Last Thursday, we had class at the Northern Territory Museum. It had a large collection of Aboriginal and Australian art, as well as displays of native animals and plants. The biggest draw to the museum is probably Sweetheart the crocodile. They caught him in the 70's because he had become too aggressive towards people...or that's what they say. I mean, I wouldn't want a 20 foot croc near me either, but he ended up dying in the relocation process, which is kind of a bummer. I'd put up a picture of him, but it doesn't do him justice. Just let your imagination run wild.
After class we headed over to the Mindil Beach Sunset Markets. They have them every Thursday and Sunday in the winters in Darwin (really harsh winters here...80 degrees and sunny everyday). There are food stalls, arts and crafts and live performers. It seemed like the whole town showed up, we had to weave our way in and out of people. I stopped at a Japanese food stand and got two giant tempura prawns. I usually don't like seafood, so this was a step on the wild side for me, but they were really good. I also got some homemade dragonfruit, passionfruit and lemon sorbet and bought a bracelet from an arts and crafts vendor.
Besides the food and art, the main attraction of the markets is the sunset. This was the first time I had been on a sandy beach here in Australia, and for lack of a better word, it was awesome. The sand was superfine and white and the sunset was unbelievable. The sailboats out on the water were a nice touch too. It was kind of like a scene from one of those cheesy motivational posters, except 10 times better because I was actually seeing it.
There were a ton of people at the beach.
My attempt at being artsy.
We had a free day the next day, so on the walk back to the hostel from the beach we talked about what we were going to do that night. Being college students, the only logical thing seemed to be going out to the clubs. We ended up at Monsoons, where it was ladies night. This apparently means that the emcee is a cross dressing man. It was a fun night, and we all had some good laughs, so no worries.
Friday was kind of a lazy day. We (the Tourism group) were the only ones around, as everyone else either had class or had already left for the camping trip. We decided to walk down the Wharf Precinct, where they had a wave pool that we chilled out in for a couple hours. It was actually a really intense wave pool...they should be more like that in the States. We had dinner out on the pier, I got locally caught barramundi, which is a specialty in Darwin. It was delicious. We also were convinced that we saw a crocodile swimming in the ocean, and that's the story we're sticking with. Don't try to tell us it was a log. After dinner we slowly walked back to the hostel, stopping in gift shops along the way.
Fun Story: In one of the gift shops, an old man told us how to throw a boomerang, and then proceeded to tell us about Mad Max 2, where a feral kid (his words) has a boomerang with razor blades on it and it chops off some guys hand. Just kind of random, but those kinds of interactions make the day ten times better. Aussies aren't shy about starting up a conversation.
When we got back to the hostel we had a new roommate, Rosie from Britain. Apparently, she was not supposed to be in our room, but the hostel messed up. It didn't matter anyway, as we were leaving Saturday morning for Kakadu, but it still kind of caught us off guard. She'll make a reprise in a later blog post, perhaps in the Fun Story section.
My next post will be about our first day in Kakadu National Park, hopefully I'll get it up here later tonight, after we come back from the casino. I'm definitely not going to be gambling, it'll just be fun to finally be allowed into one.
-Haley
P.S. The McDonald's here don't have a dollar menu. And I think they call the value meals, mates meals...but I could be wrong on that one.
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