WHARF WHISPERS – DARWIN CITY WATERFRONT APPEARS

MONTH BY MONTH

Select Date December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006

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April 2006

Early April and the skies opened, the Top End flooded and Katherine went underwater again; the river there peaking at a little over 19 metres. Then by the second week, just like turning off a tap, the sky went blue and the Dry was here!! No one was happier than Advance Civil as they finished the pipework in Herbert St, and set off over the edge of the Esplanade and down the cliffs to the Waterfront proper.



Frankipile was pretty happy too; they pushed on through the rain and storms earlier, but there were times when the Convention Centre basement looked more like a swimming pool than a carpark. SitzlerBM JV site office grew higher and higher, pallet loads of paperwork were filed away upstairs, and with blue skies, it was all systems go.

Ooops, spoke a bit too soon; April 23 and Darwin battens down for Cyclone Monica!! Not just any old cyclone; Monica was a Category 5 monster packing winds of 350 km/hr. The biggest storm in Territory history and lauded by stormchasers around the world as the "perfect storm"; thankfully she veered away for long enough to lose nearly 300 km/hr before passing directly over Darwin - a narrow escape!



What a wild month; not much earthworks but plenty of rain! So much for an early start to the dry season; it turned out to be the wettest April on record - 398mm for the month! SitzlerBM JV pushed on though, and even managed to form and pour the first slabs for the basement carpark of Darwin's new Convention Centre - a real feat considering the location and weather.