Judy & Brian Tour Oz: Darwin NT

Finally ventured out into the big smoke today, because it was a double whammy: the beer can regatta and the Mindil Beach markets at the same time.

Mindil Beach was packed, they had a long row of huge sunshades erected for the spectators to sit under and watch the activities, and then there were 10,000 punters hanging about on the beach watching the action up close. The basic idea is to build a craft using beer cans and then race it around this course out into the bay. It certainly has the potential to be enormous, but a little bit of organisation would probably improve it tenfold. The program we had didn't correspond to what was actually happening at the time and the individual events (not the boat races) were a bit ad hoc with the organisers trying to get people to become involved. There didn't appear to be any teams ready and rearing to go. We did get to see the end of a boat race that seemed to have five boats competing but only two that were truly made of just cans, the others were dinghies with cans stuck to the outside. Highlight of the whole day seems to have been the appearance of Chris Brown from The Living Room and Bondi Vet. I had to get a cold flannel for Judy! The locals loved it all though, probably the thought of all that beer that had to be drunk to build the boats!

Then there was a tug-of-war event happening, we watched the under 12's, they were so cute. But again, it didn't seem to be organised, if you happened tone wandering past and were under 12, then hey, you could have a go. Even the Men's and Women's ones were just strangers wandering not the t-o-w zone, one would have thought that they would have had proper teams from all the various concerns in town, all paying to enter, especially as the whole day was a fund raiser.

Finally, they had a 'iron-person' event and had to call for contestants to sign up for about an hour before hand to get the 9 places filled.

Anyhow they all seemed to be having fun, so good luck to them.

We bought a few chicken satay sticks and spring rolls for lunch followed by a big bowl of fruit salad which we ate sitting on the grass in the shade of a large tree. Naturally we then hit the market stalls proper but came away empty-handed, it all looked just like the stuff from last year, and the year before.

After so much excitement we thought a coffee down on the wharf at Stokes Hill would be in order, and it was, accompanied by a mango slice and a coconut puff thing. Very nice, and we were entertained the entire time by the kites dive-bombing into the bay in front of us catching the rubbish people were throwing into the water to feed them. Then a shark cruised past and hung about for a while. boats came and went, fishos went past, even the few jet skis weren't all that annoying. In all a very pleasant afternoon.

We came back to the park and headed for the pool, which blissfully was nowhere near as crowded as the 60-70 kids that were in it yesterday. When you come into the park you get a free glass of wine voucher, so i went and cashed that in, and only spent another $6 for a glass of Accomplice, for which we only pay $4.99 a bottle at the IGA. Oh, well, not to worry, as they say!