When I arrived in Australia it was raining and there was a cyclone warning. All I wanted to do was go to bed so I made it to my hostel and went straight to my room where to my surprise the two Icelandic girls from my halong bay tour in Vietnam were sleeping. That night we went out for a drink. At $7.50 it looked as though one was going to have to suffice when a friendly aussie offered to buy a round, this went on for a few rounds and after a dance we eventually retreated to our room for the precious 3 hours sleep before they had to go to the airport and I had to go on my tour.

The next morning feeling a bit worse for wear I embarked on the long road trip through the outback to our first destination Katherine Gorge. On arrival at Katherine I suddenly didnt feel capable of doing the 3 hour walking tour of the gorge and didn't even manage the half hour walk to the view point. It soon became clear that I was very ill and was soon taken to hospital. They patched me up and I went back to the campsite but was soon back at the hospital worse than before. After using my arm as a pin cushion they finally tapped a vein and hooked me up to a drip..the next morning they discharged me again still none the wiser as to what was wrong with me and on my way deeper into the outback. I was the leper of the group with nobody wanting to catch anything and I was too ill to be very sociable which made the next few days less enjoyable. Luckily there really isn't a lot to see in outback northern Aus Australia the highlights being a hot spring, which I still managed to swim in and devils marbles an area with huge orange very rounded bolders that looked like they belonged in the flinstones. Here we all enjoyed climbing over them, wedging ourselves between them and lying under them. Other than this there were many attempts at making something out of nothing for example we saw the place where the most UFO spottings in Australia have been...soo?