Saturday 12th July

Well it is Saturday again. How fast a week goes by when we are seeing so many things that we have not seen before!

Anyway, I managed a ride again this morning. Today, I decided to check out the roads that surround Darwin International Airport. I mentioned before, that this airport is a shared one with the Royal Australian Air Force. It sounds a very busy airport as we are staying not very far from it. There is every conceivable type of aircraft using this airport, from military to small general aviation. There are aircraft arriving and departing 24 hours per day. This is mainly brought about by the fact that some of the other major cities have curfews on late and early movements. Darwin is at least a 3 hour flight from Brisbane and more from Sydney and Melbourne as well as Perth. So the passenger aircraft leave the previously mentioned airports and arrive in Darwin at a late hour then turn around to return to their destination to arrive just after the curfew. There are numerous International flights into here, too.

The cycling circuit around the airport is serviced by a variety of road types. There is about half on road then a quarter on service roads with the remainder on really good bikeways. A round trip was 34 kms. The ride was really enjoyable today as there was not much traffic, being Saturday.

On my return, I took Prue to the chiropractor for another session. Then I went to Casuarina Shopping Centre to get some bits and met Prue there after she did a short walk from the session. After a coffee, we came back to Richard’s place.

We then went with Richard to Fannie Bay where we had a light lunch before going to the East Point Military Museum and Reserve. While there, we spent several hours viewing the stories and artefacts from mostly the Second World War. The stories and information were predominately about the bombing of Darwin by the Japanese and the destruction on an unprepared town. There was very little in the way of military support resident in the area but that soon changed. The museum certainly has some history stored there including the large gun emplacements. Ironically, the Japanese came back to Darwin after the War to salvage lost ships for the scrap steel and also the large guns that were there went too. Those guns were never fired in anger.

After the visit to the Military Museum, we went to look in the old QANTAS hanger that was damaged in the bombing of Darwin. It was then attached to the airport but that has all changed in recent years. It has obviously been repaired, but some shrapnel holes exist, and also withstood Cyclone Tracy in 1974. In the hangar, there are numerous items of interest such as old mechanics tools, water pumps, various types of jacks, old cars, train and variety of trucks including a well known, B model Mack.

At the Northern Territory and Art Museum there is a large variety of various types of art from Aboriginal, Indonesian and local. The museum has a wonderful depiction of the whole Cyclone Tracy event. What a lot we all learnt from that disaster especially the handling of evacuation and most importantly, recovery of the affected community. A large display of various maritime vessels, that have been in the Darwin area, from a pearling lugger to Vietnam refugee boats and Indonesian fishing boats. The latter boats were confiscated by the Commonwealth Government because they strayed into Australian waters and were illegally fishing.

The evening was spent at Richard’s very quietly as they were out to a wedding.