We are in Australia! Boy do I love it here! It's like a hotter cooler version of home! Why? Because they speak English, have English foods for two things but mainly because it's soo warm and we've got an exciting intineary planned for the next 6/7 weeks! I'm eager to get started and don't have to wait long because as soon as we lance in Darwin at around midnight we're picked up at 6.30am the next day for our national pack 2 night, 3 day tour!

First stop. Lichfield national park, an hour away from Darwin.
Driving through the park we saw tons of kangaroos and learnt lots of interesting facts about them. Kangaroos are called kangaroos because when the aboriginals (first people in Australia before Britain and others found it) were asked what a kangaroo was they said "kangaroo" which translates to "I don't know" and the word has just stuck.
Kangaroos are said to be best mummies as they can have 3 babies at one time. baby in tummy, baby in pouch and baby out of pouch. Plus they can choose to pause a pregnancy in their tummy and then restart it later at a more convenient time. Pretty clever!
We visited some gorgeous waterfalls and swam in three areas which was just lovely as Darwin was seriously hotter than we had anticipated! Rhen, our tour guide predicted it was in the late 30's to mid 40's. Wow wee, we needed the swim and thankfully all the walks to the waterfalls and waters were short 5/10 minute walks.

We had to drive within the national park and had a 4wd truck to get around. Our tour guide Rhendon was. Australian and full of knowledge. He'd been a tour guide for all of Australia except for the kimberlies and the great ocean road! Pretty dam impressive as he was our age!
It started to rain during our 1st afternoon and my mind immediately went to the whole "please don't rain! It's day one! This isn't a good sign, don't rain like last time I was in Australia, please!" Luckily it was only a hour or so of heavy rain and then just a sprinkle. But, it had rained the night before and the heavy rain in the hour worried Rhendon that one road may be closed so he rang around trying to find out. Again I'm thinking "here we go again!" The Northern Territory is a month early of the wet season and they call this time the building up time when the weather threatens to rain most days snit often doesn't until the afternoon and then it's just a burst of rain.
He found out that the road wasn't closed yet but that it soon could be. Rhen had been through last week and seen a brand new car stuck in the swollen creek. We had a decision to make, do we add an extra hour onto our trip to camp taking a detour or if we drive to the swollen creek and try but can't get across it'll add an extra 2 hours onto trip. We decided to try it! And sadly there isn't a super story to tell. We got there, turned the corner in anticipation but the water wasn't too high and we got through easy peasy!

We kept seeing these large mounds throughout our drives and later stopped at a couple massive ones to find they were termite mounds. Termites are smaller than ants that can build mounds out of grit, s*** and spit. The termites are split up into different groups, Workers at the bottom, soldiers in the middle, king and queen at the top reproducing every day. The queen produces 18k of eggs a day! The mound grows 1 metre every 10 years. It was pretty impressive for such a small animal!

We also saw magnetic termite mounds. I can't remember exactly the differences other than these all faced north south towards sun rise and set and were very thin because of sun being in the top of the sky most of the time so they aim towards it.

We stopped to get fuel at one point and James met his first crocodiles. 1 fresh water and 1 massive salt water croc. James couldn't believe size of the salty and thought it looked like a model until it blinked and moved it's back legs!

There were a variety of people on the tour, lots of French, say 7/8, 1 Irish, 2 Spanish, but the Spanish guy had lived in Yorkshire for a year so had a really good Yorkshire accent when he spoke English! 2 English who now live in Canberra after moving to Australia 13 years ago. So as you can imagine to conversations were varied but great fun and killed a lot of time during the drives between the areas within the park.

Now, I was a little anxious about camping, worrying that it would be uncomfortable, cold and just hard work! (Yes I've been cold in the nights and sleeping in pj bottoms and a jumper! James thinks I'm mad!) but luckily the kind of camping we did was defo the Glamping kind I'd heard about. Tent already put up, wooden floor, proper beds, electric and a fan. Perfect! We both slept perfect the first night. No problems. Panic over! Food was also great, Chicken burgers for lunch. Stir fry veggies with honey, soy sauce and garlic with Chicken curry and rice for dinner. The tour is a participation tour so we all helped get dinner ready and I must say it was nice to eat some homemade food rather than eating out like we've done the last month!

The next day we got up early to visit Kakudu Park and go on the Mary river cruise. The Mary river is a billabong which means it's a body of water that is always there. Even in droughts. The water is still so the sky and trees reflect in the water. Pure bliss... But our aim if the cruise was to spot crocs! We were warned that there were hundreds within the billabong and told that a guy had been on a friends 30th birthday and had been dared to swim across this billabong with the crocs inside!! He got across the first time but when he tried to swim back he was killed! He was a local too and knew the risks! They killed 11 crocs trying to find him but luckily did find his body for the funeral. So as you can imagine, we're sat in this tin can boat a little cautious of how close we get to the edge!
The billabong is full of Locus and local lilies. Locus Lillie's have pink flowers, yellow middles with seeds you can eat when ripe, (the aboriginals use the seeds to make into flour) The leaves of locus lilies are waterproof so you can use as hat! Water swirls around on top of the leaf. The local lily has a spilt leave and purple and yellow flower. The Lillie's make it really pretty!

We were lucky enough to sees fresh water croc pretty soon and about 5 salt water crocs. I was surprised that they can live in the same waters. Salty crocs will eat freshies but freshies can't eat salt water crocs, they are too big. Salty crocs will kill you but fresh crocs will only hurt you if you kick or annoy them. You'll still fight the infection of a fresh water croc for about 3 weeks in hospital.
Crocs can slow their heart beat down to 4 beats per minute, their number one priority is their body heat. They will sunbathe to heat their bodies to stay well but also to stop food rotting inside them.
When the wet season is in full swing crocs will travel with the waters. If they leave it to late to go back with the water to the billabong when the water is draining back they can protect themselves until the right time to leave hiding in mud to regulate their body heat and slow their heat rate down. They can live for 12 months if necessary like this. Pretty clever really!
We saw tons of birds also on the billabong, my favourite was one particular breed of eagle...the male will build a nest each year. His female comes and checks it and if she's not happy with it she will destroy it!! Ha!

Our second night camping wasn't quite as good as the first, no electric or fan but still tents up, and beds on wooden floors. We ended the night with kangaroo meat on the BBQ, just tasted like really meaty beef and lots of card games with the french.

On day three we went to a beautiful look out, we trekked for about 30 minutes, had to walk up and climb up a massive rock to a 360 degree view of the Kakudu national park. We couldn't see any man made buildings in the whole 360 degree view and out to the horizons, none! The best way to describe it was that it was like the lion king!! Lol! Sad thing was... Our camera died 10 minutes before! Dam batteries! So luckily our French friends took pictures for us. :-)

To my surprise I enjoyed the Darwin trip more than I expected. James was who really wanted to go, I could have given or taken it. But I'm chuffed we did it. Hot hot hot but great fun! We ended the trip with dinner with our French friends, and Rhendon and his gf before a sleep in the airport waiting for our 6am flight to cairns. Busy busy!