Botanic Gardens and the MAGNT

Day 92 – Darwin, Australia

I had decided to spend the day in the Botanic Gardens. I started by preparing a lunch to take with me, and when I opened the fridge to take a carrot out, I saw that the nice I had put them on was in fact the freezer tray. So I had a lot of very fresh carrots for lunch.

On the map, the Botanic Gardens are right next door; with Australian distances, that means a good 15 walk. Since I wasn’t sure of the way, that translated more in around 30 min, but no matter, and I passed by a nice, old cemetery. With flowers on a tree.

Cemetery flower tree

I eventually found my way to the gardens. It was pretty empty. Since I saw yesterday school buses going around and today what looked liked schoolchildren going to a sport lesson, I surmise that it is not a holiday period for the families.

So I saw trees, pretty flowers, a crocodile -a metal one, not a real one-, palm trees, baobabs, had lunch on a nice bench, and so on. (All the picture are in the gallery.) I saw also a kind of ground fowl pecking away at the soil.

Botanic Gardens

After the gardens, since I was half-way there, I went to the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, MAGNT in short.

I started with a temporary exhibition of two artists, who combined Aborigine and Western art. It is painting on wood bark.

MAGNT – Midawarr Harvest

I discovered the history of Sweetheart, a saltwater crocodile that attacked fishing boats (the propellers, actually) in the 1970s, and which was killed by accident when it was captured to be moved to a crocodile farm. That was my second crocodile of the day.

MAGNT – Sweetheart

I also saw a gallery dedicated to Aborigine art, where I saw two different rendition on the theme of Seven Sisters (see image at the head of the article), and several other arts, including songs and video.

There was another gallery for the history of Darwin and the Northern Territory, with a short exhibit about pearling: fishing for shells with mother-of-pearls, used for buttons and wood inlay.

MAGNT – Pearling

There were a few boats exhibited further, from dugout canoes to refugee Vietnamese boats. I spent a pleasant afternoon there.

I found a path that followed the coastline afterwards, going back to Mindil Beach where I wached the sunset yesterday. There was a kiosk overlooking the see with benches, so I waited the sunset there. I took some more picture also on my way back to the hostel.

Mindil Beach – Sunset