Darwin - Mandorah (that's not a typo)

Today we had an early start. After a late night fire from the bush behind our van was put out by the fire brigade around midnight, we took a walk down the cliff top path to the beach. Thinking it was a short stroll around a few rocks to the Cullen Bay Marina, we started climbing. After passing a lady sleeping in the rocks, she informed us she was waiting for the tide to go out before she ventured into Cullen Bay and off the rocks. After about 15 minutes of hiking through the rocks, we made it out the other end. Midget had a great time twisting and twirling through the rocks and the smells. We had a nice and windy breakfast down in the marina before returning to the van.

We were keen to re-visit the Botanical Gardens. They have a lovely range of beautiful gardens. Set up mainly by George Brown I think his name was, who decided to Green Darwin and turn it into the tropical place that it now is. I guess its somewhat like Broome, not tropical in the sense of the plantings that you see around the town, but tropical in terms of humidity etc. George setup the water features and got retic in, and from what I can gather, the Botanical Gardens was the nursery for the gardens of Darwin till a commercial nursery was actually set up. The frangipani’s at Barnett House were from the Botanical Gardens. There is also a new cycad garden, and soon to be opened biodynamic garden. It was still being mulched and watered in when we were there. Would like to see that when its up and running. There was also a great ginger garden.

The lovely gardener we bumped into was happy to see Midget running around having a great time chasing the chooks (native not commercial) she saw running around the bushes. She even had a pocket full of dog biscuits to encourage those who need no encouragement at all! How lovely!

We then decided to head to a place called Mandorah. For those of you living in Mandurah, you might have encountered some people over east who call Mandurah, Mandorah when pronouncing it. I am all the more totally surprised, given that the population is less than 100!

Its an interesting little spot. Just 15 minutes by ferry from Darwin, but 130kms drive from Darwin! Since the opening of the ferry service, the place has taken off. People are now commuting. Given the sad state that many of the houses are in – or should I say illegal state, I’m surprised that they’re asking $1.4m for a 5 acre ocean front block with a nice 3x2 house on it!

The creek about 1km from the spot we stopped at for the night. Midget had a great stick chasing and swim time followed by a rest in the carpark while we organised dinner. Another lady turned up about an hour later with her dog. She didn’t stay long and came back to say her dog was followed by a croc. He got out just in time. Amazing stuff. So you cant swim in Mandorah but they have a nice outlook. Looks like a few sailing boats hang out this way too.

We topped up our DVD collection in Darwin and now have Series 2, 3 and 6 of the Soprano’s that we’re watching. I have to say its nice having a TV to catch up on bits of news of the visual kind from time to time, but the DVDs are great! Up here, you have to wait a day to get the Australian so its out of date before you even get it. Interesting stuff!

PS Sorry mucked up our last day in Darwin. If you'd like to go back and re-read, we've corrected our missing items and added pics.