Darwin, Australia: Crocodiles, Cyclones, Bombs, and Snakes – Oh My!

Darwin, Australia: It started with a romantic Fanny Bay beach walk, until I found out that saltwater crocodiles crawl over rocks there. Oh, and the bombs. Oh, and the cyclones and snakes. Let’s just call this the Death to Humans Day.

Before I get to all that, an important discovery: A new favorite pool! In my last post I said

the Sanctuary pool was behind a pay wall – not true (so don’t believe everything you read on the internet…). Anyway, What I thought was the private pool is actually the adults-only Lotus Pool, just steps from our room. Very peaceful and almost empty, except for a man floating on his back with his eyes closed the entire time I was there. I mean, why not?

So it may outrank my fave Terrace Pool before this is over. Padre hasn’t tried it yet, so we’ll see what he thinks. Still

going to do the Japanese Baths, but not naked (horrors). The Japanese culture is fine with the naked thing, I hear, but luckily the Baths offer swimsuit hours for prudes (also called Americans).

Diamond Princess sailed in to Darwin before dawn but we don’t know exactly when, since we aren’t sure what time OR day it is. Time zones keep changing, sometimes by the ½ hour. Then I discovered that my I-phone calendar is changing dates I entered months ago, on its own to ‘adjust’ I guess, but not to the right dates. Curses, magic I-phone. Note to self: I-phone calendar is useless on journeys across several time zones.

So we’re all mixed up, and in a few hours we cross the Equator for the first time ever.

Found out we’re polliwogs before we cross, shellbacks afterward. To ‘initiate’ the polliwogs onboard, the Princess staff celebrated with Neptune’s Ceremony – volunteer

polliwogs kissed fish and smiled while crew slathered them with icky stuff, including eggs. These two polliwogs watched the fun from the highest, safest deck we could reach, and made a note: Never volunteer for things on a cruise ship.

Even though we learned about lots of deadly things here, we found the charming city of Darwin a beautiful place, despite the bad hit it took a few days ago from Cyclone Nora.

Huge trees down everywhere, and we arrived in the midst of the cleanup. After we learned about Cyclone Tracy later in the day, we realized that the recent cyclone was just a baby. Monster Cyclone Tracy savagely destroyed the place in 1974, more on that below.

So we read the bus schedule wrong because we had no clue what time it was, and arrived at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territories an hour before opening time. A fortuitous mistake, because if we hadn’t we might not have taken our romantic hour-long walk on the empty

beautiful beach. But at dinner that night, our tablemate informed us that saltwater crocs sun among the rocks where I had gathered shells, on that very beach. Or at least that’s what his tour guide told him. Tall tale or no, now I’m on the lookout for crocs everywhere, especially after seeing creepy crocs up close and personal at Crocosaurus Cove later in the day – including one named Chopper.

Then there were the bombs, on islands near the beach we

walked on. Of course there were. This is the very area my father’s Merchant Marine ship sailed in WWII – Dad’s ship left without him at one port, due to imminent bombing attacks. So it makes sense that there’s still ordnance lying around or buried under the sand. I’m upset with myself that I didn’t reread my father’s WWII Merchant Marine log before the trip, because as I study our

ship map, I recognize places I’m sure he wrote about. It’s one of the first things I plan to read when I get home.

When we finally made it into the museum, I found a kitty! The Cyclone Tracy Exhibit included this news article about a poor man who only saved his sink and his cat. I stepped into a soundproof room to hear an actual tape recording made during the height of the cyclone – simply terrifying. Cyclone Tracy killed 66 people, and 40,000 Darwin

residents were evacuated to other parts of Australia because the damage was almost total. I can’t forget one man’s riveting account of his family’s ordeal, including details such as how men’s hands were badly injured from gripping mattresses over their children’ heads for hours during the height of the storm.

It’s a testament to human resilience how lovely the city

looks today – but I bet these new waterfront condos are built to the highest Cyclone Code standards. I hope so.

We both thoroughly enjoyed another part of the museum devoted to Indigenous art. I just finished noted journalist (and Aborigine) Stan Grant’s timely book Talking to My Country, in which he addresses modern-day Aborigine issues and culture. In another post I plan to share what

I’ve learned about conflicts between Australia’s dominant, convict-origins culture and its ancient Aborigine one. Australia and America have much in common, in terms of simmering racial tensions whose roots stretch back hundreds of years, to slavery and conquest.

After the Culture Museum, there had to be more crocs and snakes, right? Of course! At Crocosaurus Cove, we saw all things toothy and scaly, including snakes, crocs, and lizards in a vast array of shapes, sizes, and colors, all completely creepy. I don’t mind Seattle’s garter snakes since they’re good for my garden, but these guys, whoa – a fast bite and you are toast. And one of our sons will love the fact that we watched a very dumb snake (according to Aiden his handler) eat a dead mouse. Took forever, but eventually the tip of the rat’s tail disappeared into the dumb snake’s mouth. Slow but steady, he got the job done, Aidan told us. Ewwwww.

Aiden also horrified a little girl sitting in front of us, when he asked if anyone had a pet cat (she did), and proceeded to explain how awful feral cats are to native wildlife in Australia. You thought I was going to say Aiden told a story about a snake eating a kitty, didn’t you? No, he told a story about a snake eating Bindi, the Maltese terrier, to illustrate that snakes can eat pretty big things even when they’re not that big. I’m sure the little girl figured out that this included cats. The museum adopted the killer snake, so when Bindi’s murderer finally

expelled Bindi’s dog tag two years later, they tracked down her owner, who was no longer interested in reclaiming it for some reason. Ewwwww again.

After all the museum-going, we made it back to Diamond Princess alive and well, despite the mortal threats at every turn. Now we’re halfway through a four-day journey from Darwin to our next stop in Malaysia, and today is Good Friday (we think). Soon we will watch the sun rise, for our first Easter on the high seas – Happy Easter, one and all, and thanks for following along!