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G'day people, Darren and Kerry here in the Northern Territory, the last state left on the mainland of Australia for us to visit! We spent Monday having a last look around Cairns and then left around midday heading North, briefly stopping at Port Douglas and Mossman Gorge.
Port Douglas was really nice, with palm lined streets and some VERY expensive looking hotels, far out of our 'sleep in the car' budget! I bought some new t-shirts there as some of my other one's are now getting pretty much wrecked. We are both suffering from poor hearing out of one of our?ears due to the diving so we are constantly having to repeat everything we say to each other, which is driving us nuts.
The drive to Mossman Gorge was quite reminiscent of our journey on the Great Ocean Road as there were some impressive views of the sea along the way. Mossman Gorge was a beautiful swimming hole set in an impressive display of rainforest. We walked a 2.6km track that led over the gorge and then gradually looped back round through the forest. The day was then starting to come to an end so we headed further inland and South to a rest stop near Mareeba.
The following morning we stocked up with supplies at Mareeba and then moved on to a small town called Atherton, which we briefly had a look round before setting off into the Outback. You don't have to go to far away from the coast to discover how desolate things can get in this country. In between looking out for Kangeroos there isn't a massive amount to look at other than a vast expanse of bushland, which at first is a novelty but when you don't see much else, including other cars for a few hours, things soon become a case of trying to keep yourself amused as you drive the extremely straight roads. So much so that on the following day's drive of 700km we decided to keep a count of things that we saw along the way and ended up seeing well over 100 wedge-tail eagles, around 10 Australian Kestrels, 5 wallabies, 1 kangeroo and also an extremely dead and bloated cow! Probably due to the costs involved in fencing such large areas, a lot of the cattle are left to wander wherever they want, leading to a fair amount of road kill.
The next few days were pretty much spent driving as long and as far as possible, with us only stopping in two outback towns for more than just fuel, Cloncurry and Mount Isa. Mount Isa is the larger of the towns and is the largest supplier in the Western World?for Silver. After a further days drive we finally reached the famous Three Ways intersection, where as the name suggests, you can only go three ways; back to Cairns, down to Alice Springs or up to Darwin. From here it took us another 2 days to reach Darwin via Katherine and Litchfield National Park, which gives you some indication of the distances involved when driving over here.
Katherine was more culturally diverse than some other towns that we have been through and we saw a lot more Aboriginal families about, some in their native attire. Litchfield National Park was stunning and we visited a number of spectacular waterfalls including Florence Falls, Tolmer Falls and Wangi Falls. At Florence Falls Kerry took a swim in the cool water created by the waterfall, although I couldn't join her as I have unfortunately picked up a bug and didn't want to risk making it worse. Wangi Falls were the last to be visited and were by far the most spectacular, however the swimming hole here has been roped off due to the high water levels rising and salt water crocodiles have now moved into the area!!
Later that afternoon (yesterday) we finally arrived in Darwin where we have promptly treated ourselves to a motel room so we can have a proper bed for a couple of nights! Darwin is a fairly pretty city, with no sky scrapers. There are lots of alfresco bars and there is a real relaxed atmosphere to the place, if it's possible for Aussies to get anymore relaxed!? Last night we went out to the cinema to watch Spiderman 3, which was well worth the money and today we have looked around the city and then this afternoon we walked around an arts and crafts market on the sea front. There was lots of people there and it was great fun to watch some of the street performers entertaining including some people playing didgeridoo's and drums and other people performing juggling acts while telling jokes. The atmosphere was great and the weather is very similar to Bali, being very humid.
Tomorrow we are planning on having one last look around the city, especially it's Botanic Gardens and then we will head across to Kakadu National Park to see some Crocs in the wild and hopefully see?some Aboriginal rock art. The next place we update you all from should be Alice Springs in around four or five days time. We hope you are all well and thank-you to the people who have left messages on the message board the last couple of days including Ryan and Haley, new additions to our circle of Aussie friends!
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