Gismo Queen and her King

Day 23 - Darwin

It was nice to spend a day in civilisation, and to finish the day Darwin style!

We had a bit of a sleep in, and enjoyed TV in bed for a while (ahh, civilisation!). Up for breakfast and making plans for the day. Lisa and Paul decided to head off into town so we planned to meet up at the sunset markets. We spent some time cleaning the inside of the caravan, before we headed off to the shopping centre Natalie recommended. Casurina Shopping Centre was very civilised so we spent some time there looking for the things we needed, then finished up at Woolworths for a grocery shop. I was puzzled to see the BWS attached to Woolworths was closed so I asked the check out guy who said it is closed on Sundays. I almost laughed - it was just like Borroloola last weekend! Anyway, we found a drive through and restocked the beer supplies.

After unpacking at the caravan, we then headed into town for the Mindil Beach Sunset markets. The markets are mostly about food (and oh what great food smells there were!) but we saw a baby croc that Kobi got to hold (she enjoyed it more than the expression on her face shows!):
We then indulged in some shopping before dinner, as more and more people rolled in. Some of them were very prepared - with fold up chairs, tables, wine glasses all ready for a nice dinner out. We started with entree and I was the only one of our party who was up for the oysters (recommended to me by our car salesman at Ballarat Toyota! That might seem strange, but he did live here for a couple of years!)
Thousands of people descended to the beach in time for the sunset - it must be the thing to do. I suspect these were the tourists only, as the natives who had set themselves up for dinner, continued to eat and drink!
The sunset was pretty though, even with a band of cloud sitting just above the horizon.
 Our dinner was an ecclectic collection of all sorts of food from seafood laksa to crocodile burgers, from roast beef rolls to vegeterian spring rolls. We washed it down with lime juice then smoothies and can understand why locals meet here for a casual Sunday night meal - it was yummy.

On the way out, we stopped to check out the whip man. Kobi had a go at trying to crack the whip but we think she's a little bit little for that. A few minutes later, Mick the whip man put on a show. He did a lot better than the young girl we saw at the Longreach Hall of Fame!

posted by Tracey @ 9:38 pm