Darwin

Well, overnight flights! What can I say.... they suck! Spent the night on the plane, landed in Darwin at 5am, got to the hostel at 6 to find they didnt even have a TV room to crash in (we were early for checkin by 8hrs). I managed to work the irish charm to get us into a room that had just emptied for a tour. Thought our luck was in, but it turned out to be the room right above the bar, a bar that turned out to be the local watering hole for all the Crazy Miners and Northern territory bushmen. Not much sleep for our 3nights here. We did a little exploring of Darwin, checked out the other hostels in the town to make sure we knew what to expect. We booked ourselves on a Kakadu tour for the tuesday initially, but the next three days were a right off as lou got a flu form the ice cold aircon and heat outside. We rebooked the trip and moved into a another hostel(Metaluca on mitchelle). I booked myself on sunset fishing charter that evening, meet a group of lads from wexford on the boat, we managed to get chased down by the Australian Navy was pretty amusing. Lots of scaring the wexford lads into handing me their beers for safe keeping. They didnt even give us a warning shot accross the port bow! Dissapointing! Darwin was the centre for a large scale military exercise, (navy airforce and army). The fishing was a bit of a wash out, I only caught what the aussies call a stubbie holder, no good for eating. Shame, the sunset was unreal tho.

Next day we sat by the pool and meet an couple who were in our room, we decided to go for dinner with them to the VIC, a backpacker pub. Where Kev managed to blag us all a free dinner, sweet! Headed back the hostel for a few cheap jugs of beer and conversation. We all decided to go on a croc jumping tour the next day! Holy moley! this really was Crocadile Dundee country. We landed at this hut buy the muddy Mary River. Croc country! The guide led us to a small tin boat and told us there we no life jackets because the crocs would get us before we drowned or made it to the bank. We all laughed it off thinking, yeah he's only joking. Once we started the motor on the boat three crocs
appeared out of nowhere. We headed up the river until we met daffy the baby croc, the girl at the top of the boat had some meat on a stick, the we bugger almost jumped into the boat to get the meat. This was pretty scary seeing as he was only about a meter big and there were supposed to be crocs up to 8 meters in the river. The next hour or so was spent teasing and poking huge crocs until they leaped out of the water! Some big mother out there! On the way back we managed to get a look at the king of the river, they call him hannibal for good reason, they reckon he is almost 100 years old, if you do a search on you tube you can see him in action. He survived the big croc kulls of the past. He alomst got in the water, glad he didnt to be honest! That night we all headed to the Vic again to swindle another free dinner!

Next day lou and I headed off on our Kakadu tour, turned out to be full of oldies! Still tho there was some savage views, aboriginal artwork, another croc tour, but these guys didnt see, intrested in jumping into our boat thankfully. The tour guide put on a documentary on the bus on the way home, turned out to be crocadile dundee the movie! It had a heap of the places we were just in which was pretty cool. Oh yeah on the way back we thought we had got caught up in a bush fire, fire both sides of the road, but it turned out to be ranger doing a bush burn off! Pretty amazing sight being in the middle of a 'forest fire'. Landed home and had a game of poker with all the lads. We were due to fly to broome the next day but the flight was cancelled for mechanical problems, we moved the flight two days, and then moved it again for another 5 days because we heard broome wasnt that lively.

The next week was spend lazing by the pool, free dinners in the vic and playing poker into the wee hours. Oh yeah and not to forget the sunday session! Out all day and stayed up to watch the Spain Italy game at 5am with our spirish buddy (born in ireland raised in spain, with a cork accent). Mad craic, I managed to get lost on the way home, and the hostel was evacuated by a fire alarm at 6am, everyone dragged out of their beds into the street in sometimes nothing more than a bed sheet on them. The next few days the group stared to get smaller with people leaving to go home and stuff, louise started to show her cork poker skills and raking in a few beer tokens.

On thurday night we headed to the Mindil sunset markets. Its a really big local and tourist market that has everything from crazy eats like road kill barbque to wierd stalls that sell crocadile skulls. Some savage good chinese foods and unreal danish pancakes! We had a few beers on the beach and watched the sun set right on the ocean.
Must say we were glad we put darwin back on our destination list, we had planned to miss it because of what others had said, but the place was savage craic, real backpacker laid back feel to the place, not too many long term unfriendly holiday workers.