Although it's an internal flight, the flight to Darwin from Perth was 3.5 hours, well Australia is BIG! It's also 1.5 hours in front of Perth, so we left at 8.30am and arrived at 1.30pm and as it's an internal flight, in no time we were picking up our camper van! A quick stop in Darwin for supplies where Ian was delighted to be asked for ID when he bought some beers, he thought the holiday must have knocked 20 years off him. We then found out that everyone has to show ID to buy alcohol in The Northern Territory due to big issues with underage drinking. Poor Ian, he was gutted! We set off to the first of three National Parks we were visiting. Not long out of Darwin, we realised how remote it had become. Cars were becoming fewer and fewer and after about an hour and a half we arrived at a town called Batchelor to camp for the night. I wondered if it was called Batchelor as other than the campsite, we only saw one person and he was a bloke! Apparently 600 people live there but we didn't see the other 599! The next day we went into Litchfield National Park and first stop was to the magnetic termite mounds. These are weird, jagged formations made by the termites pushing the earth up as they make their nest. The strange thing is they always build their nests facing from north to south, or south to north, not sure which. The biggest one was 5 metres tall and 50 years old. We then went to Florence falls where we swam in a beautiful plunge pool under a waterfall (I've always wanted to swim under a waterfall!) and walked through a tropical monsoon forest, saw a rock wallaby, went to a disused Tin mine, had a picnic by a creek and saw two more waterfalls. Not bad for one day!
The next day we set off again down The Stuart Highway. This is the only road South of Darwin, but Ian was determined to use the Sat Nav he had down loaded on his IPAD. For a straight road! As we got ready to turn out onto the highway, the voice came on, 'hmmmmm, I think maybe.....perhaps, yes that's right, turn left at the roundabout!' The voice was Wallace and Gromit. Well, Wallace as Gromit is a dog! I wasn't expecting a novelty voice, but you would think it would've been Crocodile Dundee, or Rolph Harris, or Dame Edna or Kylie......but no.......it's Wallace and Gromit! Anyway, as I said, The Stuart Highway is the only road South, so I expected a motorway, but it's literally one lane. Huge road trains, the size of four articulated lorries joined together travel the highway, so periodically there are two lanes for overtaking, but it's basically one lane for about 1000 miles to Alice Springs. Luckily we were not going that far, just to a place called Katherine for the Nitmiluk National Park. We set off after a night in the campsite at Katherine and after Wallace had told us to 'maybe, perhaps, yes, turn left at the roundabout' we were on our way. 10 minutes later and a big kangaroo jumped out in front of the van! For anyone who knows the story about the day Ian shouted up the stairs to tell me there was 'beer in the sink' before he went out to pick up the children and when I came downstairs it was actually a deer in the sink!, well this time I though we were going to have a 'Kanga in the Campa!', but it just managed to bounce off and narrowly missed becoming a Kangaroo burger! We did actually have Kangaroo burger that Ian made (out of bought Kangaroo mince) that night at the campsite, it's super healthy, high in protein and low in cholesterol and for anyone who's not eaten Kanga, it tastes gamey, maybe a bit like venison. It was yummy! We booked to go down Katherine Gorge on an early boat trip and this was amazing. What an amazing part of the world, beautiful. Unfortunately as it was the end of the wet season all the natural pools were closed to swimming due to the salt water crocs, these are the most dangerous crocs in the world and grow up to 6 metres long. These crocs are angry and attack for no reason. They are only called Salt Water due to the glands they have behind their eyes to deal with the salt water but they can live anywhere and are really prevalent in the Northern Territories of Australia, particularly in the wet seasons when the waters are high and the food is plentiful. They actually caught a 4.5 metre one right next to our campsite in katherine a week before we arrived! We only saw fresh water crocs in Katherine Gorge though. Then off to Kakadu National park, the third and by far biggest Park that we were visiting. We stayed at a campsite right by Yellow river so we could get the 6.30 river trip to see the most wildlife and catch the sunrise. LOADZ of mozzies at this camp but the trip was so worth it. We saw sea Eagles, Jabiru, jacana ( the dads look after the young and we saw this Male Jacana with loads of legs, well it looked like it anyway, then all of a sudden he decided to go to get some food, opened his wings and he'd been protecting his 4 chicks, sooooooo cute!) blue kingfisher, Australian Darts, cookaburra and much more plus.......SALTY CROCS! Big big crocs, right by the boat, looking me in the eye, arghhhhh! Back to Darwin for two nights, we went to Mindi Sunset Markets on the first night, which was fantastic and the second day got the bus into Darwin from the campsite so we could have a really good wander around and a couple of drinks. Hmmmmm, we ended up in the afternoon at Darwin Waterfront and ended up chatting to two lovely people called Gill and Brendan, who ended up taking us out on the town, so we ended having a crazy party night in Darwin! Then off to Bali, the last leg of the journey. speak soon from Bali xxxxx