As soon as we stepped through the airport doors, a wave of heat and moisture hit us. Welcome to Darwin.
It was past midnight, so when the taxi dropped us off at the hostel gates we had to punch in the code they emailed us, use another code to open a locked box, find an envelope with our name on it, and use the keys inside the envelope to open the door to our room. Quite a process, but we were relieved to finally crawl into bed, too exhausted to shower or even change clothes.
Only a few hours later, it was time for us to check out again since the airline had changed our flight, causing us to loose a day in Darwin. Even though we checked out, we still took advantage of the hostel free breakfast, showers, pool, AND free laundry.
With our one day in Darwin, we walked along the botanical gardens following the muddy and windy beachfront path to the Museum and Gallery of Northern Australia for a fix of air conditioning. As in many Australian museums, there was an exhibit about the aboriginal population. They also had a unique exhibit about Cyclone Tracy that devastated Darwin in 1974.
Next we went to the Fannie Bay Gaol (Australian spelling of jail), to see the home of some of Darwin’s former convicts. It was just too hot to absorb any historical information, let alone walk and breathe, so we took the bus back to the hostel and enjoyed a discounted Woolworths roasted chicken for lunch.
Our flight to Singapore wasn’t until 6am, but we decided that spending another night in a hostel for a few hours wasn’t worth it and we could just stay out all night instead. To kill time, we saw American Sniper at the movie theater (decent plot, but not my favorite–too much hoorah ‘merica for me). The next six hours we spent in the airport terminal using wifi, scrapbooking, and calling home.
