Hiya gang! Hope you're all enjoying the snow, we've got totally the opposite - torrential rain, the most spectacular storms, humid weather but still manage a good few hours by the pool during the day in the sun. Welcome to the tropics! Made it safely to Darwin ahead of schedule in Alf the fastest campervan in NT! So fast that James got pulled over by the speed cops once they caught us that is! Travelled 6450kms since Perth which is just over 4000 miles. Seen some amazing sights, some which we never even knew about, the real aussie outback! Since the last update we've been to Kununurra - very hot and humid, not a lot to do there, big Abo settlement but has got the Ord river dam and Lake Argyle which is like a canyon full of water, 17 times bigger than Sydney harbour, pretty special. Then headed to Katherine (Northern Territory) as a stopover and then onto kakadu national park. Kak by name and kak by nature i'm afraid! Booked a flight over the falls as you can't access them by road in the Wet season but due to massive 12 hour storm it got cancelled. The highlight of the park was waking up in about 6 inches of water surrounding us, good job Alf had 4 wheel drive! Hot-footed it to Darwin to make sure we didn't get stranded on any flooded roads and miss our trip! If we haven't told you already we've got a six day safari trip to Alice Springs via Katherine Gorge, Mataranka hot springs, Daly Waters (oldest pub in Oz, hope they sell Strongbow!), Tennants Creek, Devils Marbles, Uluru (Ayers Rock), The Olgas and Kings Canyon. We get picked up tomorrow at 5:15am and finish up in Alice Springs on 16th Feb. Looking forward to it, be nice to let someone else drive for a bit!

Alf has given us the best 4 weeks since we left home so we've already booked Lou Carpenter (another camper) for the East Coast. Hope you like the names! They're a bit haggered but they always seem to keep going!

Hope you are all well and not snowed in, especially if you're at work! We've almost forgotten what that is!

Lots of love to you all, Lauren and James. xxxxxxxxxx (Yes James' hair is still growing, he had to get it trimmed today cos it was hanging over his ears and he was going deaf! Starting to look like a proper surf dude!)