I headed north on the Stuart Highway towards Darwin, but turned off and side-tracked across to the Daly River.
The Daly River is known for crocodiles. And there certainly are lots lying around, on sandbanks in the river, looking deceptively lazy.
The ‘town’ of Daly River consists of a pub and a police station. That’s about it. The pub does great meals and even has views of crocs sunning themselves, not too far away.
I stayed at a bush camp not far from Daly River, which was right on the banks of the river. There was a nice shady area at the top of the bank to sit and watch the crocs while sipping a beer in the evening.
I spent a week here, doing not much, which was fine by me. It was school holidays so I was delaying my trip to Darwin for as long as I could.
So I did eventually and reluctantly leave Daly River and headed to Darwin. And Darwin was busy, with the caravan parks full, so I had to work my way out a bit before I found somewhere to stay. As the Darwin roads are all dual carriageway and 100kms speed limited, it actually doesn’t take long to get around this city.
Darwin is a modern city that seems to consist entirely of high rise apartment blocks. There are some older pre-war houses that have survived numerous cyclones over the years (in 1974 Cyclone Tracy destroyed over 70% of Darwin buildings, including 80% of its housing).
I had my truck booked in for a service, which was to take all day, so after dropping the truck off I wandered into town and joined a tour around Darwin, to get my bearings. The tour consists of being driven around in a refurbed 1940s army truck, which is significant, as Darwin has much WW2 history.
Darwin was attacked 64 times by the Japanese, with the first raid on 19th February, 1942. A great number of people died in this attack and allied ships and aircraft destroyed. Darwin was unprepared for the attack and afterwards, many people were evacuated to Adelaide River. Darwin was considered indefensible. It still is.
There are still plenty of WW2 relics around, including airfields, runways and also bullet holes left over from the Japanese attacks:
The harbour is beautiful and I had lunch overlooking the water. It was very smoky, caused by numerous bushfires burning around the city.
I decided it would be interesting to go out to the Tiwi Islands, north of Darwin, as tours out here are a relatively new thing. It was a great day, starting and ending with a 2½ hour ferry ride to get there. There are two main islands, Bathurst and Melville, and many smaller islands making up the group.
The ferry heads to the main town of Warrumiyanga on Bathurst Island where we first went for a wander to the local church and the old convent.
The Catholic Church arrived in 1911 and is still extant on the islands. Although the Church brought positive effects to the local Tiwi people, such as access to education and health care, there were also negative impacts, with suppression of Tiwi culture and language being foremost.
The church was built in 1941 and the interior resembles a giant boat turned upside down. Beautiful Tiwi paintings adorn the church.
Tiwi culture is different from the mainland – for example, they don’t have boomerangs or digeridoos. And the art is unique to the islands. The graves of Tiwis are adorned with totem poles, known as pukumani. The poles are carved and beautifully decorated and have two prongs representing male burials and a single prong for female. They ask that no photographs be taken in the cemetery, because it is a sacred place.
After visiting an art gallery with an amazingly decorated ceiling, we were taken to participate in a smoking ceremony.
This ensures that any nasty spirits that have attached themselves to us are driven away by the purifying smoke – most important.
Then we had a demonstration of local dancing by the ladies and gents of the island.
All in all, a really pleasant day, I really enjoyed it immensely.
