Knocked down twice by Cyclones, once by the Japanese: Darwin!

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The next stop on my trip was Darwin, and the first thing I did was find a backpackers, and then went out to look around the city. Despite getting in at 4 in the afternoon, it was still really hot and sunny, and very humid. Apparently over here it's only about 35 degrees, but they get about 5 degrees added on in humidity factor. The next morning I didn't have much to do so agreed to go out and get breakfast with an Irish guy in my dorm. We ended up at a pub which served alcohol before it did breakfast, but despite this it turned out to be really nice, and fairly cheap. Then I got the bus over to Nightcliffe to look around the markets, which were fairly small and unimpressive. Some guy selling fabric and stuff chatted to me about volcanoes for about 30 minutes, but ended up selling me a sarong for $10 rather than $35.

That afternoon was very sunny and hot so I went down to the waterfront. You can't swim in the sea in Darwin as the harbour is full of box-jellyfish and crocodiles, but there is a fenced off bit of the harbour were you can go in the sea, and a wavepool which costs $5 for an afternoon, with free bodyboards and stuff. I ended up going in the wavepool where I met some cool surfer guys - BJ from Aus, Jogen from South Africa, and Grace. They were all insanely good and bodyboarding standing up doing all sorts of tricks. BJ attempted to teach me to stand up but I failed epically. After about 4 hours, me, Jogen, BJ and BJ's brother James went out to get food before chilling at the backpackers for a bit. After they left, me and the guys from my dorm did the "10" minute walk down to Mindl Beach to watch the lightning storm which was pretty impressive. Then we went paddling for a bit, and walked back. When we got back we went to the pub for a drink, listened to an aborigini busking rather badly by hitting 2 sticks together, and then headed back to bed.

The next day I finally got round to buying a new phone. It cost me $29 and I got $50 credit, to use by Dec 14, with texts to the UK only 35c so anyone who wants to can now text me and get a reply, or I might even phone you once I get people's numbers again :O. Though I probs not for a while as I only have 5 numbers at the moment - my home, my mother, Ilka and Chris in Perth, BJ CJ in Darwin, and myself ([phone]). Then I got a love-potion ice-cream: white choc and raspberry icecream, with raspberry filled choc hearts, choc swirls, caramel, white choc pieces and lots of other yummy crap, before chilling in the netted part of the harbour for a bit, and going back to the wavepool with Grace, where we got free entry as BJ was on gate duty. Unfortunately though, we had to leave at 4 because the lightning came within 5k of the pool, so me and BJ went back to his place where we watched some cool video of Kelly Slater, and the waves down at Perth, and he cooked an awesome meal of sausage, chips and veg, which we ate whilst watching a pirated version of Knight and Day from Bali. Then it was back up to Melaleuca to get an early night as I had to be up at 6am the next day to go up to Kakadu National park.

The tour started half an hour late as Dean couldn't find anyone that was meant to be going on it, but eventually we had 7 out of the 9 people booked on - me, David from France, Team Finland and Team Singapore, so we headed off. The first stop was Corroborree Billabong for a wildlife cruise, where we saw a couple of Jabirus, some Darter birds, and lots of Lotus lilies. We also spotted 2 2m freshie crocs sunbathing on the bank and managed to get about a metre away from them. Then it was back in the 4WD to go up to Nourlangie Rock which is a sacred dreamtime site for the Aboriginis, but to us was basically a big rock. We weren't meant to climb on it (it being sacred and all), so we climbed up the rock next to it to look out over Kakadu Park which is massive, and then had lunch at the bottom. Then it was a short drive to Ambangbang rock art site, where the were loads of 6000 year old art paintings, and me, David and Team Finland walked up to the top to look at the view of Nourlangie rock from the other side (Singapore weren't up for a 1k walk. Then to Warradjan Cultural Centre which was good as much for the aircon and lack of flies as for the cultural stuff. That evening we had a BBQ dinner, with sausage, steak and kangaroo, crocodile and buffallo meat - which all tasted fairly bland and chewy. Then as there was nothing much else to do we went for showers with the little green frogs in the bathroom and went to bed.

The next day was much better as we spent lots of time hiking and in waterfalls rather than in the 4WD. We started by driving down a "road" (just wide enough for the car, and more like a footpath than a road) to the start of the walk. Then we hiked 6k along the Yurmikmik path to the farthest waterfall, which doesn't seem far, but it was all uphill, about 40 degrees, and there were flies everywhere. On the plus side, there was loads of catmint growing in amongst the trees so the forest smelt really nice. When we were nearly there we took a shortcut, climbing over some rocks to get to the first waterfall - Motorcar falls - which made the walk quite a bit quicker for most of us, and probably a lot longer for Team Singapore who acted as though they had never seen rocks before. Once there we all (except Singapore) went in the water and swam out to the waterfall, and swam behind it, chilling out there for a while. Then we climbed up the rocks to one side and jumped over the waterfall at the top to get to the top part of the waterfall and a second plunge pool, where we swam for a bit as well. Then the guys all went back to swim in the bottom one again and I walked up to the top of the rocks to the side of the falls to take a picture, which turned out to be much more like bouldering than walking, but as there was water at the bottom of the 50ft drop I didn't worry too much. Luckily getting down turned out to be easier than going up for once.

Then it was a 3.5k hike back to the 2nd waterfall, Kurrundie, which was much smaller than the first, but had a cave next to it that went about 30feet back into the cliff face. It was really dark and narrow, and at one point we had to duck under the water to get through, so only me and one of Finland did it in the end, but was good fun. We had lunch here, and filled our bottles up from the waterfall - which was so clean that it actually tasted nicer than the Aussie tap water. Then we swam for a bit - even Yvonne (the younger member of Team Singapore) came in the water - and then headed off to do the final 3.5k to Dinner Falls. Dinner Falls was probably the smallest of the waterfalls, but it flowed down into quite a shallow plunge pool with lots of big rocks everywhere, making like a natural spa. Keeping up the trend of doing things the others were too scared to do, I climbed up the rocks behind the fall, although unlike the first fall where I tended to have 2 or 3 contact points with the rock, these were so slippy I ended up with about 5 contact points most of the time (both hands, feet and bum). Unfortunately I had to climb down again afterwards which was a bit more tricky, as the stretch of the plunge pool deep enough to jump into was about 1 ft wide and 3 ft long, so I decided not to risk it. Then it was back to the backpackers for a swim in the pool and Dean's burritos, before drinking the boys' beer, and heading to bed.

For the final day of the tour we went out of Kakadu and over to Litchfield National Park, or as Dean calls it "Litchfield WaterPark", as that's where all the locals go swimming. We started by going to the Cathedral Termite Mounds, which were basically big, hollow, very solid mounds of earth. Then we saw the Magnetic Termite Mounds, which were basically the same as the Cathedral's but very thin, and pointing almost directly North, so the got lots of sun in the cooler morning and evenings, and not so much in the hotter midday. Then we went to our first waterfall of the day, which was much more touristy than Kakadu - for one we didn't have to hike 6k to get there, but also there was luxuries like tarmac roads leading up to it, and toilets and bins nearby. It turned out to be a series of smaller falls, each with a plunge pool at the bottom, so we chose one that was fairly empty and chilled there for ages, sitting in the middle of the waterfall. The next fall was much bigger, and had just the one plunge pool so there were more people about. Also, the rangers were there so Dean wouldn't let us climb up the rocks or jump in, but it was still pretty cool. Waterfall number 3 was probably the biggest and split into 2 falls. We started by going on a walk up to a "treetop lookout point" which turned out to have a rubbish view, as there were taller trees all around it blocking the view. Then we jumped in and swam out to the first fall, which turned out to have a natural jacuzzi about 10ft up, which 4 of us chilled in for a while. Then we swam over to the other one and climbed up a little way behind it and jumped in, hoping to avoid the rocks at the bottom. That was pretty much the end of the day. We drove to the final waterfall which turned out to be shut, so we just had a late lunch, and went back to Darwin.

After recovering from Kakadu by sleeping in late, I went to Crocodylus Croc Park, where I started by feeding the crocodiles with meat on a fishing rod, then one of the park staff got out a baby croc that wasn't going too mental after being fed, stuck an elastic band round it's mouth and let us hold him. He was about 1m long, but really heavy, and powerful - the girl gave him to a 5-year-old to hold, and he could barely control him. Then I wandered round for a bit looking at the crocs, lizards, turtles etc, before going to the reptile presentation. This turned out to be a talk about snakes, then the girl got an Olive Python out and a dead rat, and showed us how snakes feed. When she was done, a couple of the staff went around feeding cockroaches to the lizards whilst we watched, then they came out with a 4m Olive Python, and a couple of lizards to hold. I held the python first, which wrapped itself round my body, up over my shoulders, then round my head before being content to just chill out. Next, I held the lizards, the first was quite spikey and insisted on climbing up over my shoulder, but the second was fairly placid and just hung out on my hand. That evening I met 2 guys from England - Abi and James, Daphne from Burma, her boyfriend from Darwin and a Taiwanese girl. They were all pretty cool, and we ended up going out to The Vic, as they had free entry before 10, and free champagne from 10 til midnight for the girls. This made for a fairly cool night out for most of us, until Abi got so drunk that the bouncers kicked her out, so me and James started to take her back to Melaleuca, until about half way when she refused to go any further. Then some random LongGrasses started yelling at us, so James started on them, and it ended up with James getting in a fight, the police breaking it up and Abi hitting a police officer. Then Abi got arrested and put in the cage thing they have on the back of their police cars over here, and taken away, leaving me and James surrounded by 5 more police. Eventually they got another car to arrest him too, and 2 of the remaining officers took me back to Melaleuca, though I didn't get a ride in the car 😞.

The next morning for some reason I was up and alert at about half 6, so I went down to find food, and found James just getting back on a stolen push-bike tricycle thing, with a Russian guy from our backpackers, still completely out of it. Spent the day chilling at some markets and down the waterfront, dicovered that being escorted back does wonders for your rep, and quite a few people I half-recognised were high-fiving me. The following day, my final day in Darwin, I started off by going down to the World War 2 Oil storage tunnels, which were basically just a couple of big tunnels with photos in. Then I went back to the wavepool where I chilled we Jogen until he had to leave, and then a guy called Aiden who was about as good as me as surfing, but by the end of the day we had both managed to stand up (if only for about 2 seconds before faceplanting the wall - slight negative of surfing in a pool). Afterwards BJ gave me a lift back to the hostel where I started off sitting with a guy who spoke constantly about Bali, even producing 3 A1 sized maps, then when he left, a creepy old guy started talking to me about how he had a double bed, and how he needed to find a wild girl to bring back, and finally I was saved by 2 guys - Kristian from Estonia and Buster from Sweden. Ended up spending the evening chatting with them, and BJ when he got back from church, and watching Kristian and Buster get more and more drunk. The crazy Russian guy who stole the bike came over and chilled with us for a bit too, though he was a bit annoying in that he insisted on telling everyone I was on LSD, though from the way he was acting he looked to be far more likely to be drugged up than me.

Then finally it was the end of my time in Darwin, and after a 30min delay due to lightning, I was on a plane to my next stop, with Chris and Ilka in Perth 😊

K xx

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Photos

Aborigini God with 3 Penises next to Lightning God
Punishing the infidels below