Darwin Day 5

Today took a walk down into the Cullen Bay Marina for breakfast. It was really windy but nice. On return, the National Trust property was open so we decided to venture in. We were amazed at these rather plain, but interesting houses on the outside were just so practical and innovative for tropical climates.

Built in 1938, they were probably quite “out there” by our city standards. They were built for the “top brass” and higher echelons of government officials, but were just so practical. The lovely volunteer who we spoke to said that cyclone Tracey put an end to the two storey tropical house. They were then replaced by single storey houses that then required air conditioning and didn’t have the same ventilation.

These homes were vastly superior. The only problem with the cyclone was the fact the roofs weren’t secured properly. This caused most of the damage with all the flying debris destroying other, buildings etc.

The particular house we were viewing was damaged during the bombing during WWII and lost its roof during cyclone Tracey, but otherwise was still intact. The downstairs area was built with steel frame and concrete surrounds with concrete floors and was in-filled with asbestos shutters from floor to ceiling with some windows and doors around. This allowed for fabulous ventilation from all directions. At the rear was the kitchen and a toilet. Basically the living room was on the ground floor. Upstairs was the beautiful Cyprus pine floors throughout with a central corridor with two bedrooms on either side and the front verandah. The bedrooms both opened up to the balcony area and again the same asbestos louvers were all around upstairs. There was a small bathroom with the same louvers to the rear with concrete shower base and asbestos sheeting to shower and bath. It was so simple, practical and just so comfortable inside. It also had huge 10 foot ceilings on both floors with ceiling fans installed in the 50s making it even more practical. Its sad Darwin doesn’t have many of these houses left. I do have to say that people with money are building houses along these lines today with louvers and on quite high stilts throughout the surrounding inner city areas. Coupled with the huge plantings of large shady trees, these homes don’t need air conditioning, even in the “build up”.

Next we moved on to the WWII Oil Storage Tunnels built under Darwin’s city centre. When the oil storage area of Darwin Harbour was bombed in 1940, the Government decided to construct 9 underground oil storage tunnels to save this happening again. They were hand dug through the rock beneath Parliament House. Several tonnes of concrete were mixed and carried in by hand and lined the holes, and this was further lined in steel to seal the fuels from escaping. It cost an exorbitant sum of money to build and was never actually commissioned. They currently have two tunnels open to the pubic and the rest are still sealed off. All the information pertaining to the war and these tunnels are still protected by the secrecy act, and to this date they don’t know why they were just sealed off and left. It was suggested that it was embarrassing to the Government of the day to admit to the waste of money, but we wont know for a bit longer.

It was interesting to see the many photos that lined the wall of the soldiers during their rest time in Darwin, along with other local destinations at the time being photographed with sand bags and the like protecting them from further damage.

To top off this perfect day we decided to take in a harbour dinner cruise. We boarded a lovely old sailing ketch called the Albert Noble, and motored off into the sunset for a 4 course dinner.

After partaking of 2 bottles of champagne and prawns, oysters, and barramundi it was finished off with a hot chocolate dip with marshmallows and fruit to dip. Oh what a lovely finale for our last night in Darwin.