I'm in darwin. I have a day to kill here, so I went for a little walk around the town in the morning and visited the 'jumping crocs' in the afternoon.

On 19 feb 1942 at 9.00am the Japanese force, who had attacked Pearl Harbour 10 wks earlier dropped twice the number of bombs than were dropped there on this town. Almost 300 died. The last of the women and children were only evacuated on the 18th, one day earlier.

These days, the town is a traveler nexus. It's a jumping point to and from the Rock and the west coast via Broome

Some marginally useful facts about the area. There are only 200 000 in the Northern Territory, 78 000 of them live in darwin. It's 1 472 km to Alice from Darwin on the Stuart Highway.

I went to see some crocodiles this arvo (afteroon). The tour is billed as Jumpinq Crocodiles and that's what you see. They dangle a piece of meat over the side of the boat and make the crocs jump for it. And boy, some of these guys really can jump! Ecologically speaking, it's probably not good to encourage this sort of tourism, but hell, it's a great way to see just how impressive these creatures are.

To tomorrow