I woke up feeling somewhat recovered from my head cold, although the symptoms were still hanging around. Mainly relative to feeling like I wanted to sleep all day as I was still so tired. A persistent cough also seems to be developing, which is making my already tender throat feel like it is being ripped to shreds.

Being as we didn’t have anything planned until later tonight, staying in bed was pretty close to what we did. I did managed to drag myself out of bed for a while, to sit beneath the annex for breakfast. I sat enjoying the morning cool whilst I ate and read. My new book, the one I bought the other day after waiting nearly a year to get back up here for it, is about the bombing of Darwin, written by Jack Mulholland, an anti-aircraft gunner who lived through it. It is amazing to read about his memories of Darwin from the 1940s, and be able to compare them to the present day Darwin. By capital city standards, Darwin is still small, a miniscule city, almost bordering on being defined as a large town. In the 1940s, it wasn’t even that, with the now inner suburb of Parap described by Mulholland as being “considered to be out in the scrub”. As a soldier, he was to endure Darwins unchanged climate in a corrugated iron hut with but a few windows for channeling any whisper of a breeze through the stifling, steamy interior. At least our tin can has the luxury of air conditioning and quite possibly even more important, fly screens on the windows. There is no need to cower beneath a cloying net as we sleep each night, as was the norm all those years ago. Yes, while it may indeed be the same place, it’s an entirely different world.

This mornings cool temperature quickly gave way to the searing heat as the sun reached its zenith in the bright blue sky, giving us good reason to recede back into the van. With not much else to do, we switched on the tele to see what was on. Surprise, surprise we sat down to a ‘The Shield’ marathon. Punctuated with a few breaks, to take the dogs for a stroll to release them of their pent up energy, and a walk across to the caravan park office to arrange for an extra days accommodation, it was a pretty quiet, relaxed kind of day.

Waiting for a walk.

So lazy were we, that even lunch consisted of what happened to be in the fridge. With little other to choose from, we had a small cup of tinned fruit salad each that had been salvaged from one of Liz and Gregs breakfast packs. Then for dessert, we split a bag of chocolates between us. That was easy, and saved on the cleaning up.

As we walked about the park today, I considered our early issues and misgivings about the place. Now that we’ve been here for close to three weeks, we’ve gotten to know some of the other campers, and there are several vans we stop at along our wanders to say G’day and to have a chin wag. Whilst it still wouldn’t rate as the friendliest of parks, nor is it my favourite that we have stayed at, it has served us well, and thankfully we arrived when we did. It is completely full up now, so we would have been left with nowhere to stay if we had reached Darwin too much later. I now only dread getting the power bill when we check out.

Having spent the day doing nothing more strenuous than pressing buttons on the remote control for the TV, it was a bit before 6:00PM that we got ourselves ready to go out. Despite our negative opinions of the markets we’ve been to around Darwin, we still have one last one to venture through. The Palmerston Night Market, where if nothing else, there is the promise of buying the dogs some more bulls willies treats.

The Palmerston Night Market.

The market is set up in a quadrangle at the Palmerston Shopping Centre, the stalls floodlit against the setting sun. The variety is much the same as we have come to expect of the other markets being a mixture of fresh fruit and vegetables, take away food and a few craft stalls. We found the one we had made the journey here for, where we collected a big bag of bulls bits. Kindly, the stallholder threw in some cows hooves and a couple of ram balls for the dogs to try as well. Hmm, they should go down a treat.

It was getting on towards dinner time for us by this stage, so we trawled through the food stalls, trying to get a read on what delicacies would serve us well. Bec chose a stall selling roast lamb shanks, which she hungrily devoured in her best impression of a cave woman. Sitting on a rock and holding the shank by the bone, she tore the meat from it with her incisors, while the gravy bequeathed her with a brown grin, reminiscent of that seen on a circus clown. It must have been good, because she pretty much stripped the bone clean of flesh, leaving nothing more than the stark white bone.

Me eat lamb shank. Yum.

I settled on a pork Laksa, from a stall that had a generous queue of hungry diners waiting to be served. I figured that made it a safe bet. That and the fact that the Laksa was being lovingly prepared by a little old Asian woman who, hunched up over a giant mortar and pestle, looked like she has been mixing up her secret blend of ingredients for more years than what I’ve been alive. The Laksa was as good as any I’ve had before, a perfect balance of spiciness that made my lips go numb and left me somewhat concerned about the burning issue of my next bowel movement.

There was not much else that excited us at the market, so we made tracks for home, wondering what devastation the dogs may have created this time around. Thankfully all was well on our return to the van, although the sweet scent of Weet Bix must have been hanging about in the laundry, as there was evidence that one of the mutts had tried climb up on the bench again. A bag found on the floor and some scratch marks on my folder gave the game away. We’ve wisened up however, and no food had been left within their reach.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.