Blogs from Daly Waters, Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania

The end of the trip is now approaching. We have flown from Bali to Darwin for a night in a hostel and met up with Adam our driver again. He has hired a 24 seater bus for us (with AC) so travelling in comparative comfort. Strange to be able to read and understand the road signs, recognise most items in the supermarket (Vegemite is an acquired taste I think), and be able to understand what people are saying! The first stop should have been Kakadoo but the park is flooded and the roads impassable so we are now going to the Jumping Crocodiles. Wow - that was awesome. To see these massive animals jumping out of the water for food - it gave us the chance to see what powerful beasts they are (and some great ... read more

Saturday 3rd September 2016 Last night we all agreed that we would move northwards and Barrow Creek Roadhouse, 280kms away, was to be our stop for the night. Mark and Helena decided they were going to do more sightseeing before leaving and as we hadn’t been through the Olive Pink Botanic Gardens we went there. Good decision, the Olive Pink Botanic Garden was well worth going to. Miss Olive Pink was an unconventional anthropologist who championed the welfare of the aborigines from the 1940s, a botanical artist and a woman ahead of her time in promoting the cultivation of Australia's native plants. The garden consists of more than 600 plant species from all over Central Australia including 33 that are rare or endangered. The garden was opened to the public in 1985. We set off climbing ... read more

The last few days have been lovely and relaxing. We’ve enjoyed the Apostle Birds each morning (and sometimes in the afternoon, too) and the whole parade of birds and animals. I got the washing done (but not the ironing as there’s no board)and got most of the backlog of my Blog from August up to date as well as doing the current ones. We haven’t had telephone reception as there is no Optus but Barry bought $20 of data from United WiFi so we were able to email friends and family, especially Stacey, as it was her 30th birthday on Wednesday. She’d had a big Sci-Fi themed party at a hired venue last weekend and we were able to also look at her Facebook photos, which was wonderful. The showers at night have been interesting, with ... read more

Having decided to head South Barry was keen to get as far as possible along the Stuart Highway today. We had a little bit of headwind for a while but it soon dropped and we motored along fairly easily to Mataranka, where we decided to stop for lunch. I noticed some coloured statues at the start of the town that I hadn’t seen last time so Barry parked near a large Banyan Tree (Strangler Fig) and stayed in the ute while I went to see. There were four statues, all from the book “We of the Never-Never” by Jeannie Gunn which was set in the area and tells of their experiences on their property, Elsey Station, in the outback in the 1890s. One group was the author and her husband, Aeneas. There was also an Aboriginal ... read more

With our brief but rewarding stop over in Kakadu completed, we set off south east back to the Stuart Highway, stopping at a number of points of interest as we travelled. The roads here are generally excellent, but remembering some are through wetlands (a nice name for swamp) so there are areas that are uneven. Our first stop was a little off the highway at Edith Falls. There is a national park camp here and many had said this was a great place to camp. We were out of luck as far as getting a camp site suited to our long vehicle, so just went walk about from the car park to look at the falls and the stream that flows away. It is a great place to cool off in the lake at the bottom ... read more