Darwin

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Hay back home,
After leaving Darwin the first time we thought it might be good to check out the surrounding coastal areas, first stopping at Mandorah. It was a very small place and the caravan park was at the pub. There wasn’t much to see or do but you had a nice view of Darwin from the beach over the harbour.
From here we headed out to a place called Dundee Beach. It was like a tropical island. The water was crystal clear and the sand white as snow. But we had heard Crab Claw Island was nicer and only stayed one night.
It wasn’t. There wasn’t any shade and it was a 39° day. Luckily there was a pool. The only bad bit after swimming was the amount of midges and mozzies around. We were eaten alive and nothing we did could prevent it. And it was not an island.
After packing up as quickly as possible we headed to Litchfield National Park. Here were the very interesting magnetic termite mounds; they point north hence giving them the name. Throughout Litchfield NP there were numerous walks and waterfalls. It was a very touristy place with lots of tour buses coming and going, because of this we didn’t camp in the park but just outside in a place called Batchelor.
We stayed here for two nights and celebrated Mick’s birthday the second night. It was just a quite night with a few drinks, the roast ended up taking 5 hours due to the heat beads losing heat half way through (dud beads). It still tasted good when we finally ate at 9.00pm.
As we still had three nights until we were due at the Free Spirit caravan park we decided to stay at the Hidden Valley caravan park to kill some time and relax, hidden valley also has the V8 super cars. As the weather decided to change (a bit of rain and temperature fall, 25°) we decided to have a bit of a look around and headed into Casurina Square (like a mini Westfield shopping centre).
Here we decided to go all out and go to the movies (The Simpsons). It was that good that we headed there again the next night and saw another movie (Chuck and Larry).
Once we had changed sites (we finally got the trailer completely set up) we just had to wait until Matho flew up on the Wednesday and Tiss (Mick’s sister) flew up on the Friday.
Once they had arrived we did the typical touristy things. The museum which featured a very informative Cyclone Tracy exhibition, the WW2 oil storage tunnels which you could walk though (175m long). A jumping crocodile cruise (if you ever get a chance to come here it is well worth it), the crocs are wild and it is a natural instinct to jump up to half their body out of the water. The Mindil markets Mick and I went to three of these. The 4 of us did a sunset harbour cruise that included a buffet of seafood, salads and meats (well worth the money). We also checked out some of the coastal reserves, national parks and marinas such as Cullen Bay and the Mitchell mall.
The croc and harbour cruise would have to have been one of my favourite things that we have done up until now.
From here we are heading to Kununurra and across to Derby and Broome via the infamous Gibb River Road, we hope to take our time in getting there.
That’s all for now, take care and talk soon…..

Happy Father’s day, to all the dads.

12th August was Schotty’s birthday.

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