Day 105 / 2025 - Still Around Darwin

We have now been here 3 weeks with about 4 more days to go. It has been fun and the time has just flown by. Do have another maintenance problem with the van, looks like the Air-conditioner has decided to play up. Hopefully we can get it fixed before leaving Darwin.

We started this week off with a visit

 On Friday we took a voyage to the Tiwi Islands. We had to get up probably the earliest we have had to over the whole trip. We arrived at the dock in Cullen Bay at 7:15 ready for checkin at 7:30. Once checked in we were able to board the ferry. Departure was a little delayed leaving about 8:20 AM instead of 8:00 AM as scheduled. The ferry was fully booked, this was due to a festival and Tiwi footy grand final being held on the weekend. The trip over was quite smooth with the sea mostly flat. The trip took about two an a half hours and was pretty uneventful. 

 Arrival at Bathurst Island we were met by our tour guide who seem to go by many names so we were unsure on how to address him. The Tour was called "Tiwi By Design" provided by Sealink Northern Territory. We stated with a  Tiwi welcome to country which included a smoking ceremony. We were then treated to some local song sung by local elder women who were also artists in residence. There was also some dancing depicting stories about local animals. It was interesting to note that apart from the local species of crocodile and shark the other two animals were introduced species being a Water Buffalo and Horse. I would have thought the Kangaroo would have featured in a dance but realised there are no Kangaroos on the Tiwi Islands with the closest mammals being Wallabies and Bandicoots.     

 Once welcomed, we were then treated to a morning tea of Damper and Tea or Coffee. After that we were broken into two groups. Group two would stay at Tiwi By Design and participate in a Silk Screen printing class while group one would follow our guide for a brief tour of the local area. We were in group one so followed our guide for a quick tour of the local area. This included the local museum which had quite a bit of history and cultural information from the early times through to the present. History of the Twi People were described in stories and you could spend at least a couple of hours just reading these. Our guide recanted many stories including laws on marriage and kinship where islanders could only marry into certain groups. We then went past the Church that the movie Top End Wedding was filmed. The church was now condemned, where nobody could go inside. This was a pity as there many works of art displayed in the church.

 We then went back to Tiwi By Design where we were treated to lunch before swapping with Group two and taking our turn at designing and screen printing a shirt or tea towel with a local Tiwi design. Once done your creation was dried then given to you to take as a souvenir. This then concluded our tour where were then thanked for taking the time to come to Twi then escorted back to the ferry boat.

 We took another drive to the water front firstly spending some time in the Wave pool with the grandkids. From there we went for a swim in the Lagoon before stopping for lunch at the Lime Cafe. Lunch wasn't a very enjoyable experience as it took some time for our lunch to come out and when it did it wasn't particularly appetising, best described as a limp Toasted cheese sandwich. We wont be rushing back there again. We then finished off the late afternoon with another swim at the wave pool before returning to the caravan park in the evening.

Next day we drove out to East Point. Our first stop was the mangrove board walk. The best time to visit was on high tide where half of the boardwalk was submerged under water. We arrived about an hour after high tide where the waters were staring to recede where we were able to walk right to the end. Low tide exposes the muddy bottom of the area. Next we went onto the Military museum which displayed lots of war memorabilia. Most of it was from WW2 but there were exhibits for the Vietnam war as well. There was a great movie which runs every 20 minutes depicting the bombing of Darwin Harbour. Darwin was documented a being bomb 64 times although anecdotally they say it occurred more than that. 

We then travelled to the Darwin Museum. We had been before but was informed the Cyclone Tracy exhibit had been updated so went specifically for that. We lost track of time and were ushered out at 4pm closing time.

 Mike had returned from his work swing so we all went back to the Zen Rooftop bar for a drink. It was a little crowded but we managed to find a table with a view. The drinks are a little expensive but was offset with a flow of finger food. 

 On our last night in Darwin we took in a sunset cruise on the harbour. This time we went on the Fish & Chip Sunset Cruise hosted by Sea Darwin - Sea Tiwi on their 1200 HP cruise boat. The fish and chips were quite nice and came with a complimentary Beer, Wine or Soft drink. You could also purchase additional drinks if you were still thirsty. The sunset was of course spectacular and we were treated with a very quick return to harbour courtesy of the 4 by 300 HP engines.

 Just a note on our air conditioner. We did get in touch with a Dometic refrigeration mechanic. Once we described the fault and the age of our unit he recommended we replace it as no doubt this was just the start of its demise. We finally agreed to replace it for the princely sum of $3,200.00 and secured the work to be done on the day before we leave. That evening the old one started working properly again. We were um'ing and ahh'ing as to whether to call the replacement off when the night before the due date it started to play up and fail again. The mechanic came the next day and replaced our old unit with a new Dometic Freshjet 7 Plus. This is a better unit featuring inverter style starting, larger cooling capacity and comes with a 3 year manufacture warranty. It has been hot and seems to be working okay at the moment.