Darwin

We had booked into the marina at Cullen Bay in Darwin for two weeks. There were a few minor repairs and maintenance that needed doing on the yacht, as well as the massive task of provisioning for the Kimberley, and we also planned on doing some sightseeing around Darwin and its surrounds.

We spent the first few days attacking our jobs list, sourcing parts and ordering any we couldn’t find in local shops; a new battery for our handheld marine radio and an impella kit for the outboard. We had already ordered a new sensor for the anchor chain counter, and while we waited for it to arrive to a friend’s house in Darwin, we laid out our anchor chain on the deck, painting the links a bright yellow every five metres. This was just an extra precaution and when the sensor arrived, Matt installed it successfully so we have a working chain counter now. Matt rewired the battery charger for the bow thruster and stripped down the outboard motor. I did cleaning and laundry and started planning and writing lists for provisions. In between these jobs, we caught up with our friends Brian and Sandra from Sealeaf, Terry and Leonie from Sens de la Vie, and Al from Never Die Wondering.

We met Brian and Sandra at the Mindil Beach markets on one Thursday evening, and then met Terry and Leonie there the next. The Midil Beach markets are full of food trucks serving cuisines from all over the world, and are situated next to the beach where the crowd gathers to watch the sunset. Setting over the ocean, it is a truly spectacular sight, but we were a little taken aback when the crowd applauded the sun as it finally sank over the horizon. The Mindil markets was something I remembered fondly from when I lived in Darwin 14 years ago. But this time I found the crowds to be very overwhelming. While I’ve never been good in crowds, I think I am going to struggle even more after our often solitary lifestyle on the yacht. We especially realised how much we preferred to see these gorgeous sunsets from on our own boat, without being surrounded by hundreds of other people. Have we become very spoilt?!

Sealeaf was docked in Tipperary Waters marina, which was on the other side of town to us, and right next to the Dinah Beach Cruising Yacht Club. We’d heard about this interesting yacht club from some locals we met at a pub, and so we ventured out there several times to meet Brian for some drinks while Sandra was home in NSW for a while. Dinah Beach was a colourful place, full of interesting characters and old salts. Terry and Leonie also met us there with their friends Nick and Cass who’d recently moved to Darwin. Dave and Michelle from Luna Sea also came out one night too.

One Saturday evening Cass organised us all tickets to go to the Botanical Gardens to watch the Darwin Symphony Orchestra play with a band and some singers. The theme was Disco and I thoroughly enjoyed the evening sitting on our picnic rug and bopping away to the familiar tunes.

We ventured out to the Adelaide River for a jumping crocodile cruise. Matt’s family had given me a voucher for an experience for my birthday earlier this year, and we hadn’t used it in Cairns, so I decided this would be the perfect opportunity. The tour bus drove us an hour or so out of Darwin where we boarded a boat for a cruise up the Adelaide River. They promised jumping crocodiles, and that’s what we saw! We hadn’t really seen any crocodiles on our trip so far, apart from the one off in the distance at Port Essington. These ‘trained’ crocs came over to the boat when it approached and jumped out of the water to grab pieces of buffalo meat that were dangled over the side of the boat.

You could argue that there are questionable ethics about training crocodiles to view boats with humans in them as a source of food, but we also learnt some valuable facts about saltwater crocs and their habits. Crocodiles are opportunistic predators and given a chance, will definitely strike. They do lie in wait to observe and stalk, waiting for an opportunity, however they are after maximum gain for minimal effort, and tire quickly after very short bursts of energy. So if you follow some basic precautions and maintain a constant alertness and awareness, then you should be fine. They are definitely creatures to be respected.

Matt took some incredible photos, here are a few of his best:

We spent a day playing tourist on the Big Red Bus, just like the ‘hop on hop off’ buses that we so loved in Europe. First stop was Stokes Hill Wharf and the Royal Flying Doctor and World War II Museum. The interactive holographic exhibitions they have there are pretty cool. We continued the bus into the waterfront precinct and then wandered back into town via Bicentennial Park. After stopping at a pub for a drink, we missed the last round of the hop on hop off bus, so we walked back to the marina.

The public bus service in Darwin is pretty good and we were able to catch buses most places we needed to go. The marina was only a few kilometres from town and it was an easy walk in so we did that a lot too. One of the more popular ways to get around Darwin, however, was via the orange e-scooters and e-bikes that were littered all over the streets. I was hesitant to use the scooters at first, since they didn’t seem overly stable and I envisaged all sorts of accidents and injuries that might halt our trip. After seeing people of all ages, sizes and co-ordination levels managing to use them successfully, I was a bit more open to the idea though. One day on his way back to the marina, Matt discovered a bike that had its lights on and decided to see if it would work for him. We hadn’t downloaded the app that would allow us to hire the scooters, not thinking that we would use them. But the lights were on, so Matt jumped on and got it working and rode home in style. We’re not sure how the payment works, if it’s a time thing or a distance thing, so we don’t know if some unfortunate soul who forgot to log off was charged or not. I don’t think so though.

The night we were walking home from the concert in the Botanical Gardens we came across a scooter with the lights on. Matt looked at me, ‘Want to try it?’ By now, he’d had a bit of experience on them, so I nodded. We struggled to get on at first, but a couple passing by laughed at us and assured us that it could be done. Encouraged, we had another go and then we were on, gliding home, me standing at the front and Matt reaching over me to steer. I had to get off halfway up a steep incline, but we flew down the long hill to Cullen Bay, reaching a speed of just over 30 kms. I was glad I’d tried what seems to now be an iconic Darwin experience, but probably won’t be tempting fate again.

I started the big job of provisioning our boat for 6 to 8 weeks without the ability to resupply. I did several trips to the supermarket, lugging groceries back on the bus or in a taxi. Leonie and I had a girls day out, visiting several different shopping centres and picking up bits and pieces that we needed. Nick drove us on a culinary shopping tour of Darwin, visiting several different fresh food markets, delis, Asian grocers and a wholesale butcher. It was a huge help to be able to source everything that we needed in the comfort of a car. Many thanks Nick!

On a Sunday morning, Matt and I walked into town to visit the Crocosaurus Cove. It was one of the tourist attractions that was still on our list. The Croc Cove was home to several ginormous, five metre plus crocs, all in separate enclosures. Most of these crocs had been removed from places once they’d been designated ‘problem’ crocs, either for being aggressive towards humans or other crocs and so got to live out their days entertaining and horrifying tourists at the Cove. We watched some people get in the ‘Cage of Death’ immersion tank and be lowered into a croc enclosure. The staff then waved a chunk of meat around to entice the croc to come over to the tank. Over he came, and there he was, staring at the two punters in the tank, separated only by a piece of perspex. Hopefully a very strong piece!!

As we walked around the reptile enclosure there, a woman looked up from her phone and said ‘We’re going into lockdown today.’ ‘No way,’ we told her, ‘we haven’t heard anything of the sort.’ A quick Google search on our phone confirmed her story, however. It was about 11.30am and lockdown was to begin at 1pm. For 72 hours. I couldn’t believe it. It all felt a bit surreal. I felt disappointed, frustrated and helpless.

We wandered dejectedly through the crocodile area for a bit and an announcement played over the loudspeaker about closing early due to lockdown. Matt looked at me, ‘Let’s go to the pub for a last drink.’ We crossed the street to Shenanigan’s, but they weren’t serving drinks anymore. The next pub down was though, the young girl seemingly reluctantly pouring Matt a beer. As we sat outside, we rang Brian and Sandra to see if they’d heard the news. They had and were currently on a bus into town. Pub sounds great, they said and ten minutes later were sitting with us, the boys drinking beer. The pub began to fill up, people talking loudly about the lockdown and masks and restrictions. It was the first time Darwin had had these sort of measures imposed, and the first time for us too. We’d managed to avoid lockdowns until now.

Since our Sunday afternoon plans had now been scuppered, we decided to go and hang out on Sealeaf. ‘We just have to stop by the bottle shop, though,’ Brian said, ‘we haven’t got anything to drink on the boat.’ Walking the short distance to Liquorland we found it all shut up, but the Coles was chockers, with a huge line already formed outside, winding down the street. A local noticed us looking at the closed bottle shop and told us that it’s always closed on Sundays. That it’s an NT thing, nothing to do with lockdowns or covid. Bummer!

We headed off down the street, hoping to grab a taxi, when we saw a guy with a carton of beer under his arm. ‘Hey mate, where’d you get that?’ ‘Down there,’ he gestured, ‘Vintage Cellars is open.’ Vintage Cellars was indeed open and it was crammed with people. A queue of people snaked through the drive-through and another wound all the way through the small store. There was barely room to move inside, but people laughed and joked as they manoeuvred their way to find what they needed and waited for their turn to pay. It was a long wait, but hey, what else have we got to do, everyone was saying. The store manager was a young woman who seemed bewildered by the onset of customers. ‘We aren’t closing,’ she kept saying, ‘we’ll be open tomorrow, there’s no need to panic buy.’

Lady, I thought, these people aren’t panic buying. They had planned on spending their Sunday afternoon in a restaurant or at a pub watching the rugby final, and now they have to go home. With less than two hours notice. Of course they want to buy some grog to take home. We lugged our purchases into a taxi and spent the afternoon and evening on Sealeaf, talking about what this meant for us now.

It was Sunday 27th June and we were meant to be leaving Cullen Bay marina on Thursday 1st July, motoring out to Fannie Bay to watch the NT Day fireworks and then sailing out of Darwin on the Friday. It had seemed a perfect plan!! We had a day tour to Litchfield National Park with Brian and Sandra booked on the Tuesday, plus I had also hoped to get to the Museum and Art Gallery before we left. But that was not to be. Our tour was rescheduled to the Thursday, but then the lockdown was extended for another two days, so it was cancelled.

Maybe we should just leave early, we thought, when it became clear that the lockdown was being extended. We can’t do any of the touristy things we wanted to do anyway, so maybe we should just shop and go. Get out of here. Well, that was easier said than done. It turned out that the marina management refused to let us out while the lockdown was on, unless we got permission from the government. We were literally locked in.

Let me explain that. The marinas in Darwin are all accessed via locks, due to the extreme tides. You motor your boat into the lock, tie up, the doors close and then the water in the lock either goes up or down to match the water on the other side where you are going; either into the marina or out into the bay. It obviously needed to be operated by staff from the marina. And they were not willing to do so. We called several different government and regulatory services and had several intensely frustrating conversations. No one seemed to really know, no one seemed able to make a decision and no one seemed to have any common sense. It was frustrating and infuriating.

We resigned ourselves to the fact that we were indeed locked in and there seemed to be nothing we could do about it. We spent the next four days on our boat in the marina. We spent the time doing our last few jobs so that we would be ready to go as soon as the lockdown was lifted. Matt and Terry borrowed Nick’s car and filled the gas bottles and petrol jerries. I cleaned, shopped and researched anchorages in the Kimberley. We had Terry and Leonie over for dinner and drinks on several nights, and their company and the laughs we had was just the distraction we all needed.

Since our holding tank (poo tank) was full, the marina staff agreed to let us out so that we could empty it. On the condition that we immediately return, of course! Here are some pics of the lock to show how it works. The boat is driven into the pen, loosely tied to the wall at the bow and stern, the lock doors then close and water begins to either pour in or out, in order to raise or lower the water level, depending on the tide at the time. We let out or pull in the lines as appropriate, and then the lock doors open, we remove our lines and motor out.

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We used the opportunity to also fill up our diesel tank and jerries at the pump outside the marina. Now, apart from the last fresh food shop and laundry run, we were as ready as we could be. Our fingers were tightly crossed that the lockdown would finish on Friday as promised. It was a long and anxious wait that morning. When we got the word that the lockdown was finally lifted, at midday, it was all stations go. I rushed to the laundry to get a final load of washing done, had a last proper shower and then raced into town for the final fresh food shop. Matt had booked the lock for around 4pm and at 4.30pm we were outside the marina and motoring around to Fannie Bay. It felt ridiculously good to be free.

Once anchored in Fannie Bay, we quickly dropped the tender and headed ashore to the Darwin Sailing Club where Terry, Leonie, Brian, Sandra, Nick, Cass and Al and his friend Kylie were all waiting for us. There was a festive atmosphere in the club, as people celebrated being able to get back to their lives. We had a great night and it was lovely to be able to see everyone again and farewell them before we headed off. Brian and Sandra and Terry and Leonie were also heading to the Kimberley, but they had some delays so weren’t leaving Darwin just yet. It turned out we wouldn’t see them again for another 13 days, until they arrived in the Berkeley River.

As we went to bed that night, cherishing our freedom, we reflected on how lucky we are and how lucky we have been. The five days we had in lockdown, while frustrating and inconvenient, are nothing compared to the disruption that our family and friends, especially those in Melbourne and Victoria, have experienced. Personally, I don’t think lockdowns are a long term solution, and it is now abundantly clear that covid is going to be with us for the long term. Short sighted and narrow minded solutions, such as constant lockdowns and snap border closures are not only incredibly unsophisticated and lazy policy, but are also doing untold damage to our country and our people. We are a smart people and a smart country. We can do better and we should do better. We deserve better.

But for now, the two of us were able to put all those issues behind us. We were in the incredibly fortunate position of sailing off into the remote and isolated Kimberley for the next two months. We would rarely see any other people, we would have no phone or internet reception and hear no news of what was happening in the world. I couldn’t wait!!

Don’t think there are no crocodiles because the water is calm.

Malaysian Proverb