G'day!

OK, so Lee and I have been in Australia for 6 days and this is the only chance we have had to get to use the internet. Unfortunately we cannot download our photo's in this hostel so for now, we'll have to share our experiences by text, and download photo's very soon (hopefully tomorrow at a proper internet cafe).

For those that haven't heard, we nearly didn't make it to Oz on the Tuesday. When we arrived at Heathrow, we were told the flight had been overbooked and that as we hadn't checked in on-line before, we were at high risk of missing that flight. The choices at the time were: possibly be put on that flight about 30 rows apart from each other, or fly the next day and be paid $474 each and put up in a hotel for the night. We were quite prepared to do this and went back to the check-in at 40 minutes before closing to await our destiny. To our joy we were told that various people hadn't turned up for the flight in the end, and so good old British Airways packed us off on the flight and upgraded us for the inconvenience - bonus!!

We landed in Darwin at 5.30am last Thursday and were told by the people in the lovely hostel that we were unable to check-in until after 12.30pm - just what you need when you have been travelling for 24 hours and have heavy bags with you. Well it wasn't so much of a problem for us. We locked our rucksacks in lockers and went for our first explore around Darwin. Luckily our hostel is located right in the centre of Darwin so we are pretty central to everything. We took an early morning stroll through the Bicentennial Park which runs alongside the Esplanade and overlooks the sea. It really did look beautiful, especially so at this time of the morning. We were amazed at the strange birds we saw pecking around and flying overhead, chirping with songs we had never heard before. I nearly went up to the local people power walking and jogging and wanted to say to them - have you seen those birds over there, but then I realised that they are totally natural to this habitat and those people would have thought - what is she on about?!

Our second day was spent looking around Darwin a bit further. This included a trip to Aquascene at Doctors Gully. This is a small bay area that you can go to feed large fish such as milkfish and mullet by hand. The reason the fish come to this part of the bay dates back to 40 years ago when nearby residents started feeding the fish in this area by hand. Gradually the fish started to cotton on to this and over the years have passed this pattern of information to their young, hence the fish appear at the same place everyday (the time varies depending on the tide). There are an astonishing amount of fish that come up to you to be fed and they literally clamber over each other, splashing out of the water to get to the stale bread you feed them. It is quite a strange feeling having all these giant fish swim all around your ankles and wrists in the water, but not as strange as looking at the whole bay area and realising there are giant fish as far as the eye can see. We then went for a stroll in the Botanical Gardens and were amazed to be greeted by the sound of what can only be likened to dogs barking, coming from up a tree. We went to investigate the strange sounds and discovered the noises were actually coming from 2 owls! The gardens are very beautiful and serene. It is strange but it seems there are no crowds anywhere and we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. We will probably go back there with a picnic sometime soon.

We have just got back from a 3 night/4 day guided tour of some of the main tourist attractions in the Northern Territory, North end. We will expand on this and add our photo's for this amazing trip on our next blog.

Until then, a big thank you to all of you who have left us messages on our blog. It is very nice to see that you are thinking of us.