Darwin City

Saturday 25th August

I can honestly say there's bugger all to photograph in Darwin itself, or Darwin City as it's sometimes referred to, yet despite this it's still a pleasant place to be, especially given that the temperature is hovering around 33 degrees and we're at least partially defrosted from the colder conditions down in Sydney.

Seeing as Batman has deserted us, Ella and I have been driving (and walking) around some of the main points of interest in the Lonely Planet Guide to the Northern Territory and Central Australia's section on Darwin, including the monument to the WWII bombings by those nasty Japanese (who bombed Darwin much harder than they bombed Pearl Harbour, you know, using more bombs and sustaining the attack for longer, though as this isn't America, they don't really shout about it). There are still some ships sunk in the harbour, though as I've not got my snorkel, you'll just have to take my word for that.

The sculpture in the second photo marks the completion of the telegraph cable which was laid across the ocean floor from Indonesia, putting Australia in direct communication with Britain for the first time. Incredibly, it was completed in 1871, the cable itself actually dragged up the cliffs to this spot outside government house before later joining up with the overland telegraph cable stretching from South Australia up through Alice Springs (which is the sole reason Alice Springs was ever populated in the first place). I love the idea that we used to communicate through cables underneath the sea; it's an amazing feat of engineering.

Darwin itself is closer to Singapore than Sydney and you can really feel the Asian influence, not least because the climate feels much more Asian, even though we're coming to the end of the dry season. It has the youngest population of any of the Australian capital cities (average age apparently 28), though part of the reason for this is that there's a huge aboriginal population and their life expectancy is much shorter than the whitefella's, a source of much soul-searching for white Australia, who are putting the politicians under increasing pressure to address the huge divide between the blacks and whites (a very difficult issue and one I'll write more about in the next few weeks).

I've seen more aboriginal people in twenty four hours than I've seen in seven months in New South Wales, though when I've tried to smile at them today, they've given me the filthiest looks you can imagine and I've thought "hang on, I haven't done anything to you" and then immediately reflected that my heritage as a white Briton means I'm sort of guilty by association and really, this is their land I'm walking on, so perhaps they're justified in their resentment, I don't know.

Anyway, they also drink the most alcohol per head of population up here than anywhere else in the country, though the sale of alcohol is actually banned in many areas, an attempt to control the drink problem in aboriginal communities (though this just pushes them into petrol sniffing, so perhaps they'll ban petrol next).

And then there's the weather. The humidity gets so bad in the build-up to the wet season that the suicide rate soars (November being peak suicide time) and everyone goes troppo, totally and utterly troppo. When you ask the locals about it, they shake their heads, and you know there's a problem when even the locals are shaking their heads so you'll also have to take my word for it when I say that the months from October to Janaury aren't the best time to visit, not unless you can get your hands on a significant amount of cold beer.