Blogs from Northern Territory, Australia, Oceania

We all loved Darwin. The frist caravan park was really boring(only 3 bars of reception!!!!!!!!!!!!) I got my very own pet. My pet is….. a blue tongue lizard. I called him Fred. He is the best!! Everyone loves him. I have to look after him. He is my responsibility. I feed him special dog food called 4 legs. I change his water and food everyday. He likes it on my shoulder and cuddles into my neck. Other great things we saw at Darwin were all the markets, wave pool, water park that is free, museums, WW2 stuff. The parks there are amazing. Mum was really excited cause we got to meet mum’s other cousins that she has never met before. They are really nice. We played in the park at Fannie Bay. Dad and I think ... read more

April 17-24 I took the Ghan from Alice Springs on April 16th and arrived in Darwin on the 17th. The overriding memory that I have of Darwin is the oppressive humidity coupled with the heat. The week that I was there the temperature was 35 degrees Celsius with 90% humidity. I can still feel the sweat dripping down my face. Ick. Darwin itself is a port town and distinguished itself as being the recipient of a several bombings by the Japanese in World War II and almost being wiped off the face of the earth by a typhoon a some years later. There are a few nice beaches and museums in Darwin, but I spent most of my time trying to avoid the humidity by dodging from one air conditioned building to another. I am definitively ... read more

With all of our bags packed for Cairns we checked out of our hostel and headed to Darwin's waterfront before our afternoon of fishing. The waterfront was reminiscent of the restaurants around the friendship gardens in darling harbour, although a little smaller and they have the added features of a wave pool and a man made lagoon with a shark/croc net. After a couple of quick pictures we headed to Cullen Bay Ferry Terminal to pick up our afternoons fishing charter. Lochy the skipper soon had us crushing out to sea to catch the tide as it turned as this would probably provide the best chances of catching anything. With Amy giving us a quick run through on what to do we baited our hooks and cast our lines in. Straight away Jo was in on ... read more

We spent most of this morning in our hostel sorting out blogs and doing our washing. Around lunchtime we walked down to the other end of the town to go to the tourist info centre. We were planning a crocodile jumping cruise and a fishing trip for the next 2 days and we managed to get them both sorted with a little help from the locals at the tourist information centre. Next we called into Coles on our way back from to the hostel and bought some basic backpacker rations which meant we had cereal for lunch! And we then caught the bus down towards Mindil Beach to take a look at the Museum which had been recommended by our tour guide Nick. The museum had an exhibition in Cyclone Tracy which pretty much wiped out ... read more

I had envisioned sitting here in Darwin writing this blog with wonderful aerial photos of the Bungle Bungle range from out little 8 seater plane and raving about how awesome our scenic flight was. However, as many of you know, it was not meant to be and instead we ended up with an experience that we don’t wish upon anybody. However, between the last blog and this one, much has happened so I shall come back to the flight in due course (parents, you may want to skip that section!) After leaving Exmouth, we headed across to Karratha where we experienced an unusual juddering in the van. Thinking that we had shot the suspension, bent the axel or done some other major injury, we called upon the trusty RAC from Karratha who did a sport check ... read more