Darwin Report: War, Wet and Crocodiles

Greetings from Darwin – the capital of the Northern Territory, a city far closer to Indonesia than to any other Australian city and a land of two summers – one wet, one dry, both bloody hot! We’ve decided we like Darwin, but it took awhile. First we needed to adjust to the oppressive humidity. We’ve arrived at the end of the wet season and the air is still heavy and close. Sweating seems to be a permanent state of being and it’s terribly hard to sleep in the still, sultry nights. But after 4 days in Katherine and a week in Darwin we seem to be getting used to it – and the purchase of a fan has helped immensely! Then there are the bugs. The flies of the desert have been replaced with the mosquitoes and sand flies (aka biting midges) of the tropics. The flies were extremely irritating; the mossies & midges are enough to send you insane. We are both covered in bites, rashes and welts and suffer fits of uncontrolled scratching. But again, we seem to be adjusting by learning to cover up in the evening and finding insect repellants that work. However, I must admit the real life-saver in this department has been antihistamines – bring on the drugs!!

Darwin is an interesting city. The first thing you notice is that everything is very new. That’s because Darwin was almost completely destroyed by Tropical Cyclone Tracey which tore through here on Xmas Eve 1974 taking most of the infrastructure with it. The population of Darwin is very transient. It doesn’t have quite the exuberance of some of the mining towns like Coober Peedy, but there’s no doubt that people come here to make money – and then generally make tracks elsewhere. There is something of a myth about Darwin that it’s people are enormously resilient having rebuilt after the bombings in WWII and then again after Cyclone Tracey. But the fact of the matter is that in both cases the vast majority of the population were evacuated and never returned to Darwin. Instead they were replaced by developers, builders and others who sensed the potential to get rich out of the rebuilding.

On the wildlife front, as well as insects, the tropics bring a number of animals that make great handbags, but are less attractive in real life – namely frogs, snakes and crocs. I’m pleased to report we haven’t yet come face to face with a crocodile – except a giant stuffed one – but they have influenced our journey. Because the north has had such a big wet, and we are here right at the end of it, the crocs have entered many of the inland water ways that would normally be considered safe. I had really wanted to go canoeing in Katherine Gorge, but it was banned. Lucky thing, as they caught a 5M croc in the Gorge the day after we left. Here in Darwin we are surrounded by a beautiful harbor in the kind of hot, sticky weather that just makes you want to leap in. But the fact that they pulled 240 crocodiles from the harbor last year, with an average size of 3M makes you think again (and then of course there are the box jellyfish which can kill you even quicker than a croc).

As to the frogs….they won’t kill you. But I have to keep reminding myself of that fact when I discover them hiding under the toilet seat. I have become somewhat used to this phenomenon and am able to balance high above the toilet seat to ensure no frog can jump up my bum – but I have to admit that I drew the line when I found a giant cane toad staring back at me when I opened the toilet lid. On that particular occasion I decided that the bush looked like the preferred dunny!

On the subject of cane toads, this is again something that has changed since our last visit to this part of the world. The cane toads only started to arrive here around 2002, and by 2006 when we were here last there weren’t all that many. Well they are here in force now – particularly apparent when out of the ‘big’ city. For the non-Australians, the cane toad was introduced in Queensland to get rid of some sort of beetle and has become a complete menace that is spreading slowly west and south. The toad has a poison in the top of its head that kills the animals that eat it and as a result is threatening the native fauna. We learned at a dinner in Katherine that the cane toad has killed off most of the goanna’s which are the only natural predator to the crocodile (they eat the croc eggs) and this combined with their protected species status has led to a rapid increase in the number of crocodiles in the NT. The other interesting thing we found out is that some animals have already learned to adapt to the cane toad. Crows, for example, have learned to catch the toad, flip it upside down and suck out the innards without touching the poison sack in the top of its head. We saw the remains of a couple of these toads and it looked like something out of an alien movie.

Darwin is big on markets, the most famous of these being the Mindil Beach Sunset Market on Thursday nights. We were lucky enough to be here for the first Mindil market for this dry season. We brought a table and chairs, found a good spot, did a bit of shopping, watched a few bands, ate a ridiculous amount of food from the vast variety of Asian influenced food stalls, had a couple of gins from our eskie, took photos of the magnificent sunset from the beach and left just before the fireworks to escape the traffic jams. A perfect evening!

We also went to the rodeo – a first for me. Bucking broncos, catching bulls, riding bulls – it had it all. Although I must admit there didn’t seem to be that many cowboys who were able to stay on those bulls and broncos so often there was a huge build up for about 1 second of watching someone get thrown off an animal. But we had fun nonetheless.

We’ve learned a lot about Darwin’s role in WWII. Prior to February 1942 Darwin was not exactly a major military hub. However, the Japanese felt that it was a geographically attractive place for the allies to establish a centre for operations in the Pacific – so they decided to “take it out”. On 12 February, 1942 the Japanese bombed Darwin just as they had Pearl Harbour 2 months before -the same Admiral in charge, the same Fleet and the same military strategies. The locals thought the planes were some American fighters returning from a sortie and couldn’t figure out why they were dropping footballs. It wasn’t until the “footballs” started to explode that the realization sunk in. Needless to say, the town was caught completely unaware and most of the ships in harbor were destroyed and all of the planes, civilian and military, were destroyed on the tarmac. Only those American fighters, which eventually did return from their sortie, actually put up a fight. More bombs were dropped on Darwin that day, than had been dropped on Pearl Harbour (although I think they were smaller bombs).

Following the bombing the city was taken over by the Australian and US military. Even the prison was seconded and all the prisoners were released. On the way up the Stuart Highway you can still see the makeshift airstrips that were established during the war. Before reaching Darwin, in places like Katherine, Adelaide River and Oodnadatta and all along the old Ghan railway line we saw the staging posts used to bring troops north. By the end of the war the north had been bombed 64 times, but as the Japanese had predicted Darwin had become the nerve centre for the Australian fighting in the Pacific.

The government of the day tried to keep the Japanese bombings under wraps to avoid panic in the south. The newspapers did report some bombings but the magnitude of the attacks and the number of casualties was played down. Eventually the word got out as evacuees headed south, but locals tell us that to this day Australians are often surprised to learn of the enormity of the attacks.

Today is our last day in Darwin before I fly off to the UK to see my beautiful and much loved nieces, and Dennis flies off to Melbourne to see his family and (you guessed it) play golf. So expect a lull in the blogging for a couple of weeks. I hand over now to the bushman himself for his regular report of golf and other adventures. I must mention that Dennis was clearly feeling that without the beard he didn’t look like enough of an adventurer, so at the markets he bought himself a crocodile tooth necklace. While he is in Melbourne please be sure to notice this, and feel free to poke fun!

Before signing off, I’ve had a request from Steve Hynes (are you listening Steve) to provide our observations on the aboriginal ‘situation’. I’ve put these as an addendum at the end of this report, so that those not interested can easily skip it. Over to Dennis……..

Another good report from Steph, which leaves me with only a few things to add, Last night we went on a Harbour cruise on  a large Catamaran, saw the sunset and ate Crocodlie which was very tasty along with some smoked Barrumundi: great Aussie tucker. A special mention to Marion (now really good at remembering peoples names) and Brenton who we met on the road and have spent some time with them in Darwin and who provided more insights into local life here. Darwin has some very good golf courses and at this time of the year they are very lush after the wet, I played both Darwin and Palmerston the first with more success than the latter, interesting at Palmerston they have a policy where any club golfer in Australia and possibly the world can play in club competitions as a complimentary guest, should  be a policy adopted by more clubs (this makes Palmerston the cheapest place to golf at $10 beating Gunedah $13.20 on Saturdays) Again met  some interesting people and had fun in new golf courses.


The thing that sticks out for me about Darwin is that after the cyclone only 10,000 people returned from 45,000 at the time. Today there are some 125,000 people which is remarkable population growth and yet it all seems so relaxed here, no traffic problems, great infrastructure and good climate for 8 months of the year. The other stand out is the Bombing of Darwin, the death , the destruction and how close the war really was to all of us.

When we return from a 10 day break we are off to Wooliana for some Barrumundi fishing so looking forward to that and then westward Ho.

Finally we have been on the road for 8 months and seen a lot of this country, the one thing that I am sure of is that 12 months or so is not long enough to see it all.




No Doubt Politically Incorrect Musings on Aboriginal Australians


I’ve been avoiding this because it’s just such a complicated subject and any honest observations are certain to be seen as politically incorrect. But one thing I can say is that the intervention seems to be having a visible effect on public drunkenness in the NT. As a left-leaning, bleeding-heart southerner I was against the intervention as I felt it intruded in the aboriginal peoples’ rights to self determination. But if you compare what we are seeing on this trip, with what we saw on a previous trip to the NT in 2006, it seems obvious that the strict alcohol laws introduced and enforced as part of the intervention have all but eliminated the terrible public drunkenness that had made places like Tennant Creek and Katherine so utterly distasteful. I might add that these places now compare favourably with towns in other states with large aboriginal populations – places such as Bourke in NSW or Coober Peedy in SA. In both those towns we saw a lot of drunken and violent behaviour on the streets, begging in front of the liquor stores, public brawling, etc etc. We’ve seen none of that in the towns we’ve travelled through in NT.


Now, here’s the thing. Maybe it’s only public drunkenness that’s reduced, and in fact aboriginal people are still getting stinking drunk in the privacy of their own homes and communities. A distinct possibility given the line ups one sees in the liquor stores. But my feeling is that even if it’s only public drunkenness that’s diminished, this is a really positive step. I say this because my other observation about aboriginal Australians is that they seem to be caught in a spiral of disrespect. The more European-Australians have treated the aboriginals with disrespect, the more the aboriginal people have lost confidence and behave in ways that can only lead to contempt, so the more disrespect grows and the cycle continues. It’s a chicken and egg thing – what needs to come first, being treated with respect, or behaving in a way that commands respect? At the very least, the reduction in public drunkenness makes it less difficult to respect the aboriginal people.


The other BIG observation regarding aboriginal people is the plain and simple fact that their children are not in school. We know this because we encounter them (generally with their parents) in the shops and on the streets throughout every school day. I don’t know if the intervention has made a difference to the magnitude of this problem, but it certainly hasn’t fixed it. We’ve read some interesting stuff from Noel Pearson, and there was a similar message being preached by Mal Brough on the front page of the Australian last week – the number one priority for aboriginal education has to be attendance, the rest can follow. If there is one thing with the potential to break the spiral of disrespect it is education surely.


I must emphasise that we have had very little to do with the aboriginal people themselves. Any comments in this blog are based solely on observations made from the outside looking in.