Today is Territory Day...or Cracker Day as the locals more often refer to it. Yes, the only place left in Australia where you can go and buy fireworks to let off yourself...and they do it really well!!! Pop-up shops all over the place are set up to sell fireworks...but not before 9:00am on Territory Day and they have to close by 9:00pm. Fireworks can be set off from no earlier than 6:00pm (although some people's clocks must have been a little fast...) and have to finish that night. Quite incredibly, they were all pretty good about it...maybe they are too fearful of loosing their fireworks that they really behave with them.
But more of Cracker Day later...we started the morning with a stroll around the Botanical Gardens. It is an amazing place and Darwin is really lucky to have it...some of the old trees were blown over by Cyclone Tracy but there were rescued and stood up in amongst the rest of the carnage and recovery. With the day warming up, we stayed in the Gardens for some lunch...and to finish off a multi-stage cache to bring up a total 1500 cache finds since I started nearly 3 years ago.
The late afternoon was spent back at the motel...split between the Pool and the Laundry...a rather pleasant way to get the washing done actually. For dinner we went downtown and found a pub where we could sit on the street and be entertained by the local's fireworks...well at least the high ones that went above the buildings. After dinner we walked back the our motel via Bicentennial Park which was an impromptu fireworks site with the locals sending "thousands of dollars" up into the sky in spectacular fashion...and rivaling some New Years Eve's efforts put on in Melbourne and Sydney!
