First stop of the day was another markets – the Parap Village Markets. A really well known and loved market by Darwin locals – so much so, that people apparently trek across Darwin to come here to have a laksa for breakfast from Mary’s every Saturday morning. I did have dreams of having laksa for breakfast, but I didn’t end up feeling keen for it at 9am in the morn. And by the time 11am rolled around, the line was enormous. However, another mango smoothie definitely went down a treat (from the same stall as we visited on Thursday evening at Mindil Beach) – Debbie and the kids all got their own smoothies as well and it made for a delicious and cool morning tea, especially as the humidity of the day really started to kick in mid-morning. Before smoothie time though, we’d wandered through all of the different stalls that were there and the kids picked up a couple of little things they liked. We had a great time chatting with a didgeridoo maker and artist – Daniel bought a small boomerang from him with a long-necked turtle on it. After chatting about how much Eliza loved echidnas, he very generously gave her a small rock with an echidna painted on it, which made her day! Both designs were really similar to others we’ve learnt about north of Alice Springs – mostly animal paintings, and all using really thin lines for the paintings.
From there, we headed across to the Darwin Military Museum. It was a really interesting time walking through the different displays about Darwin’s involvement in World War II. The highlight was probably a short video presentation they had of the bombing of Darwin in February 1942 – essentially recreating the moment it all happened, using photos from the day. It was quite intense, and makes you appreciate just how awful that experience must’ve been for those in Darwin. The rest of the museum was a series of displays inside, and then a lot of vehicles and other exhibits outside. They made use of the old gun turrets at East Point, and a bunker, for some of the displays. It was a lot of reading and taking it all in – but the kids definitely gained a bit better understanding of WWII from the perspective of Darwin. There was lots of curious questions about why Japan wanted to bomb Australia though…
It was getting close to lunchtime at this stage, but given the huge smoothies for morning tea none of us were hugely hungry. So we decided to keep the WWII theme going, and we headed to the Oil Storage Tunnels, down beside the Darwin waterfront. We knew from reviews that this would only be a short visit – and it was. We probably only spent about 30 minutes there. But it was still incredible to be able to go into these enormous underground tanks and read all about the history of them. The kids really enjoyed the experience too.
The plan for the afternoon was to let the kids have a swim in the pool here in the apartment complex. But knowing that it was actually quite a small pool, and that the kids would probably get a bit bored in a short amount of time, Debbie found this amazing place in the northern suburbs of Darwin: Leanyer Recreation Park. It’s a beautiful big swimming pool, plus a small waterpark for littler kids, plus 3 huge waterslides! All put together by the NT Government, and all completely free. As we headed there, I half expected it to be incredibly busy given it was a Saturday afternoon – but it was actually not too bad at all! As expected, the kids pretty much spent all their time on the waterslides, and absolutely loved it. After a while, they managed to get Debbie to go on quite a few times with them as well. And yep, I definitely had a bit of regret for deciding that I wouldn’t swim this arvo! Although everything earlier in the day was great fun, there was definitely a feeling of tiredness after spending all that time out in the humidity – so it was just a perfect way to finish off the day.
