What time is it there?!

....from the very hot to the very humid, we arrived in the capital of the Northern Territory and we saw far more green trees, lush grassland and lots of stuff that looked alive rather than dead than we had seen for a while! Most of us grew up being taught that there are four seasons, the aboriginal people actually recognise six seasons (which does make some sense when you see it written down), however to the local people of European descent there are only two seasons up here..... "The Dry" and "The Wet". And we didn't arrive in The Dry!

Darwin is probably best described as the Australian equivalent of Milton Keynes (although we have yet to visit Canberra). Those buildings that weren't bombed by the Japanese in 1942 were destroyed by Cyclone Tracy in 1974 so it is basically a 'new town'. It is a wonderful mixture of 70's architecture, complete with those cement floral brick things that people used to build garden walls out of and then paint white! It is also good as it is quite compact and with the humidity as it is, walking about wasn't a pleasant experience. Cyclone Tracy seems to have given Darwinians the opportunity to build plenty of pavement cafes in the guise of 'cappucino strip' (all towns seem to have one!), a new waterside Esplanade which gives great views out to the sea and brand spanking new backpackers accomodations (relatively speaking!) complete with swimming pools and air conditioning!

One of the major toursit attractions is unsurprisingly focused around the water (as most of Australia is) and is called Aquascene. At high tide hundreds of fish come into the shore to be fed huge amounts of bread, the supply seems to be limitless as do their apetites! Rules are : grab some bread, the mouldier the better and put your hand in the water and soon hundreds of fish are surrounding you and literally eating out of your hand! There are several types, including quite large Milk Fish all whom thankfully are not meat eaters and have no teeth so we were safe! There were are few rays (pictures are a bit poor of these compared to our previous efforts - sorry!), some cat fish and the Aussie icon the Barramundi! All in all we had a great time and made some great temporary friends who by next high tide will have forgotten we ever existed!

Darwin Pictures here.