We return now to my 1999 trip around the world. From Mount Isa in Queensland, the last place I wrote about from that trip, I caught a bus westward to Tennant Creek and then headed north to Darwin. For most of the way, the weather had been pretty awful and it had been touch and go nearly every day as to whether or not the roads would be open the next morning - but I finally made it to the top end. On my last day in Darwin, I arranged a 4WD tour of Lichfield Natio...

After leaving Alice Springs in 2002, Eloise and I hopped on a plane and headed out of the country towards Fiji and therefore missed out on a chance to visit Darwin. When we returned to Australia the following year, we had a limited amount of time before moving on to our main destination of New Zealand and this gave us the opportunity to visit Melbourne and Adelaide in the south as well as to put things right by spending a couple of days in Darwin - mainly so that...

The itinerary today changed totally at breakfast this morning when the news surfaced that the entrance to Litchfield National Park was flooded and that we could no longer visit the park or go swimming at Wangi Falls as planned. Mike had been given a report by his boss early this morning that the road into the park was under nearly two metres of water, and had been getting half hourly updates throughout the night - but the latest news was that the water level, alt...

From Katherine, the coach took us along the Stuart Highway for another couple of hours until we broke for lunch in a little town called Pine Creek which is situated conveniently on the turnoff for Kakadu National Park. Now, you might think that once in a blue moon it would be possible to turn up in a small Australian town and find everything to be perfectly normal rather than ever so slightly odd in that peculiarly Australian way. But no, even Pine Creek has to ...

Unfortunately, there is always one person in every holiday group who seems determined to annoy as many people as possible, and at breakfast today she decided to join me at my table. This lady - we'll call her Betty - must be in her late 50s and seems to think that she's done pretty well for herself over the years and should share all her knowledge with everyone, whether they want to know or not. So over my cereal this morning I found myself being subjected to a l...