June – July 2017

Darwin is famous for it’s spectacular sunsets, and I had the opportunity to witness three of them. Obviously three dawns as well, but I only went out for one. Yes, I mean dawn as in sunrise, not me!

Sunset number one: Hotel balcony

I arrived the day before the tour and spent the afternoon walking around Darwin. I was really tired so I just watched the sunset from my balcony. It wasn’t terribly exciting, though the clouds were nice.

Sunset number two: Mindil Beach

The tour very conveniently finished on a Thursday, one of the two days the famous Mindil Beach Sunset Market is on. Food is the main attraction;  pick just about any cuisine and there is a stall selling it. There are also lots of handmade craft stalls, art, music, and of course sunset over Mindil Beach.

Again, not the magnificent spectacle I was hoping for, but I only hung around on the beach for a couple of minutes. Far too many people, and they weren’t a happy crowd. One guy in a deckchair complained about his view being blocked. If you want to watch a sunset from a deckchair it’s a bit stupid to go to the beach where half the population of Darwin and every tourist has congregated!

So I didn’t much like the Mindil Beach market, though the food was delicious.

Sunset number three: Nightcliff

I’d done a little research on the best sunset photo spots in Darwin (read Googling “best sunset photos Darwin” 🙂 ) and Nightcliff Jetty seemed like a good option. Not only would the jetty serve as a nice prop for the photos, but a food van called “Jetty and the Fish” parks there on weekends. It was supposed to have really good fish and chips… “best in Darwin”, I read somewhere.

I arrived at about six o’clock; plenty of time for fish and chips before sunset. Unfortunately the van wasn’t there. Apparently it goes somewhere else on Friday nights these days – bit disappointing.

But the sunset was far from disappointing.

One thing for would-be Nightcliff photographers to remember: wear shoes you can scramble across rocks in. If I’d been wearing my hiking shoes the photos may have been more adventurous!

… And a dawn

When I booked this trip I had two options. Option one started on a Wednesday and finished the following Thursday; option two started on a Saturday and finished the following Sunday. I picked option one so I could stay in Darwin for an extra couple of nights and go to the Darwin parkrun on Saturday.

For those who don’t know, parkrun (with a small “p”) is a free 5km run that happens every Saturday in hundreds, actually probably thousands, of parks all over the world. It started in the UK in 2004 with a group of friends meeting each Saturday and has taken over the world. There are 50 parkruns in Victoria alone… I’ve done nine of these so far and plan to do them all.

Darwin is special – it’s the most northerly parkrun in Australia. And that is why I found myself wandering around on the foreshore before it was light. There were quite a few of us “parkrun tourists” there, and we were starting to wonder if we were in the right place. Then the organisers and local runners arrived about five minutes to seven. It was on!

The course is a couple of loops up and down the foreshore park; a very attractive course, and the temperature was quite pleasant at 7am. I was a bit slower than I would have liked – had to have a walk break earlier than usual. Guess not running for two weeks has an effect. As I turned for home on the final loop I saw the Auswalk bus setting off along The Esplanade with the next group of happy walkers. I waved, they tooted – hope they had as much fun as my group!