Darwin

Arrived here in Darwin on Thursday. Headed straight to Maccas in Palmerston for lunch! Then off to Shady Glen Caravan Park on Stuart Highway. Cabin is pretty good and comfy with a sofa. Cranked up the air cond straight away as its pretty humid and hot here. Caravan Park itself is pretty grotty - signs up everywhere telling you not to leave anything lying around and make sure you lock up all the time!! Not very reassuring! We also quickly found out how close it is to the airport as the earth shook on a regular basis!!! Nevermind, we soon made the cabin as messy as all the others we have stayed in and then we felt right at home!!! Went to the Mindil Beach Sunset Markets on thursday night. Very big, very popular,very,very crowded. Sensational sunset. Lots of stalls, especially food stalls.
Friday we did some food shopping at Casuarina then off to the city for a look around. Nice looking waterfront areas -had a look at the Stokes Hill wharf, the Esplanade,Govt House, Parliament House and the old WWII Tunnels. Then on to Cullen Bay Marina - very upmarket here. This is where the ferry leaves to go to the Tiwi Islands. The Marina itself has an interesting loch system to counter the huge tides here in Darwin. Later we went back to Palmerston for another night market.
Today - Saturday - we went to another market at Parap Village. This one was also very big,very popular and very crowded. It was also very humid and hot. These markets had a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables - interesting looking tropical vegetables. A lot of the stalls have tropical smoothies that they whip up fresh for you. These are very popular with big queues - we got some of these and they were delicious - really refreshing and icy cold. Other popular stalls were the laksa stalls - people queue for ages to get their saturday morning laksa!!! We bought some fresh jack fruit,pawpaw and mango.