Northern Territories

Dear all

Another post, but this time we have moved onto Australia, more precisely we have been in the Northern Territories. Our journey from Phnom Phen took us back to Bangkok where we had set out some 2 months earlier, but this time we stayed at a little spa resort near to the airport, where I indulged myself in my last Thai massage, utter bliss and only 5 quid for an hour! The next morning we caught our flight to Darwin, via Singapore when I also had a little spend and acquired a little net book in the vain hope that I would be able to update the blog more often - I will try when we do get access that doesn't cost the debt of Ireland!

Setting up camp on the first night

In Darwin we picked up our little wicked camper

van and set off for our outback adventure. Our first stop was the Humpty Doo Hotel, which is famous for saying that its famous & its halfway to Kakadu so many tourists all stop for a drink or one for their enormous lunches. He soon arrived at our beautiful quiet campsite and set ourselves up for the night.



On the way into Kakadu



Little did we know we had entered into an animal war zone........ first came the Cockatoo's all in full mating glory.. next the crows, some magpie geese and Ibis. Finally the mosquito's realised that I was a moving buffet cart and descended en mass..... The next morning I looked like I had the measles with hundreds of bites all over my arms and back. Let me tell you Bushmans 60% deet does obviously not work here! There were however some great butterflies and a number of grazing wallabies who just wandered past to make up for the discomfort........ (I think!).

 Our next few days were spent around the park with no further animal incidents, but we did have too invest in a fan to be able to cope with the heat in the night & we had to restructure our waking days to get everything done by 1.00pm before it got to hot (our hottest day was Jabaru outside the bakery where the temperature showed 51C in the shade! Yow!!) The whole park is massive some 20,000 square km, but the main aboriginal are sites are located quite close and we stuck to Jabaru and Yellow Creek for our walks. We did manage to splash our on a river cruise where we saw our first 'salties' (salt water crocodile), which were bigger than I imagined and some quite spectacular birds including, sea eagles, storks and cranes.

Next stop was Katherine some 300 km south and about 8 degrees hotter than Kakudu! The main street is pretty much the town, but is famous for its 13 gorges and its hot springs. Given the heat we took the easy route and went on a combined tour with the first part on a helicopter over the whole length of the gorges and the second part a river boat trip up the first three. Suffice to say it was breathtaking and spectacular and certainly better than the alternative 5 hour walk in 45 degrees!!The pilot even landed on the gorge edge so we could take some photos, but they really do not do justice to the place.

Our last stop was the magical Litchfield National park, which was cooler, more compact and pretty much a mosquito free zone! (albeit replaced by persitent sandflies). The whole place is 10% the size of Kakadu, but much more is packed into the area with numerous waterfalls with pools you can swim in underneath. We were fortunate that all the 4WD roads were still open unlike Kakadu so we got right off the beaten track. In summary if you can stand the heat and are immune to to Mozzies and sandflies then this place is so worth including on a tour. We took hundreds of photos and the edited highlights are all on Facebook. I will leave you with one final snap taken in Katherine, for which I will give a prize for the best caption!

Enjoy

Hugs

Sara