The first part of today’s story involves Cyclone Trevor again. We didn’t dock at Thursday Island as scheduled so that we could outrace the storm. And it worked. Well sort of. We got to Darwin with no strong winds or storm. So we docked. And during the night the storm caught up. Fortunately it had lost most of its punch as it crossed the York Peninsula. We still had buckets of rain and 55 km/hour winds. That meant our time on shore was somewhat limited.
However, the internet connection was very poor for a few days. So my blog was delayed.
Darwin. What a strange place. The harbor area is huge. There are miles and miles of beaches. Many are beautiful sandy beaches. But it has more crocs than any other place in the world. There is no swimming except one very small area in town. There they have netting to keep out the crocs. They also have large numbers of jelly fish that sting. And the climate is either wet or dry. But always HOT.
We went to the museum and saw the record croc. It was over 18 feet long. Fortunately stuffed.
Then walking around town we saw thus Banyan tree. They are all over Australia but this was the only one I got a decent photo. There is no real central trunk. Branches or whatever they are called drop from the upper tree and become roots. This is just one tree!
Early on during WWII the Japanese bombed Darwin with even more bombs than were dropped on Pearl Harbor but with much less loss of life. They had Hoped to break the alliance between the US and Australia. That didn’t work. But because of the damage both from the bombing and from many cyclones the city looks very new.
The best thing was the lawn mower. I thought I was home.
Johnson's Travel 