Darwin, Australia

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We arrived at Darwin around 10.00 am. Darwin is the capital of Australia's Northern Territories State and our gateway to Oz - as we have decided to jump ship here so we can fly on to Cairns (the ship's) next port of call. This will gain us a few extra days in Australia, which we would otherwise have spent at sea.

First, though, (using some more of our "credit") we took a tour to Lichfield National Park which is about 100 km south of Darwin. This is somewhat closer than the larger and better known Kakadu National Park. The drive to the edge of the park took over an hour and a half but the journey was interesting. We saw the Uranium mining town of Rum Jungle (the town derives its name from an incident when a thief stole 750 ounces of gold from miners after getting them drunk with rum!) and a few wallabies before arriving at a bush station for lunch - Barracuda for D steak for M with wine.

We then started our tour proper. Lichfield National Park is in scrub bush territory with much eucalyptus growth on a sandstone tableland which absorbs trillions of gallons of water in the wet season which is then slowly released. Hence, there is always water in Lichfield and its tourism attraction lies with a number of spectacular waterfalls and pools where this is flushed out from the plateau. At the first of these we were given a half hour to swim and D managed to reach the falls. The second waterfall was more impressive as it lay Niagra like, in a deep gorge so was better for spectacular photos. We finished the tour by taking a boardwalk to a 'graveyard' of two metre tall headstones - which are in fact enormous termite mounds. These mounds are fascinating feats of insect architecture cleverly oriented with the sun to keep the termites cool in baking conditions. The mounds come in two varieties: 'tombstone' and 'cathedral'. Cathedral mounds can be up to 9 metres high. They are constructed by grass eating Cathedral Termites. The tombstone mounds are constructed by Magnetic Termites (so called because they use the earth's magnetic field in order to orientate their mounds with the sun). Its absolutely amazing what these tiny insects can create with soil, sand saliva and feces.

Back to Darwin, where this relatively small town (population about 40,000) gave us a two mile rush hour traffic jam (opposite direction thankfully) as the thundery winds brought down an overhead power cable on the southbound Stewart Highway. Totally paradoxical and, we were assured by our guide, an exceptional happening. We collected our backpacks and passports and jumped ship. We went and had an excellent buffet meal at the Jetty restaurant (where there was apparently a Salty crocodile lurking under the jetty) with Amanda Prince (who had also disembarked to visit family in Sydney) before heading to the airport for our flight to Brisbane and then to our final destination, Cairns.

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