Darwin - Mandorah

Another week slides by in sunny Darwin.  The weather up here is just so consistently great; warm sunny days followed by slightly cooler nights.  Great weather for tourists!!

This Darwin Show is in town this weekend with Show Holiday today creating the first of 2 long weekends in a row.  The next weekend has a holiday on Monday 6/8 for Darwin Cup Race Day.

The ‘showies’ are in town but we have decided to not visit Sideshow Alley.  Instead, this week we concentrated on Carol’s sewing. She is building a good collection of stock and at last weekends Nightcliff Markets we sold more dresses and hair clips.  Carol, (with Kirstys generous help and tech skills), has this week launched her online store on Facebook called “The Vintage Caravan”.  The store has had plenty of ‘visitors’ and lots of ‘likes’ – apparently that’s modern language for good.  While Carol was manning the market stall, Garry visited a museum dedicated to the war on Australia in WW2.  It is a very informative display which really brings home the effect of constant bombing on the people of Darwin.  The audio visual display with the sights and sounds of the bombing and the stories of people who expeienced it were really well done.  Outside was a good display of field guns and equipment based around one of the 9.2inch cannon that was installed to protect Darwin Harbour.

An unexploded Japanese HE bomb dropped on Darwin

Shells for the 9.2 inch Cannon

Personnel Carrier

One of two 9.2inch cannon protecting Darwin Harbour entrance

Field Gun

Blitz Transport

Large personnel carrier

Garry is still enjoying the work at the hardware and having a couple of days spare at the end of this week decided now would be a good time to add another water tank to the van.  We found on previous free camps that we have sufficient power for the van for up to 5 days but after 3 days we ran out of water.  I was previously quoted $700 to have an additional tank installed but didn’t have the time to wait weeks for the tank to be sent from Melbourne to Brisbane.  We found a great little business up here that carries spares for boats, trailers, and caravans (hence the name BTC) and the carried water tanks in stock.  We bought an 82 ltr tank for $125 and then got the galvanised steel sheeting and strapping, and all the plumbing bits and pieces for about $85.  So by the end of Thursday we had our extra tank installed for $210.

Our neighbours here at the van park are old Darwin residents who left Darwin in their van a few months ago but are back for their daughter’s wedding today.  There has been much excitement around with mother-in-law more anxious than the very casual bride and groom.  Apart from the groom’s suit not fitting and the two booked limo’s cancelling about 5 days before the wedding, everyone was relaxed and by the time I post this it, will be all over.   

We have been meaning to get out to have a look at Mandorah and this week was our chance.  Mandorah can be reached by Ferry in 15 minutes from the city or by road over about 110kms from the van park.  We intended to drive and stay overnight but the with the long weekend and half the rooms being let out permanently to contractors working in town we had to make do with a day trip today.  Mandorah is a beautiful little beachside village consisting of a pub/motel that has a large wharf, the pub, the road out and not much else.  The beach looks a great place to swim except for the crocodile warning signs and the outlook from the pub across the harbour to the city 7 kms away is very nice.  We fished from the wharf, had lunch at the pub (barra and salad, of course), and fished from the wharf again.   Carol had her hand sewing to keep her occupied.  Despite being assured by the lure salesman that I had to (buy and) use metal slices only, the fishing was slow so it must be the operator.  Out of the 20 or so different fisher people using the wharf during the day we only saw two queen fish, a tuna, and a few small bream(?) caught all day.  The queenies and the tuna were very good sized fish, all around 15 kgs and the bream were bait sized and thrown back.  For the record, I did not catch anything but had a very enjoyable day not working. 

Beachfront bar at Mandorah Pub

Eating area with Darwin City over the harbour

A relaxing place for a beer!!

Mandorah Wharf - ferry to the city in 15 minutes

Interesting rocks

Pub gardens outside the motel rooms

Perfecting the cast in between hand sewing

Waiting for that first bite.....

The most amusing part of the day was watching a Hire BBQ boat from Darwin trying drop a couple of passengers off at the wharf for a nature break.  There was about 10 ladies and one lone bloke on board who sat in the corner and shut up.  After several unsuccessful attempts, the young lass piloting the boat eventually decided that the best way to let her passengers off was to ram the wharf at about 10kph, keep the power on and hope the passengers were able to leap safely onto solid ground.  Several fishermen offered to tie the boat up to wait for the return of the passengers but the skipper decided it was easier to keep powering along the wharf bouncing off several pylons until they bounced out into open water again. Most land based people lost interest in the fate of the boat and its crew about then.

((Sorry about the messy post but our Telstra Bigpond internet is giving us the yips here in Darwin.  For the last 3 days it has been veeerrryyy slow and was taking minutes to upload a photo.  Several other people in the park are having the same problem.  Today it is working just fine again!!?? Go figure.. This is the second time it has slowed to a crawl for several days in a row. Last time it happened it cost us $100 at a PC repair place only to be told it is Bogpond and not our PC.))