Back in Darwin

12th - 16th of September 2006

The night we came back from Kakadu, i went to the Vic with Sandra and Claire, the worlds happiest Belgians, where we met up with JJ, a really cool guy who works as a S.W.A.T. instructor back in Germany and Mark, one of the few Americans who has a passport! Kinda crap that we were the only ones from our group who showed up, but we had quite good fun anyway. Later on we went to Shenanigans, and Irish pub near our hostel, where we ran into "Club Germany", Volkmar, Sebastian and Thomas from the group. Good times...

Next day I didn't do a whole lot... Hung out with Sandra and Claire, lazed by the pool and enjoyed the weather. On Thursday I decided to go to the Mindil Markets again, this time with Stephen, a Swiss guy from my Uluru tour, and his cousin. Saw eMDee again (I actually videotaped them as well), plus another didgeridoo band. On my way out of Maleleuca (my hostel) I suddenly saw two faces I had seen before in the reception... Two girls from my home town in Denmark! Camilla and Pernille from my year group in high school... How weird is that...! Turns out they actually both work at the Vic. Thought I saw a girl who looked like Pernille in the bar the other day, but I didn't really take a closer look since you run into people who look like people from home quite often. But what do you know... It's a small world after all :)

Friday I decided to go to the War Museum of Darwin to learn a bit of history. Jumped on a bus and went way to far... Oops. Waited for the next bus going the other way and jumped of "near" the War Museum, which turned out to be quite far away from the bus stop. But what... No rush, so I started to walk along the coast, enjoying the view. Eventually I reached the East Point Reserve, a conservation area with a swimming lake, the war museum, wallabies etc. I kept walking, walking and... walking. I started feeling really dehydrated and couldn't believe I hadn't made my way to the museum yet, so I decided to ask a guy who was unloading some stuff from his car. Turned out that I was going the right way, but I had another two miles to go. Crap, I thought, and asked if there were any buses or other forms of transport. No buses, but then the guy offered me a ride to the museum in his smashing BMW 540i! How cool is that - he wasn't even going that way. Turned out he had done quite a bit of travelling himself, and he gave me a lot of good advice and recommendations about travelling in Asia. Sweet as!

By the time I was at the museum, I only had 40 minutes left before they shut. I went in anyway, and for once, had a exciting and fascinating experience in a museum! For once, it wasn't the typical dry exhibition, but a good mix of artifacts from the war, for instance an old Nazi flag, a Japanese soldier's Holy Bible, bombs, small and big weapons etc. Saw a bit of a really good video about the bombings of Darwin, composed of illegal film clips from the actual war. Pretty good museum!

As they didn't have busses going the other way either, and I didn't meet any nice Aussie who offered me a lift, I started walking back. The walk was more enjoyable this time though, since it wasn't so bloody hot and since I walked on the beach this time. Heaps of rocks to check out, boats and a brilliant sunset view (have a look in the gallery for more good sunset photos), which made the 8-10 km walk practicable.

Saturday morning I packed all my crap and went for a last dip in the pool before I had to make my way to the airport. I met quite a few Danes as well, so I thought I probably had picked the right time to leave Darwin - didn't come to the other side of Mother Earth to meet Danish people :-)

Bye-bye Darwin - I'll be back!