Off to See the Wizard - Our Last Day in Darwin

Our time in Darwin is quickly coming to an end.

We started our morning by visiting the Parap Village Markets, which I believe are the second largest after Mindil Beach. I made one little purchase.

I don’t tend to carry a purse these days, but still need a little coin at times.  I have been carrying it in a small plastic zip lock coin bag, which is getting very close to the end of its life.  I now am the proud owner of a new coin purse.

What do you think it is made from?

Would you believe it is from recycled car tyre inner tubes.  The stall had a wide variety of bags in all shapes and sizes, purses, belts and even jewellery.  It was all so professionally constructed. A great form of recycling.

After that we ventured to the Casurina Shopping Centre again to do the groceries and I wanted to buy a skewer for when I’m baking in the van.  Who’d have thought such a simple thing would be so hard to find, pretty much like when I was trying to buy a new pan for cooking a slice.  Finally, in Woolies of all places, we found them…….in a pack of 10!!!  Who needs 10 skewers?  Oh well, I will have some spares for home and we can put one with the camp oven stuff.

This afternoon has been just back at the van, doing a little cooking and starting to pack up ready to hit the road tomorrow.  I think we are both ready to get moving again.

I have been stitching one hexy flower a day, so three more to show for my efforts.  Only three more to do before I run out of papers.  Not to worry, I have plenty of other options until I get some more.

Mick has started another book.  This is the fourth book in four days.

So, what was our opinion of Darwin?  We had heard it feels like a big country town and that is what we felt. Nowhere was crowded, other than the markets.  The roads were not extremely busy either, which was nice.  We believe we may have just missed the big tourism rush.  It is even noticeable in the week we have been here that the caravan park is a lot emptier now than when we arrived.  We didn’t have a look at half the tourist attractions, but enjoyed what we did see.

The weather has been hot, as expected, but also rather humid already.  The locals are saying that the build up to the wet season has started early.  One local we spoke to said she would love to experience some cold weather, as she has never visited the south of the country.  She described the seasons up here as the “Dry” and the “Sweat”, rather than the “Wet” as whatever you do, you sweat.  That is already the case, especially for us that are more used to a dry heat.

By the way, we have done 6,600 kms so far.  We seem to think of our trip in stages, and now are ready to start the third stage.

I don’t think we will have much internet for the next few days, so it will be a catch up again when I can.

The highlight of our day was our lazy afternoon.