Named after Charles Darwin, Darwin is the capital of the Northern Territory and is home to half the Northern Territory population of 200k people. It's also a bit of a frontier town so is pretty secluded, and was set up in the 19th century to stop the Dutch and French getting a foothold in Australia. The reason for our visit though was Kakadu National Park, Litchfield National Park and Nimbuluk National Park. If only someone had told us about the wet season.Th...

We arrived in Alice Springs from Darwin to incredible heat, humidity and thousands of flies. Our favourite combination.We booked into Annie's Place (great fish and chips for GBP 2) for a night, before picking up our Camp n' Drive station wagon for the 1500 kilometre round trip to Uluru (Ayer's Rock), King's Canyon and the Olgas, three famous rock formations in the Red Centre of Australia.Day one and we drove the 450 kilometres to Ayer's Rock R...

Cairns (population 120k people) is an access point to the Great Barrier Reef and Cape Tribulation in the north, and is also only about three hours from the Undara Lava Tubes, supposedly the largest lava tube system in the world.On our first day in Cairns we rented a wreck of a car (it looked like a malt loaf, a little old lady's car would've put it to shame) and drove over a hundred kilometres north to Cape Tribulation, where World Heritage Barrier Reef m...

Magnetic Island was named by Captain James Cook, as when he sailed passed the island he thought his ship's compass went funny. It's just off the Queensland coast from Townsville, and is home to a World War 2 fort, where the Australians kept watch for Japanese invasion. After the Whitsunday cruise we stopped over on the island for two nights to relax. Luckily we had an upgraded sea view room at Base Backpackers, as the guy booking it did us a favour. On...

The 74 Whitsunday Islands were named by Captain Cook in 1770, and are the tips of underwater mountains. The islands are surrounded by fringing coral reef.As with the rest of the East Coast, we found ourselves herded onto a trip for two days and two nights aboard the Dreamcatcher, skippered by Captain Ron, first mate Scotty and trainee first mate Jo.We picked up our boat from Airlie Beach on the mainland, where we'd spent the day before, and set sail into grey...