Helga

Helga

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Day 21: Chillin' out in Darwin

Greetings all,
Day 21 was a total contrast to all the others. We found ourselves staying in a pretty upmarket pub so thought we would make the most of it. One thing about casino hotels (!!) is how cheap their food and drinks are so we had buffet breakfast for $13 each and began to plan our delivery of the bikes to BMW and our packing for the holiday from the holiday (thanks Alan!)

We arranged to check out at 12 noon so spent the morning sorting and packing gear - some to come home, some to be biffed and some to be packed on the bikes to await our return. The nice conceirge lady let me use the hotel's carwash area to clean the red dirt off the bikes - even gave me a bucket and some carwash - so we gave both bikes a good clean up. When I say "we" I actually mean "me" because Dick was busy doing business stuff on the computer. It was so humid that I confess neither bike got a great clean and I had to go back to the (air-con!) room to change. At about 12.30pm we finally checked out leaving some gear behind in the hotel storage and cruised off towards BMW down the Stuart Highway and straight into the daily noon-time thunderstorm. Let's just be polite and say it was jolly heavy, jolly wet and jolly wetting rain.

The sales manager at BMW was a nice bloke and gave us a courtesy car ride back to the hotel where we hunkered down and waited out the time for the plane due to leave Darwin for Sydney at 1.45 am. Fortunately we were at a casino so Dick and I bravely took $2 each into the pokies room and gambled. I can see why this activity is so dangerous as it actually took an amazingly long time to lose the whole $2. You would almost get down to zero and then have another little win which you would gamble away. Creepy stuff and so many people grimly pushing buttons and looking dejected.

So after another cheap dinner and more free internet time we decided to taxi out to the airport and enjoy the delights of Darwin Airport. Which would have been great except there weren't any. On the insecure side of Darwin Airport there is almost nothing. Finally we got through check in and into the departure lounge ready for the flight to Sydney at 1.45am and hopefully some sleep on the way. The checkin lady was a nice person from Whangarei who was so impressed by Teddy Boy that she said she would try and arrange for us to have a three seat row each to ourselves so we could stretch out and have a sleep. And that will wait for Day 22!

I am going to upload some photos so you might like to have a browse through some earlier posts.
Cheers,
Ken (in Welly) and Helga (in Darwin)

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