Red Brigade: Sunsets and Politics

On Thursday I was lucky to have another flying visit from Rosie, in transit to Adelaide from Kununurra in WA. The oddness that is Darwin flight times meant Rosie was able to fly in for dinner and then out at 1am for a night flight. Apparently you know you’re a Territorian when you have to drop someone at the airport at midnight and you think its normal. I’m not quite there yet.

The weather has been threatening storms for the last two weeks, none of which has really come to fruition. These clouds greeted me on the way out of the gym Wednesday night...

Luckily Thursday night was clear so Rosie and I headed down to watch the sunset at Fannie Bay yacht club. The club has a funky little bar and tables out on the grass looking over the water. We got to watch a spectacular sunets with some lazy beers and then had a lovely meal (We both contemplated but decided against the crocodile fillet). Naturally millions of photos were taken. You can't say the NT doesn't do a good sunset. Dinner was reasonably priced and came with free salad bar! I’ll definitely be visiting again.

Yesterday marked the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Darwin Harbour back in 1942. Parliament only voted to make this a national day of significance three months ago so I think the day was extra special for everyone there. 19th February will now be known as "Bombing of Darwin day'.

Fi and I headed into town a little early and managed to get a carpark in the prime VIP area. We were very proud of ourselves – maybe we’ve been living in Sydney too long where the crowds are always astronomical. We couldn't understand why noone else had parked there.

 Our search for a nice breakfast cafe however was thwarted. We wandered into a nice little outside joint which looked gorgeous. It was in the old CWA building with long tendrils of ivy around the roof. Unfortunately appearances can be deceiving. Despite being one block away from a big public event with national dignitaries attending, this particular cafe had failed to consider that they might need extra staff to cope with all the people out and about. The one and only waitress was not coping AT ALL. I was surprised she managed to even take our order without crying. When our cups of coffee finally did arrive they were only half full, which matched our orders, which were only half wrong. Fi's toast was sitting a pile of water and my extra mushrooms never appeared. Lucky the waitress had forgotten to charge me for them. Disappointing. Sadly the search for a good breakfast place continues....

I was very impressed by the setup for the ceremony itself which was down at the Cenotaph on the Esplanade near the water. About 5000 people attended and the organizers had loads of seating spread out for everyone. There were canopies set up so there was shade for everyone and then a number of large screens around in case you wanted to sit out on the grass and watch. They even had people there giving out free bottles of water and fans to combat the heat. 

Fi and I managed to sneak into one of the covered platform areas without too much trouble and had a lovely time watching the show. Ray Martin was MC (I love Ray!) which was exciting in itself.

The  (nice jacket, sensible wedge heels), Tony Abbott (black suit) and Quentin Bryce (lots of silver jewellery) were all in attendance as well as large numbers of the armed forces.

The speeches were very well done and there were lots of flyovers which the kids loved! But the most touching part for me was the recreation of the bombing itself. The combination of the air raid sirens, the automatic weapon fire (blanks only) and the cannons was very overwhelming. I can only imagine how it affected the veterans that were there! Very emotional