TOD Tour 2.0 Day 57 - Museum, Art Gallery & RFDS

A reconstruction of a street scene after Tracy

Our second day using the Big Red Bus and it was all highlights.

We started at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory. Boy, what a collection and isn't it well curated! In one gallery, a collection of works ranging from indigenous art, through photography and even film, celebrated the relationship between the moon and earth. So many different angles and ideas and such quality in the artworks.

Upstairs, the finalists in the Telstra National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Awards were of staggering quality and every turn provided new treasures. Amazingly talented people.

In the museum galleries, there was such a diverse range of exhibitions. The gun exhibition is about Cyclone Tracy, which all but destroyed Darwin on Christmas Eve, 1974. Stories, pictures  and powerful video images shot by the ABC by their on the spot reporter on Christmas Day. There were excerpts from Major General Alan Stretton's diary, the man placed in charge of recovery operations by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and even a database of people evacuated from Darwin in the weeks after the cyclone. It was all very powerful but the part of the exhibition which shook you to the core was just a small room with two entry points. A small, lightless room, filled with the actual recorded sounds of Tracy as she ripped Darwin apart. Standing there in the dark, the hand in front of your face invisible and the screams of the wind and crashing of timber and corrugated iron the only sensory input ...it was unnerving.

This is very clever curation.

An exhibition of the early Territorians paints a picture of rugged individuals who took on hardships as though they were a new shirt.

Natural history at MAGNT is an immersion in taxidermy and so many different ways of making animals interesting, especially for children. A long rising ramp of glass cases of birds and reptiles and shells and butterflies captured to attention and sparked the excitement of a succession of children as they climbed it. At the top of the ramp is Sweetheart, another triumph for taxidermy. Formerly a 5.1 metre, 760kg estuarine crocodile who terrorised fishermen in the Finniss River system fifty km from Darwin, by attacking their boats and chewing on the propellers of their outboard motors. Between 1974 and 1979, the activities of this alpha male became known across the world. Parks and Wildlife contracted two crocodile hunters to capture Sweetheart but he died after being anaesthetised.

There is a fabulous cafe which overlooks the water, with a good range of food choices and which serves a very good cup of coffee.

Entry to this amazing facility is free. Can you believe it?

We caught the BRB to Stokes Hill Wharf and had fish and chips overlooking Darwin Harbour. Not bad.

On the spur of the moment, we went into the RFDS Museum which is also on the end of the wharf and loved the virtual reality recreation of the bombing of Darwin. It was our first experience with VR and it was pretty impressive.

Click to see today's photos

After that it was buses back to the digs and a change of transport to get to Mindl Beach for the sunset markets. I know I'm supposed to be excited by one of Australia's most famous markets but ... really ... it was just lots of food stalls, a few musos bleeding their hearts out, jewelry, tie dye clothing, leather belts ... you know the drill. Sue and I watched the sunset on Mindl beach, just the two of us and a couple of thousand people taking photos of the falling sun with iPhones taking flash photos. It was so romantic.

Darwin has a lot to offer. I'm starting to think seven days may not be enough.