Territory Day Celebrations.

Tuesday 1st July.

I spent this morning geocaching in the Lee Point area. There are a number of caches concealed along the many almost hidden foot tracks through the dense jungle undergrowth within the Casuarina Coastal Reserve. The beauty of this is that I uncovered some very interesting WW2 sites in my search for the caches. However it would be very easy to become disoriented and lost in this maze of tracks if you did not pay particular attention to the many off shoot path options throughout the area. At one stage I must confess I had to refer to the "backtrack" feature on my hand held GPS to make sure I was on the right track.

After about three hours I had found eleven caches so I figured this was more than enough for the day as it was now becoming very hot with temperature approaching 33 degrees C.

A restful afternoon, then at 4:30pm a group of us from the caravan park headed off to Lee Point beach to secure our spot for the fireworks display to celebrate Territory Day. This annual event is to commemorate the Northern Territory becoming an independent territory.

We all took along drinks and food to share and set up several picnic tables and our camp chairs on the beach. Fireworks are only sold in the Northern Territory at this time of the year and the locals spend hundreds of dollars each to make sure the day goes off with a bang.

Boy, do they do exactly that. The fireworks on Lee Point beach are only one of literally hundreds of sites around Darwin where they congregate to do likewise.

They started at 6:00pm in full earnest with the most impressive display either of us has ever seen. The fireworks are what I would describe as professional fireworks and most would leave the Sydney Harbour New Year's Eve event literally in the dark. They continued on non stop until midnight, a total of six hours with only the occasional very short pause. The noise and pure spectacle is hard to describe but fortunately I was able to capture some great video of the amazing spectacle.

There must have been several thousand people along the foreshore with many groups having a bonfire also on the beach. As we were leaving around 9:00pm we saw channel nine arriving to film the event, having previously been to several other sites for footage for the news the next day.

At one point a commercial aircraft approached from out at sea, presumably an overseas flight arrival into Darwin. The plane was seen to divert away from the landing flight path and circle along the huge expanse of the beach to afford the passengers a better and longer view from the air of the action which must have resembled a scene similar to Bagdad or some other war zone under attack.

To reiterate, Gail and I agreed that in all our years we have never ever witnessed such a display in any location you may care to name. All we can suggest is that if ever you get the opportunity to visit Darwin make sure you are here for July 1st. You will not be disappointed.