Darwin

I decided to squeeze in another little trip before tree planting down south. I headed Darwin in the top end of Australia in the Northern Territory. I picked Darwin because even though it’s almost winter in the southern hemisphere, it is always hot and sunny in Darwin in the dry season.

My flights to and from Darwin were unfortunately at ridiculous hours. I got into Darwin at 1:30am, so by the time I got off the plane, got my bag, got to my hostel and checked in, it was a little past 3am. That said, I slept in till 11am the first day I was there. My flight back to Brisbane was even worse, I went out drinking with some Dutch, German and English people before catching a 1:45am flight in a pretty tipsy state. I ended up getting into Brisbane at 6am after not being able to sleep on the plane. By the time I got the train and the bus back to Redcliffe it was almost 9am. So as you can imagine, I slept till the afternoon.

My hostel in Darwin was really nice. It had a two layer pool, a jacuzzi, a pool bar and a really big pool deck all on a rooftop. I was staying in a 6 bed dorm room and had to share a bathroom. I met some really nice people from mostly European countries. I spent a lot of time either reading by the pool or playing pool volleyball with a soccer ball with others from the hostel. Our hostel was on the busiest  road in Darwin and every so often, we’d accidentally launch the ball off the roof onto the road. One of the restaurant owners took a knife and popped our ball after getting a wet soccer ball land on the tables of his restaurant a few times too many.

I took a half day fishing charter my second day in Darwin. We went out into the Darwin harbor and caught quite a few fish. The biggest ones were 40cm cods and blue bones. The guy from Colorado snagged a 10 foot shark, but after fighting with it for a while, the shark left with the hook and bait.

I went on a tour on my last day in Darwin. We first got to hold an 8 foot Python. It was all fun and games until the thing tried to eat my wiener. After that I quickly gave it back to the handler since those snakes are capable of eating cats, dogs and small dingoes whole. We then went on a boat and saw some crocodiles jump out of the water to get food from a rope. The first one we saw was the biggest croc in the Adelaide river. He’s 8 meters long and is close to 100 years old. The locals call him “Hannibal” because he’s so tough he even eats other crocs. After the crocs we went swimming in a couple different waterfalls. We weren’t able to swim in one of them because the rangers spotted a croc in it a couple of days prior.

I didn’t drink until my last night in Darwin, which proved to be a bad idea since I was pretty tipsy checking in for my flight. I don’t know if I mentioned Jetstar charging me an extra $80 last time I flew with them. But once again Jetstar gave me a hard time. This time the lady wouldn’t let me check in since I only had my drivers license and no passport. I argued with her for a while telling her I had taken  half a dozen domestic flights in the past 4 months and never needed my passport. Anyways, after a while she gave in while giving me attitude. Once in Brisbane, my bag was the last to come out on the conveyor belt and I was sure that Jetstar lady from Darwin had sent my bag to Honolulu or something on purpose for arguing with her. That could have been dangerous for Brisbane Jetstar staff since I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours and all I wanted to do was get home and go to bed.