DARWIN

Loving brother and sister at the Old Town Hall, Darwin

Poking their heads of the Cell Block B at Fannie Bay Gaol

DAY 30 – DARWIN                                                                           Monday, 1^st August

Woke up to a stunningly gorgeous day in Darwin!!  A casual morning walking around the heritage sites of old Darwin.  It was interesting to see the Anglican church and old Museum which had been so extensively damaged during Cyclone Tracy.  Then off to see the WWII oil storage tunnels which were used to store fuel for aircraft and ships underground so that they could not be bombed.  The kids were really interested.  It is so great to see your children develop and to have enormously important discussions with them about war and its futility.  Beth is so beautifully and innocently idealistic, just explaining to me how easy it is to avoid war and you “just walk away”. 

With the Endeavour at Stokes Hill Wharf

From there we went to Myilly Point Heritage Precinct to have a look at some houses built in the 30s for government officials.  They so reminded me of holiday houses down at the Gold Coast, especially “Waverney”, where I spent so many childhood holidays.  Louvres and open plan, with the breeze blowing through, no fly screens and timber floors.  Just beautiful.  The kids were very excited to find the bullet holes in the upstairs louvres and the bullet holes in the front fence.   I had no idea that Darwin and the whole Top End was bombed so extensively by the Japanese for 18 months from February 1942.  I think more than 60 raids.

We had lunch in the Darwin Botanic Gardens before heading to Fannie Bay Gaol for a look at how prisoners lived between 1883 and 1979.  It was enormously primitive with the maximum security section, being the first building built in the 1880’s, still used until the end.  It showed mattresses made of straw and an amazing set of Aboriginal paintings which had been painted onto the cell walls.  In the infirmary was a great explanation of the last two men (incidentally the ONLY white men) to be hanged in the Northern Territory in 1952.  It was pretty confronting to explain to my babies what it meant to be hanged and show them what the gallows looked like.

We discovered by chance that The Endeavour (the replica of Captain Cook’s ship) was going to be docking today at Stokes Hill Wharf.  As Beth had been learning all about his voyages, we decided to go down to take a look. We couldn’t get on board until Wednesday (when we will be going to Kakadu) but it was great to see it up closely.  It will be in Melbourne in March and Beth would love to go on board and have a good look around then. 

Home for a swim before Daddy’s famous chicken and avocado fettucine and bed!!