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Blue Pearl - Darwin



We are motoring along 2 days out off Darwin on the way to Lombok in
Indonesia. Lombok is just east of the better known Indonesian Island of
Bali. The passage is just under 1,000 nautical miles and we are
expecting to make landfall on Monday September 10th. We did have some
very nice sailing wind for the first 12 hours of this trip but then the
wind completely disappeared and we have now been motoring for almost two
days, hopefully things will change.

Darwin was a wonderful stop-over. The city itself is not an
architectural pearl. It has a seventies look which is because cyclone
Stacy destroyed most of it in 1974 and this came 30 years after a world
war 2 bombing campaign by the Japanese had also destroyed most of it...!
New construction and development is still going on with the most
prominent feature being the recent completion of the "Waterfront" area
with multiple restaurants, a conference center, a large children's
playground and a very nice, large swimming pond and separate wave pool.
Very well done. As in the other Australian cities it struck us again
here, how much public and private money is being spend to create a
pleasant in-city living environment.

Darwin is the main city in the Australian "Northern Territories". Large
areas are referred to as the "Outback" and the "Top End". We explored
the "Top End" with a day and a weekend trip to Litchfield National Park
and Kakadu National Park. Aboriginal lands with a very long history.
Kakadu National Park covers 20,000 square kilometers, many times the
size of our home state of Rhode Island. Kakadu is recognized in its
World Heritage listing as one of the oldest living societies on earth.
We enjoyed exploring the vast country site with its Rock Art,
Biodiversity, amazing landscapes, waterfalls, plunge pools, and animal
habitats. It is also an area where crocodiles are omnipresent, as are
the warning signs to stay out of their way. There are fresh water
crocodiles and Estuarine or saltwater crocodiles. There is very little
swimming because ,as the locals say, the crocs are everywhere. We did
swim in several of the plunge pools which are the large ponds that the
waterfalls cascade into. Very refreshing.

A highlight was our Yellow Waters boat trip in Litchfield National Park.
A true Safari experience; we saw crocodiles, exotic birds, herds of
water buffalo's, wallabies, boars and a beautiful meeting of water and
land. A very special outing with a brilliant sun set to finish the day.
An unforgettable experience.

Visiting Australia must count as one of the highlight of our rally so
far. We enjoyed every moment of it and could have spend many more weeks
exploring the country but on we must go, we still have half the world to
sail around before arriving back in Rodney Bay, our point of departure..!

Captain Ruud.
--
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