One day in Darwin

We spend a day in Darwin as a transition from the Ghan train to diving in Cairns. Most of our time was spent doing laundry and other housekeeping items.

The whole tropical area around Darwin was extremely hot. Day time highs were in the area of 36 C - pretty hot after being in temperate Melbourne at 15 C. We did a walk along the harbour esplanade in Darwin at 0600 when the temperatures of about 27 were someone manageable for walking.

Of interest is that Australia was in receipt of bombing attacks from Japan during Pearl Harbour. The town of Katherine had their airport runway bombed out. At that time it was being used for military purposes.

Darwin was also important from a strategic point of view and had also been bombed. The town decided to hide their oil reserves underground around 1942 and the oil tunnels were the access points. There are several oil tunnels throughout the city of Darwin but these particular oil tunnels, 5 and 6, were available to view.

Darwin has a large harbour and this was one of the first photos I took during our morning walk.

The city esplanade and area is quite picturesque. We enjoyed walking about before it got too hot for us to be comfortable.

We returned to the hotel and made preparations for our flight to Cairns. Steve was starting to have a very sore throat so first on the agenda at Cairns was to go and have him see a doctor. One of the folks on the GOW developed pneumonia so we were quite concerned and wanted Steve to get checked before scuba diving.

Onto Cairns....