At the Top End - Darwin

 Please do not think dear reader that we have zipped back to the UK for a festival!, this blog describes our visit to the iconoc Mindl Beach Night Market in Darwin. This was an amazing experience and all the better for being quite unexpected. Phileas had failed to bring any travel information about Darwin as the stay was only to be brief. But amazingly, we were in Darwin on the one day a week when this market happens. A shuttle bus took us from our hotel and we spent an hour or so browsing the 100 or so food stalls selling food from all over the world, from Greek Souvlaki to French Crepes and Vietnamese Pho. We opted for delicious salads and took our supper to the beach to watch the sun set. Now we have watched the sun setting from Cornwall to Vietnam, Australia to Vancouver Island but we have never experienced a sunset watch like this one.

 We, of course, had to have a quick beachcomb, and Fogg snapped this rather intriguing photo of a small volcano made of almost perfect 'pearls' of sand. Phileas thinks she knows what animal made it, do you?

 A few shells and fragments of coral had to be collected and more wiggly lines investigated before we returned to the dunes to join the several thousand other sunset watchers.

 Families were enjoying picnics, playing footie or just sitting gazing out to sea waiting...... We are always happy to chat to people we meet, these 2 from Queensland were as amzed as us by the numbers. While we waited we swapped travellers tales and compared journeys we had made.
Then the sun began to sink slowly in the west (I know it isn't really!!!) and we were delighted when a range of boats moved across our view. We will leave the pictures to speak for themselves. Well, hopefully, as at the time of writing a couple seem reluctant to appear, maybe they will be there when we finally hit the publish button.

Quite beautiful and crazy at the same time!! We wandered through the market and chose a small painting of a turtle by a young, aboriginal woman called Natasha Lloyd. The green back sea turtle (gurlibil - Yawuru language) is her totem, given to her when she was born. It is painted in traditional colours and in the 'dot' style.

Now we are in Broome, waiting to head to The Kimberley. We will blog our adventures on our return in about 2 weeks.

Until then, best wishes from

Fogg and Phileas