Darwin! We only had a couple of hours to spend at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory but it was such a treat to be able to visit. A talk on Cyclone Tracy had started just minutes before we got there so the first thing we did was pop in there for a listen. The cyclone hit on Christmas Eve 1974. The talk was being given by a man who had lived through it and it was so, so interesting to hear him talk of the events of the storm. He was full of facts and figures as well as anecdotes. One that stuck with me was that after the cyclone 35,000 people were evacuated in the week following the storm, leaving Darwin with a population of just 10,000. We lasted nearly through the whole talk but TurboBug (2) was having too much fun playing with the fold up chairs in the auditorium so we had to duck out. There was much to explore. The auditorium was near the kids’ room (which didn’t allow photography) so we played there for a bit before moving on. The main corridor was a treasure trove! If I hadn’t had kids to chase I could have spent an hour here looking at all the specimens from birds to lizards to shells to crystals. What an amazing collection! (I know, my pictures are terrible in this museum, it all looks so much better in person.)
We watched the video about Sweetheart, a giant croc who they tried to relocate in the late 70s but he died in the process. He was 5.1m long and weighed 780 kg (1720 lbs).
The museum has an extensive collection of documentation of rock art in the NT. This one was in the main corridor and was painted by a man who documented many of those sites.
I just read on their website that the museum has 1.2 million animal, fossil, rock, and mineral specimens. That is staggering. This large room off the main corridor held many of the animal specimens. There was so much to see in this room!
There was an exhibit on Cyclone Tracy, complete with a sound boothwhere you could listen to the sounds of the storm. Throughout the exhibit you could listen to stories recorded by people who had lived through the storm. Darwin is considered one of the more modern cities in Australia because it had to be rebuilt after the storm. Even the trees had to be planted since the cyclone stripped the trees right off the land. The aerial shots were fascinating. The pictures compared the area before the cyclone, after the cyclone, and decades later.
So it’s called the Museum and Art Gallery, but we didn’t have much time to explore the art before rushing out to make it to a dental appointment. We found this ‘Mater’ and had a quick walk through the gallery on our way out.
LadyBug consistently tells us she wants to be an artist when she grows up, so I asked her to pick her favourite painting for a picture.
As we left we told the kids we would return another day but we never made it back. The short amount of time we spent there was not enough.
Mindil Beach Sunset Market
A must in Darwin is to visit the sunset market at Mindil Beach. It’s held twice a week but everyone told us the Thursday night market was the one to attend. It’s so popular that it can be difficult to find parking so we opted to park at the [huge] casino next door and walk over. The market is right next to the beach so everyone gathers on the beach to watch the sunset and then hits the market to enjoy some food and entertainment. We grabbed our mango smoothies and headed to the beach with everyone else. It was our first sunset viewing in Darwin and what a beautiful one it was! At first we wondered whether we’d see much since it was a bit cloudy toward the horizon. The colours were still beautiful.
Then the sun peeked below the clouds, and wow, the sun was pink!
There were a few other people watching the sunset with us. :)
We wandered back in for some food. JitterBug (8) was so happy with his swirly fried potato thing. I’m sure it has a better name than that, but I can’t remember what they were called. We hung around for a little while and watched them slicing the potatoes with what looked like one of those apple twirlers that you attach to the benchtop.
There were a couple of entertainers. We listened to one guy playing the didgeridoo but it wasn’t quite our taste, more like rap music, a very modern take on an ancient instrument. But this guy was so interesting. I don’t know what this was called but wow, he could make amazing music with it. It looks like a wok with a lid!
There was a lady with a young saltwater crocodile, she was there advertising for a local wildlife park. This salty is about a year to a year and a half old. We were once again amazed at how soft they are. We got a good look at his feet and saw that only the back feet are webbed. She pointed out his ears and nostrils and we got to have a good little chat with her.
We watched a whip cracking demonstration. JitterBug had a go and did his best but I don’t think he ever quite got the cracking noise, neither did many of the other participants. The booth had some beautiful whips and leather goods for sale.
There were a couple of booths that had various crocodile merchandise. Genuine teeth, feet, things made out of their hide. It all made me cringe a bit. I don’t want to think about how they get all those crocodile feet.
The market is really popular, a huge tourist draw. We really aren’t huge fans of markets and this is one of the only ones we’ve visited on our trip. We wandered around with the rest of the crowd and had a good look at all the various booths. It made for a memorable evening in Darwin.
Survivors’ Lookout & Govt House
After our tour of the oil tunnels we walked up to the nearby Survivors’ Lookout. This is where survivors of the 1942 bombing of Darwin gathered to survey the damage in the harbour. The view of the Darwin harbour is mostly obscured by trees now.
After Japan’s entry into the war Darwin began evacuating citizens, by the time of the bombing most of the women, children, aged, and infirmed had left the city.
According to the signs, the day of the bombing there were 46 ships in the harbour. Eight were sunk.
Further up the road was a monument with more information about the bombing.
It shows 292 fatalities in Darwin that day, but I’ve seen several different numbers (usually lower) and it seems as though it isn’t certain.
Also nearby is the Government House, where the Administrator of the Northern Territory lives. (Territories have an Administrator rather than a Governor, and a Chief Minister rather than a Premier.) Once a year they open the building up for public tours, wouldn’t it be lovely to see inside? The gardens are beautiful.
This lovely coat of arms for the NT was on the gate. Those are red kangaroos, the largest living marsupial, on the sides and a wedge-tailed eagle at the top. Both, as you can probably guess, are emblems of the Northern Territory.
We have seen these frangipani trees all over the place up north. Such a symbol of the tropics with their beautiful white flowers. The kids love collecting them but they turn brown right away.
On the way back we took the walkway over the road to get a view of the Darwin waterfront. Our car is parked down there under one of the trees, the entrance to the tunnels is on the right of this road.
In this building there are a few shops and eateries. There’s a free ocean water swimming lagoon behind all those trees. If you follow the path to to the left you’ll get to the wave pool. We made sure to visit both during our stay in Darwin, the wave pool was especially fun and one of the highlights of our stay.
We drove by nearby Parliament House but opted not to stop in for a tour. If it was just us adults we’d probably stop in to more of these places, but we visited parliament in Canberra and that was enough for the kids for a long time to come. Maybe Perth. 😉