(photos: Darwin River, Botanic Gardens, mangrove swamp)We slept ten hours until 7 AM, got up, and dashed off to Lee Point, north of the city to check out the shore birds. The tide was already going out and the shore birds were quite a distance out. The beach is lovely with coral reefs and little surf, but with the danger of crocs and box jellyfish, swimming isn’t recommended. It was very hot and humid by 9 AM, so we headed back to our room terrace for breakfast. We were entertained with visits by the brolgas and bustard and hotel puppy. After a bit we set off downtown to visit the Botanic Gardens where the Rufous Owl roosts. It had been seen this morning according a ranger so we spent a couple of very hot hours staring up into trees trying to locate a large brown mass sitting on a brown branch to no avail and finally left and drove to the Art and History Museum. After a tasty tuna sandwich we visited the Cyclone Tracy exhibit made famous in Bill Bryson’s “In A Sunburnt Country”. The cyclone came ashore in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, 1974, with winds over 200 mph and devastated the city of Darwin. At one point you enter a totally dark room and hear a recording of the sounds of the Cyclone: metal ripping, trees crashing. Pretty amazing and scary, and a pretty impressive museum with also exhibits of natural history and aborigine art.
We returned home and picked up some garlic stir-fry beef and ate it with our room wine while watching the ubiquitous John Howard on TV.
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