Today was all about the CBD or Central Business District and also the port which is just on the edge of town, in fact all of Darwin seems to have a coast line. We had quite a relaxed start to the day which was nice as once we walked outside it seemed hotter than yesterday even at 9:30 in the morning. The forecast had suggested there was a slight chance of rain and they really need it plus a storm that will clear the air but I don’t think it will be coming any time soon. We were following the Historical Darwin City Walk guide which started down by the Esplanade with Lyons Cottage, this was built in 1925 for the staff of the British and Australia Telegraph company, it is now an art gallery and shop so we didn’t bother going in, opposite was the Old Admiralty House which was built in 1937 and was home to the naval Officer commanding the North Australia Area, it was sold for redevelopment by the government and is now a restaurant. Our next stop was the Memorial Cairn which marks the site where the original cable from Java to Darwin was brought ashore allowing communication with London which had previously taken many weeks to be completed in hours, however they are obviously not that proud of this as the monument is rather insignificant and easy to miss! Not so easy to miss is the new city hall which the locals call the wedding cake, apparently they call it this because it is white, square and full of fruit and nuts soaked in alcohol! It is on the opposite side to the old Government house which is home to the Administrator of the Northern Territories , it looked really nice, it was built in 1870 and unlike a lot of other buildings in Darwin survived both the Japanese bombing and Cyclone Tracy who seems to have demolished most of the other buildings in the area. I hadn’t realised until I was looking at Darwin that they suffered so many bombing raids during WWII and there is a lookout named Survivors Point just down the road from Government House where it is said the survivors of the bombing raid went to look at the damage that occurred after the first raid. The bombings destroyed a lot of buildings but luckily the casualties were low compared to other areas, 235 were killed with 300 – 400 wounded. Further round was the old Police Station, Court House and Cell block which was built in 1883 these buildings also survived the raids by the Japanese but were destroyed by Tracy although they were rebuilt and are now an administration office. Further round are the Town Hall Ruins which show the destruction of a cyclone, they haven’t re-built these and they stand as a memorial to the 65 people that were killed by cyclone Tracy. It is said that of the 45,00 people that lived in the town at the time of Tracy, 30,000 were evacuated from Darwin it is still listed as the worst cyclone to hit the area. From here our walk took us down to the waterfront area down a set of stairs that are called Traveller’s Walk, Before the Stuart Highway was upgraded visitors to Darwin arrived by ship and after disembarking at the Port of Darwin they climbed the escarpment via the walkway known as Travellers or Chinaman’s walk either because at the top was China Town or after the Chinese who built the walk. This took us right to the port where a lot of development has gone on, there are luxury apartments and hotel complexes all surrounding a lagoon that keeps the croc’s and jellyfish out! We walked around here and then went back up to the town and jumped on the Hop on hop off bus. We have walked nearly all of the route but it is nice to see it from above, also it takes you out to East point where the gaol we went to yesterday is and as we didn’t make it along the front it gave us a great view of this. The complete bus journey takes an hour and a half and by the time it had finished we were very hot and a little shattered, as we have a long drive tomorrow we decided we would head back to the apartment for a relax before packing up and moving on tomorrow.
