We left Darwin loaded on pancakes ready for the road trip once again and set off towards Litchfield National Park.

Before we came to Australia, we knew that a didgeridoo was high on the agenda of souvenirs to purchase but none had fallen in the right price range that we liked. That was until shortly after leaving Darwin we called in at a town called Humpty Doo (Where do they get their town names from?!!) to visit a famed local art shop where didge's were a-plenty. Suffice to say, we found a good looking and sounding piece of naturally hollowed out wood painted by a member of the aboriginal community and it joined us on our adventure. Getting the initial sound wasn't too difficult for me or Sam but sustaining the note using circular breathing has proved a challenge! Watch this space!

Berry springs was recommended to us shortly after leaving Adelaide so we drove through torrential rain to get there. It was a nice little pool and very warm but not as enjoyable as if it had not been raining perhaps.

We drove on to Litchfield N.P and set up camp at what is probably my favourite campsite yet - Wangi Falls. The rain had cleared which spared us the unwanted headache of pitching up in the wet and we took a short walk down to the falls. The campsite is very basic but has a toilet/shower block (with no lights!) with a resident frog in the girls toilet and it was very cheap. But what made it such a nice place was the close proximity to the falls. You can hear them from our tent and walk a few minutes for a swim in the beautiful waters.

Litchfield is predominantly about the springs, rockpools, waterfalls and swimming holes and we paid a visit to a few of these including Florence falls & Buley Rockhole where a huge lizard/goanna went for a little walk near to where everyone was swimming. They aren't dangerous but they sure are pretty big.

Also in the national park here are the magnetic termite mounds. The best way to describe this field of grey, vertical slabs is a graveyard without the flowers! Another of nature's phenomenon's, the ants build the mounds in a north-south orientation in order to capture the right amount of daylight and apparently, if not built in this manner, they don't survive!

The first part of our drive out of Litchfield was the most action packed driving yet! Along our travels, we've had emus, cows, lizards, birds of many varieties and dingo's all appear on the roads in front of us but never caused us any problems. We left Litchfield at 7am because our drive was due to be the longest in a single day yet. This early hour promised to add many more animals to that list within seconds as Kangaroos started to leap out in front of us so we drove extra carefully and ever more vigilant. Before long, frogs leapt passed, more kangaroos that caused us to slow right down and even a family of pigs that required a slamming of the brakes (no skidding though!). We thought we'd passed the worst of it when BANG, out of absolutely nowhere, a fairly large kangaroo chose it's last moment in life to jump in front of the car and, subsequently, went under. There wasn't any way we could've seen it coming but, luckily for us and not the kangaroo, no apparent, visible damage was caused apart from a small crack in the bumper. Suffice to say, the next 10 hours of driving was pretty tame and very uneventful.

That was until we ran out of fuel 2km from a petrol station - and our destination! Thankfully our canister proved it's worth! We returned to Tennent Creek for one night before another long day of driving.

Heading to Mt Isa, we crossed the NT/Queensland border on a largely desolate road. Mt Isa was 665km from Tennent Creek and just about as unimportant to the everyday backpacker! Hence our departure the next morning to Townsville on the east coast.

We foolishly accept the first hostel we get to in Townsville because, quite simply, we just want to rest and sleep after covering about 2500km in three days since leaving Litchfield. Unfortunately our hostel is a bit of a party place and low noise isn't enforced.

It's strange to think that we've covered the distance between Cairns and Sydney in 3 days but we've got about 6 weeks to enjoy that leg of the trip! It goes to show how much more there is to see and do on the east coast and thankfully less driving too!

We stayed around Townsville for 2 days relaxing before heading north towards Cairns. Maybe we are approaching things a little differently now because we can see and do things whilst travelling as the distances are a little less. Maybe we'll wear ourselves out more easily and maybe we'll feel like we're rushing things but hopefully we'll adjust and enjoy things just as much. Doing things this way will also give us more days to spend doing nothing by the see too!