Thursday 12th August - Darwin

Home comforts.  We'd forgotten how nice it is to be in a house with all the modern conveniences we've adjusted to not having these last three months.  To sleep in a proper bed, to be able to make a cup of tea without having to set up the stove, to have the internet at your beck and call, to have a TV, a sofa, running water - I could go on, but I think you get the picture.  We spent the morning enjoying these things and didnít venture out until after lunch.  Bliss.

Tyres were our main priority as we'd been keeping our fingers crossed that our current ones would last the 2500km journey up from Alice Springs.  We had to fit our new spare in Tennant Creek and, had one of the other tyres failed, we would have had to get out the bead breakers and tyre levers as our other spare tyre was on the cracked rim.  Luck was with us and despite the worn through rubber and missing tread block we made it, and the local Tyrepower actually had a set of BFGoodrich KM2s in our size.  Not normally kept in stock, they must have been ordered in for somebody who never picked them up, so on they went.  Fresh rubber for the Land Rover and relief for us.

Mindl Beach market is a Thursday and Sunday evening institution in Darwin and is a major draw for the tourists who come to browse the various stalls and sample the food on offer.  Trinkets, t-shirts, scarves, jewellery, cane toad or kangaroo scrotum purses, didgeridoos, bull whips, road train canvas made into bags and hats, Aboriginal art - you can get all sorts.

There's an eastern bias to the food on offer with so many tempting smells that I had to get Anne to choose for me.  She settled on honey coated chicken with noodles, and chilli beef with rice to share.  Nutella crepes with banana/strawberries and cream ensured that we were really stuffed as we sat around and chattered with Mitch and Chelsea and some of their friends.  Live bands performed on the nearby stage, fire eaters set a bad example to enthralled children, and the bull whip man demonstrated his wares.  Evening entertainment doesn't get much better.