Darwin to Broome: Day 1

This past week our family took a 'holiday' to northern Australia. We started in Darwin, (remember the movie Australia?) which is located at the very top/middle part of Australia. Darwin is famous for a few things (1) crocodiles, snakes, blue ringed octopus etc....pretty much everything deadly lives up here as it is so warm. (2) The Japanese bombed Darwin during world war II; much like Pear Harbors bombing in America (in fact Darwin was bombed just a few months after Pearl Harbor). (3) Lots of Aboriginal art, culture and people still live up in the northern territory of Australia.

We started the day by taking the kids to a crocodile farm. It was mating season for the crocs, so we got to see several crocodiles up close (which we otherwise wouldn't have). We helped fed the crocodiles and we also held a baby crocodile.

We intentionally visited the crocodiles first, as we were going to be driving through the outback for the next 10 days camping in national parks swarming with crocodiles. I was hoping to give my kids some incentive to avoid independent exploration- which they all three do all the time! I just knew someone was going to go missing-

 Here Stan is feeding the crocodile with a fishing pole and some chicken

 Here Thomas is holding a baby crocodile

Followed by Mary and Olivia

Here is a pool of 1-2 year old crocodiles. Here at the park many of the crocodiles are grown for meat or leather. 

 Here are some crocodile burgers and kabobs available for purchase

After visiting the crocodile farm, we toured the cities aboriginal art gallery, and historical sites from world war II. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures at the art museum but here are some pictures from the historic oil tunnels-

 

 We walked to a beautiful look out point over the ocean and then climbed these stairs down into where the tunnels were built-

 The tunnels were huge, Olivia sang at the top of her lungs through the whole tour-

Later in the afternoon we visited one of the beaches

Mary and Thomas-

 Olivia's seashell collection

 Her favourite!

After the beach we fed the fishes at a very beautiful fish preservation pool. They were HUGE!

After feeding the fish we cleaned up and in the evening we strolled through Darwin's 'markets on the beach' and watched the sunset. It was perfect! Olivia, Mary and I decided to get matching anklets with bells from one of the local jewelry stalls. I got my first anklet in Hawaii when I was a kid at a similar market.

 These markets reminded me a lot of the Sweet Pea Festival in Bozeman, Montana 

 Didgeridoos 

 Painting of the outback- the large one is of Ayers Rock in the middle of Australia

Aboriginal artwork

 Mary trying out a didgeridoo 

 When we lived in Sydney we could never see the sunset over the ocean because we were on the East. Western Australia if famous for beautiful sunsets. As the sun started to set everyone from the markets came up onto the beach to watch it. There were probably a couple hundred people watching; everyone clapped when the sun finally set....(talk about appreciating the simple things- can you imagine if you applauded every time you saw a beautiful sunset?)

After nightfall, we got in the car and drove 2 hours west to Litchfield National Park for our first day in the outback!

Some interesting things about Darwin: from winter to summer the temperature only varies about 10 degrees (from 85F- 95F)...so coming from Melbourne, we were in paradise!