Darwin, Northern Territory

Saturday October 27,2012

Thursday night we moved our clock back 30 minutes!  One hour or two of time zone changes we are used to, but 30 minutes?  And, looking at a time zone map of Australia, the time differences are by territory or state, not north-south lines like in the States.  It must be confusing.

Again on Friday we needed to set the clocks back another 30 minutes,  next we are going to Lombok, Indonesia, so it might make sense.

Quick story;  we always bring an electric digital alarm clock with us so we can see what time it is in the middle of the night without getting up or using flashlights.  And, we can use it to wake us instead of having a phone call.  The ship is using 220 volts while in Australia and New Zealand, so we also brought a universal adapter for our clock.  The clock quit working right away.  Probably a voltage surge through the adapter.  We were lost without a visible clock so while in town on Friday, we searched out one at a K Mart.  12 bucks.  We thought it was the best $12 ever spent.  Ha!  We came back from dinner and a show, after being gone for 3 ½ hours and the clock had gained 40 minutes. 

In the port show for Darwin on Thursday, we learned that the city of Darwin has removed 265 crocodiles in the last couple of months from the Darwin Harbor.  Scary!  Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory and the northern most of the large cities in Australia.

We docked in Darwin at 9am Friday, and the outside temp was 93.2 F and 80% humidity.  In the afternoon at 3pm it was 95 F and the humidity was the same.  It felt very much like Maui.  We decided to walk around the town and to take a Hop-On Hop-Off bus.  It turned out that the bus only went to three stops, so we decided that there wasn’t that much to see via Hop-On.  We were advised by two different sources that a good bus ride was the #4 out to Casuarina, a northern suburb.  It went past beaches, the botanical gardens and through some very nice residential areas.  The ride took about 45 minutes and often the bus was very crowded, probably due to an unexpected influx of tourists!  Like us!  The bus transported a number of groups of Aboriginal people and they are a talkative, loud crowd.  The fare was $2, free if you had a senior card.  They accepted the King County Metro card John has, a nice perk.