Darwin

We were in fact in Darwin three times on this trip
 - none of them for long. Personally I'm not a big fan of Darwin at all, although to be completely fair, it's something of a prejudice, possibly based around that fact that I had my first, and only major car accident there, rolling a friend's car and spending a day lying in a casualty ward waiting for an X-ray. A day! Despite the prejudice, Darwin is a country town masquerading as a capital city - it has the feel of Canberra, but not the massive government largesse.

We arrived the first time at 2 AM on the cheap flight out of Sydney - we could probably have slept on the terminal floor, but we had booked a motel nearby (walking distance if not for the US air base fencing) so off we went. We had to wake up the proprietor because we'd lost our late night access code (over-reliance on internet technology) but they kept their grumpiness under control. We left at 8 for the Kununurra flight, so not a lot was done apart from dozing.
 fitfully between the traffic noises from the Stuart Highway.

The sunset is a shot taken on the 2nd pass through, waiting for the Mary River "bus". We stayed in Fannie Bay, for no particular reason, but it turned out to be a good decision. The sunset is the view from the Yacht Club outdoor dining area, and the food was as good as the view. Really, best club/pub food I've had for ages. The early evening is of course the best time in the tropics, so all round the mood was excellent. The motel was - adequate - so we slept well & the staff hospitality was immense, sow e were able to organise the logistics of departure & bag storage smoothly before heading off for an early morning run. (The other good time of day, is, of course, immediately post-dawn) We started off with a stickybeak at "early Qantas Hangar", not exciting, but informative. It's now used by the vintage car club, and that's quite interesting as well.

Post-run we headed off to the Museum/Art Gallery/Botanic Gardens, to fill in the day until 2 PM. This balcony scene from the Art Gallery wouldn't have changed much in 50 years. Good coffee, totally random service. Three tables in  our section waited more than 20 minutes for coffees, one of them in fact leaving in disgust. We, OTOH, got service

and refills in seconds.

I was briefly tempted to make witty remarks at the expense of the pensioner tour bus patrons - then I realised that there's no relevant difference between them and me. Startling thought, although one that I am starting to get increasingly frequently. My hair will be grey too soon, then what actual difference will there be at all?

The collection at the museum/gallery is small but interesting. Somehow I failed to take any pictures of the boats, which ranged from small dugouts to largish fishing trawlers and - educated by my own limited sailing experiences - seriously impressed me with the ingenuity/determination/skill of the sailing world. Not that the vast majority of sailors would feel that they had any choice, as they would be/have been engaged in traditional family businesses, or making career choices from a very limited range of options.

The north coast of Australia is much closer to Southeast Asia than the East coast, which means that the Asian-Aboriginal trade cultures here

go back further than any European involvement in Australia. If Putin were Indonesian, he'd be able to make as strong a case for invading Darwin as Crimea. Well, he would have been once, if Australia hadn't been busy confiscating Indonesian fishing vessels for the last 50 years to top up their museums with. It raises questions about "taken-for-granted" versus "militarily-willed".

I took these two photographs of indigenous art because I particularly like the evolving indigenous forms; it's possible to see both traditional Australian forms blending with developing European ideas of representation in both these pieces. From the air, a lot of the landscape between Darwin and Kununurra looks exactly like the first piece, and it's not hard to imagine (although certainly not necessary) aerial landscapes in the second picture as well.

Finally, a companion picture to the first; another sunset. I think this is coming into Darwin, which means that is actually the SAME sunset as Fannie Bay, just an hour earlier and a few 1000 feet higher. But I'm not sure if that's possible...and is that the wing of an Embraer 170?

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Greater minds than mine can pronounce. It's interesting how much water there is - how many inlets & estuaries - close to the coast, and then, how quickly they vanish as you head inland. Ten thousand years ago, when the Ice Age was in fuller swing and the ocean levels comparatively lower, the coast of Australia would have been far larger, and must have been a very hospitable place.