Darwin

16 May
As you may well have realised our inital plan of turning off to Kakadu National Park, Darwin and then Litchfield National Park before returning to Katherine has changed due to a few of the attractions in Kakadu being closed due the late rains. We have revised our plans to look at Litchfield, then to Darwin and Kakadu before returning to Katherine. This meant arriving at Kakadu a little bit later and hopefully seeing some extra sights.
On leaving Litchfield National Park we decided to take the unsealed road via Berry Springs to Darwin. This road was fairly corrugated with some deep water ruts that needed to be taken slowly. It is shorter in distance but probably takes a little bit longer to travel. The boys were looking forward to a swim at Berry Springs but were disappointed to find that it too was closed because of the recent rains.
Pushing on to Darwin we found a caravan park in Berrimah, a suburb of Darwin that is fairly close to the city centre, and after setting up camp decided to look around in the city. Darwin has changed quite a bit in the last 5 years or so since I was there and it now boasts a few high rise buildings not just the backpackers hostels and pubs that seemed to line the main street.
Our first point of call was to see the tunnels that were built as an oil storage device during WW2. These tunnels were built to protect Darwins oil storage from air attack during the war but by the time they were finished the war was over and they have never been used for this purpose. There are 2 tunnels open and are now house over 100 wartime photos.

Aquascene

We then headed to Aquascene, a fish feeding business that allows you to feed the wild fish that come in from Darwin harbour every day to be fed by the public. This business has been running for about 50 years and all sorts of fish from Catfish, flathead, mackeral, barramundi and rays can be seen in the same area. They give you bread to feed the fish and provide information about the different species as they appear. Declan and Thomas both enjoyed patting some of the fish as they fed them.






17 May
After a slow start to the morning Declan and I decided to go fishing but by the time we were organised we had struck low tide and had trouble finding a place to fish (due to the 8m tidal variation in Darwin). We managed to find a jetty near a marina and fished for a couple of hours without luck.
As we had been enduring a small water leak in the camper trailer I took the opportunity of being in a large city to find a new piece of hose a repair it. This was not as easy as expected and a few hours later I managed to get the job done while Linda found a supermarket and replenished supplies.
 With most of the day gone we decided to spend the rest of it in the pool just relaxing and enjoying doing nothing.