Our Europe and UK Jaunt

Rainbow Valley near Alice Springs

Next Saturday we jet out of Central Australia for a four-month stint in Europe and United Kingdom.

We'll spend a couple of days at Perth getting some new kit items and then head initially to Hong Kong. A day or two there (we've been there three times before) and we are off to London and then Spain.

We have two tours organised, one a cruise through European cities that commences at Copenhagen and the other a bus tour that begins at Brussels. We've been to Brussels, but it will be nice to revisit and see how much it has changed since 2010.

Late March we will be at Basel in Switzerland where I will attend the Baselworld 2017 Watch and Jewellery Show. As some of you may know, I have an interest in horology. This will be my first ever watch show so I'm really excited to have been able to fit it into our travels.

In the coming week I'll place an itinerary online somewhere and advise close friends of its location. I'll also find somewhere to place our photographs and plan to do some posting to Trip Advisor.

Happy days and lovely nights.

Robin

Merry Christmas from Our Caravan to Yours

Visiting Darwin, Capital of the Northern Territory

We’ve been to Darwin dozens of times and for 18 months from 1997 lived there in the dreadful humidity until we could no longer stand it.

At this time of year it was much less humid (the Dry Season) and pleasantly warmish. My main objective was to have a growing cyst that was becoming increasingly a pain in the neck attended to while Christina’s main objective was to have fish and chips at the Stokes Hill Wharf which we had loved to visit during our previous times at Darwin.

Other tasks included the purchase of a new awning for our caravan. The old one had deteriorated while sitting in the sun at The Alice and after being battered by hail-stones during July, had numerous holes in it. We also bought a new side step since Christina had fallen off the plastic one and cracked it, and we bought two shade cloth screens, both to complement the awning so we look like we are in an annex, but aren’t and still have some privacy.

In the best medical care I have ever experienced (not that I have had much), a doctor at Palmerston Doctors who just happens to be a GP and a surgeon, removed my cyst which was infected. No ifs, buts, or stuffing about. He assessed the situation, agreed it was a cyst and cut it out the same day.

We attended Stokes Hill Wharf and much to our surprise found a joint Darwin WWII Bombing museum and Royal Flying Doctor display centre had been added since our last visit. Before our fish and chips, we paid the small entrance fee and spent an hour or so within the centre.

It’s very well presented and if anything, needed more content, but it had only been open for a week, so it’s early days yet. Many people are unaware of the massive bombing raids the Japanese carried out on Darwin so it’s a worthwhile addition to Australia’s war and flying doctor histories.

Robin

PS: Since writing this I have been to Broome which also has a history of Japanese wartime bombing. Much to my embarrassment, I never knew that.