Darwin, Northern Territories, Australia

  Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia
Thursday, November 13, 2008

Darwin, Northern Territories, Australia
We got off our flight from Singapore to Darwin at about 4:30am, got our visas no problem and took a shuttle bus to the hostel that got us there for 6am. We knew the hostel we were going to had a bit of a reputation for being a party hostel but when we got there there was a crowd of really messy people in the pool and shouting and screaming at the top of their voices, we were having second thoughts about staying here but we had already paid for the first night so we said we'd just see how it went. We hope to finish up our trip to Australia back in Darwin so this time we weren't in Darwin to party or even to sightsee, we had one aim and one aim alone, to buy a car and get out of there.

Karl Halloween night

Lydia in the park

The hostel actually turned out to be ok, the bar and pool area were really busy all day but the rooms themselves were quite quiet. So we had a few hours nap, bought Australian SIM cards for our phones and started walking round all the different hostels looking at the notice boards trying to find a decent car for sale. We went to see two camper vans that afternoon, both the same make, Mitsubishi L300's, but they weren't great so we went back online for another couple of hours to see if we could find anything else. 
The next morning we walked for miles up the main street into Darwin where all the car dealerships are. It was a useless exercise though as all the dealerships had was quite new cars well out of our price range. In the evening we went to see another Mitsubishi L300 campervan. This one was much better than the two we'd seen the previous day so we settled on AUD$3,500 (E1,750) as it was fully equipped with everything we could need for travelling round Australia, big double bed in the back, cooker, pots, pans, cutlery, the lot.
The next morning we had to get cash from the bank to pay for the van and bring it to the vehicles registration office to register it in our name, so that took up most of the day. When we got back to the hostel in the afternoon the cleaner had been into the dorm room and, even though my clothes were in a wardrobe, she threw them all in the bin. I didn't know where they were or where to start looking and the hostel receptionist wasn't helpful at all. So I started going through all the wheelie bins out the back of the hostel. I won't start to describe what I found in some of the bins, disgusting! Eventually, after about 8 bins I found the black bag with my clothes in it, don't know what the cleaner was thinking, luckily we've decided to check out tomorrow and start the roadtrip towards Cairns.

Dee and Lydia

Karl and Owen Halloween night

That evening was Halloween, which isn't really celebrated in Australia but it was also the second of the two International Rules games between Ireland and Australia so I stuck the Dublin jersey on and we hit the Irish bar to celebrate buying the van and getting my clothes back. The bar could have been any bar around Croke Park on a match day, GAA jerseys everywhere and there was a good atmosphere. We met a couple from Deansgrange called Dee and Owen and we had a good night with them.