Darwin

We like Darwin. Its such a friendly cheerful town where everyone seems to get out and get involved in all the local events. Where else would you get an event like this, the beer-can regatta:

Although its a Capital City, the capital of Northern Territories, it is still just a town about the size George. Just before we got here they celebrated Territory Day, a public holiday that marks their “independence”, the founding of the Northern Territories, with fireworks displays. We gather that it must have been quite a show based on the number of left over fireworks that were let off in the next few days. They are isolated from the rest of Australia by thousands of miles of desert, but they aren’t that independent. Almost everything in Darwin has been transported right across Australia by truck or ship, and then heavily marked up by the time it gets to the shops: It’s an extra expensive town in an already expensive country, quite a challenge for those of us travelling on feeble South African Rands. But they do manage to get almost everything that Australia has to offer. They even have my favorite shop, Bunnings, the chain of massive hardware stores.

The only noticeable sign of independence is that they have their own time zone, 30 minutes and 3 decades behind Queensland. There’s a lovely old fashioned innocence and cheerful friendliness everywhere. There’s no crime, no traffic, kids are polite, there’s no litter or graffiti but they do have some groovy murals:

 

Rules are relaxed. Careening, the practice of parking a boat on the beach at high tide so you can clean and paint the hull is banned in most developed countries, including Australia. But it is still standard practice in Darwin. I used the opportunity to get Pegasos scrubbed and antifouled. 

In many respects Darwin is an unlikely place to find a city. Its insanely far from everywhere. It’s surrounded by Aboriginal lands, which means incessant bush fires and no attempt at farming anything. Crocodiles, Jellyfish and muddy water make the beaches quite unappealing. The tidal range of up to 7 meters combined with the very flat shallow bays make for challenging shipping. The summers are hellish. Every now and then a Cyclone rips through and damages everything. Imagine the ferocity of the storm that reduced their original town hall down to these few broken walls.

But despite the challenges its a wonderful and busy town. Every day there would be an event on at the Darwin Sailing Club where we became temporary members, or at the Trailer Boat Club next door to the north or on Mindil Beach just next door to the south, making Fannie Bay where we anchored quite a festive place.

Here’s a few more photos of the beer-can regatta. A few boats made entirely out of beer cans race around a short route off Mindil beach while hundreds of small boats raft up and anchor together and most of the townsfolk join in to support the event.

The crowds and boats make enough noise to chase away all the crocodiles. Normally it would not be safe to swim here.

We met up with Bronwyn and Gary, old friends of Marcelle’s from Cape Town 25 years ago and now living in Darwin.

We saw another boat like ours, a Jim Brown designed Searunner 37 trimaran. The owners are Alan and Bronwyn (another Bronwyn). And with typical kind Darwin hospitality they collected us from the yacht club, took us to their home, showed us around their boat and then drove us to town for shopping.

Almost everyone seems to be involved in boating. Very young kids get taught to sail in tiny little dinghy yachts:

The very competitive Australian Tasar sailing nationals competition was being held at the same time. We saw the start of the Darwin to Dili (East Timor) yacht race. The Darwin to Sumlaki (further East in Indonesia) is soon. And then there’s the Sail to Indonesia Rally, which we have joined. It’s a fairly informal group of 25 yachts sailing more or less together on the same route across Indonesia. The organisers helped with Visa and boat clearance formalities and a few events have been planned for various destinations along the way.

But first we have to cross the Timor Sea to get to Kupang, the nearest entry point Indonesia. It involves a long sail through 4 nights. Marcelle opted to fly. I would have liked to do so as well but that wasn’t really feasible. So I recruited two young polish backpackers as crew. Here’s Maciej and Manic:

They are attempting to be the first Poles to hitch-hike all the way around the world. They started two and a half years ago and have sailed on a series of yachts across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. They were a delight to have on board. They are very capable and eager to help with everything and good company with funny stories and interesting insights of their travels. Most of the journey was desperately boring. There was very little wind and so we slowly and noisily motored nearly all the way. Sunrise and sunsets on the open sea and a few brief visits by dolphins were the highlights.

Eventually after 4 days and 9 hours we arrived where we are now: Kupang, Indonesia.