Author: drewandgab

26^th August

Our caravan has been parked up on the nature strip in front of my brother’s unit block in Darwin for the past couple of weeks while we have had a week in Darwin and then a week in Bali.

After returning from Bali we had another few days in Darwin. The main purpose of which, was to get the fridge in our caravan replaced.

While we were in Kakadu, about 5 days before we arrived in Darwin, our fridge just stopped working. It seemed that the refrigerant gas was leaking. The fridge was pretty full, having stocked up with fresh food and meat only 3 or 4 days earlier in Katherine. All the meat in our freezer defrosted and the food in the fridge was getting hot. Luckily, we have the car fridge, so were able to cram everything in there to get us through till we arrived in Darwin.

When we rang the caravan repair place, and called in a few days later, they confirmed that the condenser was broken and the gas had leaked out, so we could get a brand new fridge fitted under warranty – but would take 10 days for the fridge to arrive.

Lucky timing because we had already planned to hang around that long with our Darwin and Bali time. This is probably the only time in our 6 months that we will be in a major town for this length of time.

Anyway, the fridge is in and seems to be working well. We have used this time to stock up on necessities while we have “real” shops, as well as one last Darwin sunset at Mindal Beach markets and another visit to the kids’ favourite waterslides.

We loved Darwin and spending time with family, and had a wonderful, relaxing week in Bali, but it’s time to be on the road again. We are looking forward to the 4 of us being back in the caravan and to the next leg of trip. From here we will head south to Katherine, via Litchfield National Park, then westward toward the N.T/W.A border.

23rd August

We usually go to Bali twice a year – and it had been over a year since our last trip. So when we discovered flights were so quick and so cheap from Darwin we couldn’t resist. Just a quick week to get our Bali fix (and some croc-free beaches).

Surfing for the boys of course!!

 

Some time for the kids with their beautiful many Komang, while mum and dad enjoy some yummy restaurants 🙂

 

Some DJ time on the beach at La Planche.

 

A few visits to our favourite live music venues

 

Just chilling out at the hotel

 

Or at Cocoon or KuDeTa

 

And of course, Bintangs on the beach at sunset

 

We had wonderful, relaxing week. Bye bye Bali – time to get back to our caravan.

16th August

We spent a week in Darwin with my brother Nick, his girlfriend Maria and baby Parker. Mum and dad also came to visit, which was lovely. It was great to catch up with family, as well as exploring a bit of the city and surrounds.

Darwin has wonderful sunsets and one of the best places to watch them from is Mindil Beach, followed by dinner at the markets.

 

And more stunning sunsets at Cullen Bay…

 

We did a lovely day trip to Berry Springs. They are hot springs that feed into pretty swimming holes.

 

The kids loved these waterslides and waterpark…and it was free!! Darwin has a lot of free and low cost attractions. It is really a great city for a holiday.

 

For us, it was mainly about catching up with family and for the boys to spend time with their baby cousin Parker. Just lovely!!

 

9th August

The first place we headed to in the North was Cahill’s Crossing. This is an awesome place to view crocs as they gather here at high tide to catch the fish as they get washed over the crossing at the change of tide. We watched them for over an hour. At any one time, we could see anything from a couple to about 15 crocs.

 

Ubirr in the far north is famous Aboriginal rock art site. The paintings are so well preserved.

There is a lookout at the top of Ubirr, with lovely views out over the floodplain and escarpment. It’s a popular place for sunset.

 

We also did an in a walk in the area with some amazing sandstone rock formations.

 

Click on the link to see…

Southern Kakadu and Central Kakadu

7th August

In the central part of Kakadu, we based ourselves at Mardugul. We had a beautiful bush campsite, with almost 100 metres to our nearest neighbours. Lovely at night, with the fire and the full moon.

This camp was just 5 minutes south of the popular Cooinda Lodge and Yellow Water Wetlands. We could easily pop up and use the resort pool and enjoy the sunsets at Yellow water.

 

The highlight of the central area was Nourlanjie Rock, with amazing Aboriginal Rock art in a beautiful rocky outcrop setting.

The sunset looking back over the rock was stunning – and we had this majestic view all to ourselves.

See also..

Southern Kakadu and Northern Kakadu

4th August

We spent our first 2 nights in Kakadu at Gunlom Campsite. It was a lovely campsite with 2 beautiful swimming areas – a series of natural infinity edge pools up on the escarpment and a huge plunge pool with a sandy beach at the bottom of the waterfall.

Later in the week we did a daytrip to Maguk, which is also in the Southern area. This plunge pool that is my favourite of the trip so far. The pool was super clear and fed by natural spring water flowing down from a pretty waterfall. The water was just the right temperature – cool and refreshing, without being too cold like fresh water often is.

The kids loved all the ledges and spent hours jumping off the rocks.

The south also has some pretty amazing termite mounds

Kakadu is one of the few National Parks that we’ve been to that have allowed fires. The kids love building and lighting the fire every night. They also had a great dusty game of soccer with some other boys they met. Loving life in the bush!!

 

See also…

Central Kakadu and Northern Kakadu

2nd August

This is definitely one of my favourite places that we have visited so far. The area is at the opposite end of the same National Park that Katherine Gorge is in, and has a number of beautiful waterfalls and plunge pools.

 

The lower pool is huge, surrounded by tall limestone cliffs. It is particularly beautiful in the afternoon watching the colours change as the sun sets.

The upper falls has beautiful clear water and big high rocks that the kids loved climbing and jumping off. The water was cold – but so clear and refreshing.

Today we did an 8 km return hike further up the river to 2 more waterholes. Both were lovely and one had a nice little beach area where we stopped for lunch.

31st July

We had a couple of nights in Katherine – mainly to stock up on supplies – as it is the first place in nearly 3 weeks that we have been to with ‘real’ shops.

But of course, you can’t come to Katherine and not see the gorge. We didn’t go down into the gorge, but did a nice hike (actually a pretty challenging and very hot 8.5km hike) up the escarpment and along to a great view of the first gorge. It was well worth the effort!!

We also went to a cool little family outback show that happened to be on the day we arrived. The owners of the Outback Experience in Katherine did some shows on horse breaking, farm animals and dog training. The kids got to help out with the dog training show.

 

There were also a couple of shows by a visting slap-stick Aussie duo called the Crack-up Sisters. They did some acrobatics, whip cracking and were actually quite hilarious

 

Katherine for us, was also about the little luxuries we take for granted. Let me tell you – we were like kids in a candy shop when we hit Woolworths yesterday. Fresh bread and meat and fruit and veges. Not only were they not frozen, but so cheap. For the past few weeks we have pretty much only been able to get frozen bread and have been paying around $6 on average per loaf. And only a couple of times have had the chance to buy fresh veg – and only then at very high prices.

And phone and Internet reception!! It’s actually not a bad thing being out of range a lot of the time, but definitely a convenience that we take for granted at home. We could have had phone reception a little bit over the past few weeks had we been with Telstra, but were struggling to get them to connect us – long story. We are with Telstra now, so should have a little more reception as we head off away from the city again tomorrow.

29th July

We have spent the past few nights at Mataranka, which is about an hour south of Katherine on the Stuart Highway. The area is famous for its Hot Springs – Mataranka and Bitter Springs. The water is a constant temperature of 34 degrees and is hot only due to the ground temperature of the limestone it travels through to reach the surface. The water at both spring areas is incredibly clear.

The springs at Mataranka flow into some man-made pools they have made in the river, at an amazing rate of 30 million litres a day. Bitter Springs are a bit more natural, but narrower. You can float downstream enjoying the scenery above the water or, like we did, put on your goggles and snorkels and check out the river below. It was cool to see what the river looks like bellow and we saw a couple of little turtles too.

 

We stayed at Mataranka Homestead. It was great because we were right next to the swimming hole and had fun terrain for the kids to ride their bikes. We have had wallabies at a lot of the places we have camped during the past few weeks, but we had this lovely wallaby here with her little joey. We even got lucky and saw it climb in and out of the pouch.

 

But, by far, the biggest attraction for the kids about staying here, was seeing Nathan Grigg’s whip cracking show. He holds 3 world records for whip-cracking, both for speed and length of the whip cracked. He does a 40 minute show most nights here. It was entertaining and pretty impressive. He made the whips imitate different sounds. Cam made his second stage appearance in as many nights when he made the toot-toot sound when he did the Steam Train imitation. He also made the whips look like lightning, using white whips and strobes. And finished his show with whips on fire. We also saw his show during the day at the Sunday markets.

26th July

Tonight we camped at the Daly Waters Pub. I guess it was once upon a time a classic little country pub in the middle of nowhere. It is still in the middle of nowhere and has a lot of the old memorabilia, but is now more of a tourist destination.

Nonetheless, we had a fun night – great atmosphere, good entertainment and yummy food. The boys got up for a thong clapping song and Cam blitzed the air guitar competition.