The next stop after Alice Springs and a quite pleasant overnight bus was Katherine Gorge, where I got a free night in Nitmulik tent village included in my Oz Experience package. Or, that was the idea anyway. Turned out I'd managed to book the wrong night, and the place was full. Considering how empty the rest of Oz has been this was quite a surprise, but it turns out the place was overrun with old people and families with kids, this is tour bus territory now! Anyway it turned out that another girl called Neomi who was on the bus had also managed to make the exact same mistake (we're blaming Greyhound) so I felt like less of a retard. Liz, who I'd been on the Oz Experience bus with on the East coast and who was on the rock tour but with a different group was there too and was clearly some kind of genius cos she actually booked the right date, so we could all stay in her tent, crisis averted (there was nowhere else to stay in town and no bus, paaaniiicc).

Due to the plague of oldies on the place, there were no canoes left explore the gorge so the three of us just wandered off and had a bit of a swim instead, which was lovely and warm compared to the Uncle Brian's tour, thank god. Had an amazing steak dinner included (in our heads this meant FREE STEAK!), a nice early night (not much of a party scene), and an amazing pancake breakfast (they were fancy ones with icing sugar and everything) before setting off on our hike. It was 3.5 hours to the end of the first gorge and we didn't have that long due to faffing over pancakes, so we had to get our march on. And it was far too hot for that kind of exercise. Eventually though we got to the lookout with nice shinyfaces on and took a million photos of the view - a pretty nice view at that.

For some bizzare reason the truck back into town only went at 1pm or 5:30pm and our bus was at 5:45pm so we had to take the 1pm truck. Which meant four hours of sitting around Katherine. Katherine has nothing in it. So after four hours of sitting around and paying ridiculous prices for internet we were quite keen to get on our way. But noooo, Greyhound wouldn't let that happen and we were delayed for THREE hours. They didn't even have a reason. Eventually though at 1am we got into Darwin.

I was expecting Darwin to be big city with skyscrapers and lots of cars but as with pretty much all 'cities' north of Brisbane, it was tiny, and the roads were almost deserted. There's one main street where all the backpacker hostels and pubs are, and another street where all the shops are, and that's about all I saw of the city. I miss big cities! I had a lot of time to kill there till my tour though so had to find something to do. First day I went with Neele and Milan (from the rock tour) to the museum, which was pretty good as far as museums go - lots of different displays (I gave the one on fish a miss though, had enough of those!). Then Neele got on her plane and me and Milan went to explore the sunset market which was pretty cool - had an awesome electro-didgeridoo band playing and lots of amazing food and guys playing with fire. We watched the sunset, had some fun with giant shadows then met up with Liz and a girl called Carrie to go out. Wasn't a particularly eventful night - drinks are expensive and there were loads of old local women gyrating about which was a bit of a downer, went to bed early.

The next two days were pretty lazy, I just sat around on the internet all day really. I know this isn't a very holidayish activity (as some drunk local shouted to all the people using the internet at Peterpans: "There are real people outside!") but some people like to sit on sun loungers doing nothing, I like to spend all day on the internet. In a dark room. It was too hot ok! We went out both nights with a variety of people but they were generally the same sort of affair where everyone's sober and moving to the music until it's an acceptable time to go home. The music wasn't too great anyway, it's all the same everywhere - gets a bit boring after a month! Decided I don't really like Darwin, it seems too empty and characterless. Everyone's really well dressed (I think they were all locals) but nobody looks too happy. I went to the lagoon one day with Milan, Liz and Benny and Nathalie who were also on our rock tour, which was all very nice and all but it was all about the 'chilling out' and I wasn't in the mood for it.

The whole town is packed to the brim cos this is the best time to be here cos it's not too hot so there's no space in any hostels (I almost fell on top of the two guys sleeping on my dorm floor), and all the tours are booked up. Luckily I caught onto this in advance and booked my tour for Litchfield and Kakadu in time (it was included in my price so there was no way I was missing it!), while Liz couldn't get a place. This is about the only lucky thing that happened while I was there though. In addition to the tent and bus fiascos, I also realised that I left all my warm clothes in Alice Springs (in a laundry bag which they apparently put in the bin!) and that I wouldn't be able to reschedule my flights home from New Zealand cos there were none available for the whole month of August, so I'd only have two weeks to do the whole thing, which is impossible. I was a bit concerned that I'd accidentally stolen a rock from Uluru and cursed myself forever (or until I wrote my sorry letter and returned it of course), and was pretty worried I'd be hit by a bus seeing as it was Friday the 13th too, buuut I escaped Darwin unscathed and set off into the outback one last time.....