Thursday, 7 May 2026
This morning we were a bit more leisurely, leaving the cabin about 10.00am. After they turned the water off … again. When we were out yesterday we received messages – the water is off, the water is back on again, but it didn’t affect us at all, because we were out and about. They seem to be working on an ongoing plumbing issue or upgrade and the water was turned off again just before we were about to head out. We had to brush our teeth in a glass of cask water!
Apple Maps was programmed for the George Brown Darwin Botanic Gardens and Syri delivered us to a pedestrian access for the gardens. Damn, where’s the vehicular entrance?? We accidentally drove past the turn off so we turned into Mindil Beach Park and turned right, heading back towards the turn off, only to find that we were on the wrong side of a huge median strip. Syri told us to execute a bit of a blocky (that was actually more of a triangle) and then we missed the driveway for the gardens because it was really skinny and looked like it was maybe the exit only?? So, around the triangle AGAIN.
Eventually we were parked successfully in the car park and we headed into the gardens, making our first stop at the Visitor and Event Centre, where we said hello to a Golden Retriever and collected a Visitor Guide & Map. The Information Centre had a comprehensive timeline of the gardens that would have taken us all day to read! Suffice to say the 42-hectare George Brown Botanic Gardens were established in 1886 as a site to evaluate plants for economic and agricultural potential in a tropical environment. It soon expanded beyond its experimental beginnings, into a garden featuring many local and introduced tropical plants. The gardens are renowned for surviving WWII and multiple cyclones, including the 1974 destruction by Cyclone Tracy. Restored under curator George Brown, they were renamed in his honor in 2002.
The gardens are fabulous but a little bit wild after the wet season. There were parts that looked to be in need of a bit of weeding and pruning to get things back in shape. Despite this we enjoyed our walk through the rainforest to the Dragon courtyard. We followed this with a stroll through the Shade Garden which brought us to the Crocodile Sculpture, a galvanized mild steel structure completed by Techy P. in 2020 and titled ‘The Grand Escape’.
We arrived in the Africa-Madagascar Garden which features seven of the nine species of the baobab trees that grow in Australia, Madagascar and Africa. The trees were so same, same but different. They all featured the iconic bulbous trunk, but some species still had their leaves, some looked characteristically ‘dead’ with few, if any, leaves and one, Adansonia za, was sporting large, fluffy flowers. A board said the flowers have a strong, distinctive scent. Another visitor there at the same time as us announced that he would have to have a good sniff. He proceeded to smell one of the flowers and announced that it smelled like a urinal cake! We thanked him for the tip and decided that we did not need to have a sniff for ourselves.
From there, we made our way across the Heritage Lawn and then up to the Cycad Garden and Dinosaur Trail. Cycads date to the Jurassic period so someone thought it was a good idea to install some fiberglass dinosaurs to complement the area planted with these ancient plants?? With most of the gardens covered we headed for Eva’s Cafe for some lunch. C.B.L.A.T.S on toasted sourdough. Now, anything with chicken on it, I’m usually a bit paranoid about it being cooked properly. Hmmn, the chicken, the bacon and the sourdough were all very well done. By which I mean over cooked, not done well, ha, ha. Still, the sandwiches were tasty, even if a little dry and crispy.
From the gardens we drove to the 1934 Qantas Hangar. The construction of the hangar commenced in July 1934 for Qantas Empire Airways Ltd at Parap. During the 1930s, the Ross Smith Aerodrome was Australia’s international gateway, with all flights into Australia having to stop in Darwin. Use of the hangar ceased after it was badly damaged during the Japanese bombing in February 1942. Following repairs in the late 1940s it was used by the Allied Works Council and Department of Civil Aviation. After being listed on the NT Heritage Register in 1993, it was purchased by the NT Government through the Department of Arts and Museums. Since 1999, it has been leased by the Motor Vehicles Enthusiasts Club to display and maintain museum, club and private historic vehicles and machinery. And who should turn up while we there but our flower sniffing acquaintance from the gardens. Who was stalking whom??
Well and truly time to head back to our cabin in time for Splice o’clock and then relax by the pool for an hour or so. There do not seem to be many other guests at the Discovery Park and we had the pool area to ourselves. Very nice having the pool about 25 paces from the door of our cabin too!
We freshened up and then headed back to Mindil Beach for their famous Thursday night market. Dreading how difficult it might be to park the truck anywhere near the market we were lucky to see people parking on the grass strip between Atkins Drive and Gilruth Avenue. Well, if everyone else is doing it … From our unofficial car park we wandered off into the markets. After taking a couple of photos down on the beach we started checking out the food stalls. So many food stalls!
Will we have souvlakis, will we have noodles? So much to choose from. We walked all the way to the end of the stalls, not wanting to rush into making a decision and then have regrets. We were all but committed to going back to one of the souvlakis stalls, when we spotted Paella @ Sunset. We were sold and purchased two portions of seafood paella.
Then it was just a question of dessert. Poffertjes or churros??? It was too hard to decide on one or the other so … we had both. But not one straight after the other, we are not completely without impulse control. Wandering back through the stalls, we reached the poffertjes stall first so purchased a single portion (butter, icing sugar and lemon) to share. From there we headed into the craft section of the market for a look around. We managed not to buy anything to clutter the house up with, but did treat ourselves to 30 minutes of Thai massage to loosen up our backs and shoulders. After that, we completed our circuit of the craft stalls and dived back into the food section.
Once again we restricted ourselves to sharing one portion of churros with dark chocolate dipping sauce. And at least we didn’t have them ‘loaded’. OMG with both the poffertjes and the churros people were ordering their portions with MOUNTAINS of extras; fruit, biscuit crumbs, caramel and other flavoured toppings, hundreds and thousands, cream and ice-cream. I thought only fries came ‘loaded’, I didn’t know that you could get these dessert options loaded with more sweet stuff.
After our second dessert it was time to head back to the Discovery Park for our last night in Darwin before heading to Lichfield National Park tomorrow as we head back towards Katherine.
Steps: 12,241 (7.31kms)
