Survivors’ Lookout & Govt House

After our tour of the oil tunnels we walked up to the nearby Survivors’ Lookout.  This is where survivors of the 1942 bombing of Darwin gathered to survey the damage in the harbour. The view of the Darwin harbour is mostly obscured by trees now. After Japan’s entry into the war Darwin began evacuating citizens, by the time of the bombing most of the women, children, aged, and infirmed had left the city. According to the signs, the day of the bombing there were 46 ships in the harbour.  Eight were sunk. Further up the road was a monument with more information about the bombing. It shows 292 fatalities in Darwin that day, but I’ve seen several different numbers (usually lower) and it seems as though it isn’t certain. Also nearby is the Government House, where the Administrator of the Northern Territory lives. (Territories have an Administrator rather than a Governor, and a Chief Minister rather than a Premier.)  Once a year they open the building up for public tours, wouldn’t it be lovely to see inside?  The gardens are beautiful. This lovely coat of arms for the NT was on the gate.  Those are red kangaroos, the largest living marsupial, on the sides and a wedge-tailed eagle at the top.  Both, as you can probably guess, are emblems of the Northern Territory. We  have seen these frangipani trees all over the place up north.  Such a symbol of the tropics with their beautiful white flowers.  The kids love collecting them but they turn brown right away. On the way back we took the walkway over the road to get a view of the Darwin waterfront.  Our car is parked down there under one of the trees, the entrance to the tunnels is on the right of this road. In this building there are a few shops and eateries.  There’s a free ocean water swimming lagoon behind all those trees.  If you follow the path to to the left you’ll get to the wave pool.  We made sure to visit both during our stay in Darwin, the wave pool was especially fun and one of the highlights of our stay. We drove by nearby Parliament House but opted not to stop in for a tour.  If it was just us adults we’d probably stop in to more of these places, but we visited parliament in Canberra and that was enough for the kids for a long time to come.  Maybe Perth.  😉