22 February 2000
Went in to Darwin again this morning after dropping ute into Mazda dealer for service. Not many people about first thing in the morning and had main mall almost to ourselves. But that soon changed. There was to be a demonstration later in the day against the NT's new mandatory sentencing legislation and people started arriving for that, and on top of that there were two American warships in town on their way to carry out relief work in East Timor. The ships were the USS Pearl Harbor and the USS (I forget the name). Between them they disgorged 2,000 American service personnel onto the streets. These were wandering everywhere and all queueing up at telephones and ATM's. And all speaking Americanese and doing generally disgusting things to the English language. On Saturday (after this current lot are gone) the USS Bonhomme Richard (a large aircraft carrier) is due to arrive and deposit 3,000 more. Apparently this week will be the largest influx of Americans since WW2.
Went for a walk to Lameroo Beach not far from city centre and just sat and watched the sea. After sitting quietly there on the rocks for a while we noticed the shells on the beach were moving. Weird. Then realized they were inhabited by small hermit crabs who, when the vibrations from our footsteps died away, recommenced scurrying about with their shells on their backs looking for food (or whatever it is hermit crabs look for). As we were leaving the beach we struck up a conversation with a group of aboriginal people who were also there. They were all from Thursday Island except for one younger lighter skinned fellow who was from South Australia and who the others referred to as "the foreigner". The oldest one of the group was a chap called Thomas Billy who on learning we were travelling around Australia asked us to send him postcards c/- Post Office, Darwin, which we will do.
For lunch went down to Fishermen's Wharf and had fish and chips. Food was just beautiful, but not much fun with sweat running everywhere. Lorraine was complaining that even her eyelids were sweating!
By this time ute was ready for collection so we went and got it. No major problems, just routine service.
From there went out to Casuarina Square again to do a bit more shopping, then back to motel.
Leaving Darwin tomorrow for Katherine again, then after revisiting Edith Falls and Katherine Gorge exiting Katherine south west for Kununurra or Wyndham in WA.