Another World Heritage Site, The Road Less Travled, Plains and Mines, Eastside Homey, Parcel Delivary Service.

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The highlight of our stay in the top end is Kakadu national park, a area the size of whales encoumpasing Aligator creek and its catchment basen all the way to the sea. The park is one of the most diverse national parks in the world and therefore gets the increasingly common title of 'World Heratige area'. through the middle of the park a great wall and platau streaches for thousands of Kilometers, atop this platau is the aborigonal Arnhem lands, but beaneath lies Kakadu (with the exception of a few Uranium mines!).

Numerous spectacular waterfalls run from atop the paltu down the sheer rock, into cool pools and Monsoon forest, while there are also huge Wetland areas, grassy plains, scrub bush, Euclypt forest, dry forest, and patches of rain forest. All with their associated wildlife, and visitors. There are some 8 species of bird and 4 mamels that are found only in this part of the world! We manages to spot a few of them, of note the very rare Rock Pigeon!

We only spend two days in Kakadu which is a bit of a shame considering its size and variety, but since we are moveing in just after the rain season most of the roads are still washed out and huge areas of the park are still under crock infested water. Our highlite is walking round and up Nuralangie rock, which boasts some of the best Abborigonal rock art in Australia, atop the rock we can see the vastness of this area and raise our caps to the Ozzy government for keeping such a large and resourse (massive Uranium deposits) space as a National Park, we can only hope that the growing demand for Nuclear power throught the western world will not be the downfall of such a pristene and diverse landscape. Allthought the fires of industry and progress are encroaching on the park with 2 mines already permitted within its boundries.

From the cool pools of Kakadu we head south on the long road across the country to the east coast. We drive 2000ks in 2 and a half days as there is not much to see here but grasslands, cows, and mines. We stop at a famous Outback pub in a place called 'Dalley Waters' we take a dip in some natural hot springs, we spend a night camped at a road house where the road to Alice springs mets and the road to Quensland its called 3 Ways. We have a night in the industrail mining town of Mt Isa, and finaly with very sore bums, bleary eyes and a burning desire to Kite we hit the East coast of QLD at Townsville.

We only do one night here, enought time to hit a Backpackers, sort our lives out, charge batterys, get a good Pizza, and plan the home leg of our tirp back to Sydney. Townsville is nice in the way Banbury is nice, its a pritty hick town gone massive in the last 10 years, tourism has made it boom beyond its means and it shows, it is a little tacky and gaudy and the infastructure is lagging behind the demand.

From here with some intersting findings on the Meterology website we drive 90k south to the sleepy Alva beach near Ayr. This place has about 30 houses and a camp site, we saw a big water tower with a VB (Victoria Bitter) logo on it and thought ' great there is a pub', when we drove up to it and found some blokes house we were a bit dissapointed.

Never mind though we have been at Alva for 3 days and Kited hard every day. The beach has a huge sand bar creating a massive lagoon inside a long beach break, this is a great place for us to go realy postal, not jsut pushing envlopes, this time were delivering parcels. With the RND team for Airush (another big kite manufacturer) on site Jimmy and i feel we have to represent our kite brands, with some Darth Vader action on the water, a bit of head cam kiteing and new tricks for the both of us, Front roll transitions from Jim and big grabs and the elussive doubble backroll from me!

Were here till the wind dies, and then on south into the heart of tourist country, wish us luck.

(again appologies for spelling this crap pc! and it wont let me do pics so u will have to wait to see the Dark Lord of the Sith face planting in the sand!)

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