The final leg of our Australian adventure has proved to be a comedy of errors with respect to our stalwart vehicle, the Beast.A new fuel filter was all she ever desired to start properly and run reliably and since we granted her one in Broome, she'd been chugging along beautifully.From Broome we headed to explore the Kimberlies in Australia's northwest.This area of the country has two seasons: wet and dry.Unfortunately for us it's still the wet and with this all the 4WD tracks we had hoped to explore were still bogged down and closed namely the famous Gibb River Road.In its place we were forced onto the paved Great Northern Highway and spent our first night in a lovely town called Fitzroy Crossing.We advise all who read this to steer clear of this hole of a town.As I mentioned earlier, the Beast was running smoothly and as if to give us a bit more of a challenge, we thought it wise to lock our keys in the car…while it was running.Surrounded by bugs in plague-like swarms, the maintenance guy at our campsite was unsuccessful in his attempts to break into the car so we very carefully and skillfully hammered a screwdriver through a window.Mission accomplished - and after a brief clean up effort and dinner cooked in a kitchen that seemed to wholly move with ants, crickets, grasshoppers, flies and about 30 other insects we could not identify, we retired to our tent.It wasn't until 3 am that we were introduced to Singapore ants, which apparently are capable of eating through tents.There were at least 200 of the little b******s crawling all over us at night - it was awesome.

Travelling in a vehicle containing all supplies necessary for an entire year becomes infinitely more difficult knowing that when left unattended any passerby can help himself to whatever they please through an open window.We could not take in any sights until this window was replaced.The next town of any substance was Kununurra on the border with the Northern Territory.We headed there with high hopes.These hopes were crushed on arrival when it became immediately clear we hadn't a prayer of finding a Toyota dealership or wrecking yard here - it didn't help that it was Saturday and everywhere was closed anyway.We passed the time with some cask wine in the company of 3 Estonians (I swear the guy could've passed as an American - he learned his English from watching Friends and Seinfeld) and a Korean guy who had spent a month cycling from Sydney to Brisbane (Why? - I dunno).

Katherine, in the Northern Territory, we thought was our best hope in patching the Beast's wound.Another 700 kms or so on another empty road led us there and we were pleased to pass by a large Toyota dealership as we entered this populous town of 11,000 inhabitants.After visiting a few wrecking yards the next morning without any luck, we placed an order for a new window, which would arrive 2 days later.So what to do in the meantime?Kayak through Katherine Gorge?Sorry - too early for that just yet - still too many crocs in the water.Just our luck.We did however enjoy relaxing in Katherine Hot Springs which is a rather large creek diverted from the nearby river flowing through lush tropical vegetation - it was really good just to float in the warm water and basically recharge our batteries for a day.

We picked up the window early on a Wednesday and after about an hour of trying to think back to my days working in my uncle's body shop of how to dismantle a car door without breaking anything too badly, I had the new window successfully installed and we were on the road again towards Litchfield.We had only been driving for about an hour when we pulled over to see why the air con wasn't working only to discover that the Beast was now leaking engine coolant.Upon further inspection, we realized that the radiator plug had inexplicably broken.Having thought that we stopped the leak with some candle wax, we hit the road hoping to reach civilization - the temperature gauge pointing in the direction of HOT persuaded us to pull over and come up with a better plan.Finally some good fortune blew our way in the form of two blokes on their way to some maintenance work in Katherine that pulled over and within 15 minutes replaced the broken plug with a spare bolt and we were back in business.

With our radiator now full of water we entered Litchfield National Park with just enough daylight remaining to dip into what soon became our favorite cooling off spot of the entire trip - Buley Rockhole.It is a series of smallish waterfalls rambling down rock faces with plunge pools at the base of each in which we waded in for hours.We did the same first thing the next morning before heading off to explore the park further.Florence Falls was next and after a bit of a hike to reach the bottom we had a dip in the much larger plunge pool at the base of the 50 ft. falls.With the pool being much deeper, we didn't venture too close to the falls as who knows what lurks in the deep.The most picturesque of the park's falls, Wangi Falls, we had to give a miss as it was closed due to the presence of salties (salt water crocs).It wasn't until a few days later that we learned that an Aboriginal woman had been attacked by a salty on the day of our arrival to the park.Luckily her husband wrestled the croc until he convinced is to let his wife go - to think, we had been swimming in the same water system…

Litchfield would be our last adventure as our next destination was Darwin where we would attempt to sell the Beast.A day of driving around to all the used car dealerships in town taught us several key facts: 1) not one of them would offer us more than $3500 for our precious baby, 2) we'd have to exert the effort to sell her on the private market, and 3) she had a bit of an oil leak.Our next plan of action was to post ads in the local paper, trading post and put flyers up in all the backpackers in town.The week that followed had us sitting around our hostel's pool working on our tans and praying for our phone to ring with interested buyers.A full week passed in which our accomplishments were little more than a celebratory night out to commemorate our safe arrival in Darwin, deepening the color of our skin a few shades of brown, and a whole lot of reading our books.Finally a call came through with some interest in the car.$2000 he assured us was all he could offer.An hour later we agreed on a price that we could be moderately happy with.When all was said and done, whatever we lost on the car was less than half what we would have paid to rent a 4WD for that period of time so we can't complain too much.It's a huge relief knowing that the Beast is now someone else's problem - we'll both miss her though and we hold a special place for her in our hearts.

Singapore is our next destination where we will celebrate our 3 year anniversary in extravagance before getting reacquainted with our lives as backpackers and venture into the great unknown of Southeast Asia.We just can't wait to be on the move again…