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G'day everyone, and welcome to Australia!
We've been here for four full days now, and having spent some time in Darwin, Kakadu and the Top End, decided it was time for another blog. Our various flights over Sunday and Monday all went according to plan. We flew from Krabi near Railay to Bangkok on Sunday, spending the night in Bangkok, where we went to a huge shopping complex to do some fake goods shopping and had dinner. The next morning, Jo and I flew on to Singapore, where we had to wait for five hours before our connecting flight on to Darwin. We eventually arrived at our hostel, Melaleuca on Mitchell Street, at gone 4 o'clock in the morning! We settled down to some sleep after waking everyone in our room, and didn't get up until 10 on Tuesday.
On our first day in Australia, Jo and I pottered around Darwin, taking in the sights and sounds of the city. It seemed quite small and provincial, but very pretty when we walked through Bicentennial Park by the sea. We also both had haircuts, which I in particular felt I definitely needed! It felt a lot better not to be carrying all that weight around! After lunch we picked Joe up from the airport. He had a more difficult journey to us, flying from Bangkok to Sydney, and then (after waiting five hours) coming back up to Darwin. He seemed pretty chirpy considering though! Late that afternoon we went to the East Point Reserve at Fannie Bay. This was the highlight of Darwin so far for me, a beautiful crescent bay, really green and captivating whilst the sun came down, and offering a real glimpse of Aussie suburbia. The reserve was full of locals jogging or biking and BBQing. That evening we went out for a meal to celebrate our first night there. Jo and I had rump steaks and Joe had a schnitzel. We also went to the cinema that evening to watch 'The Hurt Locker', which I'd been wanting to watch for ages, and finally got to see.
The next morning we went back through Bicentennial Park to Doctor's Gully. Here you could wade into the water down a ramp and hand-feed the mullet, catfish, batfish and milkfish which came right up close and swam around your ankles. We got some really good pictures of this, and it was good fun for the half an hour or so we were there. The afternoon was taken up walking over to Stokes Hill Wharf at Darwin Port, so I could finally have my fix of fish and chips. I've been craving some since I left England, and was so happy to finally tuck in...and they didn't disappoint, especially coupled with some good views out to sea! Looking out, we could see a storm coming, so got under cover. It was a huge storm, and we tried to make a break for it and get back to the hostel when it stopped. However, it started again very shortly after, and we got caught in a torrential downpour and got absolutely soaked!
On Thursday we left Darwin at 7:00 a.m. to begin our tour of Kakadu National Park. We got picked up in a 4x4 Land Cruiser with a trailer attached, which would pretty much be our home for the next two days. We did the tour as a group of nine, though to be honest we didn't find them the most interesting! The tour in itself, though, was amazing. Our first stop was the Adelaide River, to do a crocodile cruise. Before getting on the boat we all got the chance to hold a snake (Joe managed to overcome his fears!). The snake was a lot heavier than I imagined for some reason, and was really muscular. We all got some good pictures with it, and Jo then managed to get an amazing picture of a possum just before we boarded the boat. It didn't take long for us to see our first wild crocodile. Attaching some meat to a string, it was dangled over the side to entice the croc to jump out the water and grab it. When the crocs attempted to eat the meat, we were able to see how quick, clever and agile they were and get some action shots. Our guides also fed a white-breasted sea eagleand some kites, so we could have a closer look at them. That day we also went to Ubirr, an Aboriginal rock art site. All these paintings dated from different periods, from thousands of years ago to contact with the first Europeans. Other impressive paintings were those known as 'x-ray' images, a how-to guide for catching and eating fish, turtles and wallabies. After looking at these, we climbed up a sandstone escarpment and looked out over the huge floodplains going as far as the eye could see in any direction. Part of 'Crocodile Dundee 2' was filmed in that very spot. Normally Ubirr is full of tourists, but coming in a transition period from Wet to Dry as we did, we only had one other group with us. It was an amazing place, and made you feel really small. After all, Kakadu can fit Wales inside it! That evening we stayed in a huge tent with bunkbeds, and a huge table we could eat our dinner of stewed kangaroo and veggies with mashed potato around. After dinner we all had a go on our guide's didgeridoo before bed.
We were woken at 6 on Friday and were on the road by 7:00 o'clock. Today we went to Gubara inside Kakadu, for a day of walking. We walked around three kilometres before veering off the main path to look at some less well-known rock art. Leaving our bags there, we undertook a bit of a scramble/rock climb right to the top of the escarpment. This was really good fun, as there were some awesome bits of climbing involved, and was our favourite part of the trip. We got some really good views at the top and also stumbled across a black-tailed rock wallaby. Coming back down, we made another detour, going through a narrow hole which turned into a 15 metre wide, but 1 metre high, tunnel, which we crawled through on our hands and knees. Inside I managed to see the silhouette of a ghost bat which our guide pointed out. Before we had gone in the tunnel, Joe and I had tried a local bush-tucker speciality: a green ant's silt from its behind, which tasted like lemon juice! Next we went swimming in a creek of the South Alligator River. We swam in some plunge pools by various waterfalls, and even stopped in a pool where shrimps nibbled at you...One went up my shorts! On our way back to Darwin, we stopped at a service station and met a really excitable guy who had just caught the biggest barramundi, a huge fish, in his life. We asked him to show it to us, and it really was humongous! I've never seen a freshwater fish that was as big! We also stopped at a magnificent cathedral termite mound, as tall as two people. The queen inside it would have been over sixty years old.
Tomorrow morning we have to be up bright and early again to catch The Ghan, the train that traverses the whole continent from north to south, to Alice Springs. It promises to be an epic journey, 26 hours of it, and I'm actually looking forward to it! Hopefully I'll write another update once we've done The Ghan, Alice Springs and Uluru.
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