Oz Trip - Day 61

Day 61 – 1/7/2012 – Sightseeing and Territory Day

We met up with Wayne and Jenny Cunningham, some friends from Bundaberg, for smoko. They were in Darwin visiting their son. It was good to catch up with them. Next stop was the CBD to do a bit of walking around. It was good that it was a Sunday as it was free parking everywhere and a lot less busier than a weekday.

We did a walk around the mall, the parklands and recreation precinct and the old Military Oil tunnels. In their area similar to Brisbane's South Bank and Sydney's Darling Harbour, their area called Darwin's Waterfront Precinct has a swimming beach and a wave pool. It all looks relatively new and is very nice.

The Mall

The Tunnel entrance

You can walk into Tunnel No 5.  No 6 has sludge in the bottom of it. There is no No.1 to 4

Inside tunnel 5

Looking down onto the swimming beach area

The wave pool with the convention centre in the background

Old Government House had fantastic views over the harbour

The day before on our scoping trip, we found a nice looking pub at Nightcliff overlooking the water that was advertising for the 3^rd State of Origin. So we decided to head back to see if would be a suitable venue to watch it. Luckily we did. They had a $10 cover charge for the night and weren't serving any food. While there we also ran into Wayne and Jenny and their family having final drinks before Wayne and Jenny headed back to Bundaberg the following day.

From there we headed back to East Point Reserve to try and find a spot for the Territory Day celebrations. Now for those of you who don't know, Territory Day is the one day of the year where NT residents celebrate self rule. And the best part about it, is they reserved the right to buy and left off fireworks on that day. By that I don't mean official fireworks like organised for Riverfire and New Years etc, but anyone can buy and let off fireworks for the one day! It was like legalised pandemonium, and fantastic!!!  Unfortunately Jodie wouldn't let me buy any because she said that she liked all of my fingers and face exactly the way that they were, and my disability payout wasn't big enough to keep her in the lifestyle that she was accustomed too!

We found a spot at East Point Reserve that looked back onto Mindil Beach where the official/professional fireworks were going to be set off. But we could see the whole bay. It was a fantastic atmosphere. Families coming down to the beach and setting up BBQ's and bonfires on the beach to let off their fireworks. Mind you, this was all on a day when a total fire ban day had been declared!!!

We arrived at our spot at about 5:30pm and people were stating to let them off then, even before the sun had set. It was one of the best fireworks displays that we had ever seen. We ended up leaving at about 8:30pm and they were still going. You could seem them all the way along the bay and over the CBD.

This is how you do it son, light it and RUN!

Far left you can see a massive bon fire being stacked up!

Let the fun begin!

This one was let off by a group on the beach, it nearly took our head off as it flew past us and exploded about 2m behind us!

Even when we got back to the Big 4, locals were still setting them off around the neighbourhood.

As you would expect when you start mixing alcohol and fireworks you get the idiots. We later head from Wayne and Jenny that there were some people in a house near them that were firing fireworks at passing cars from the house and people in the cars were returning fire!!!

Here are some photos of the news paper the day after. It has some classic quotes in it. It also appears that the local newspaper has the same high journalistic standards as Bundaberg's local paper.