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On from Cairns to Darwin, we arrived in Darwin early evening and found a lovely room at the Holiday Inn, which had a fantastic 30m pool - perfect for the children to practice their new swimming skills. Darwin is fairly swanky in places but decidedly dodgy at night.
Sadly had to leave the comfort of the Holiday Inn and head off on our expedition into the outback and Kakadu. Unfortunately, as it is the rainy season, the main highway to Kakadu has been washed a way, so we had to take a pretty circuitous route, about 450 km in total, with about one shop and petrol station on the way. I have to say Kakadu Highway must be one of the most boring roads in the world - endless Australian bushland with one tree looking much like the next. We were all psyched up to see crocodiles but sadly none around. We did, however, see goannas, kookaburras, cockatoos, some very mean bighting flies, wallabies, kangaroos and dingoes.
We stayed in a hotel in Kakadu, which was the shaped like a crocodile - reception through the mouth, pool in the tummy, rooms along the body and so on, so the children were very pleased to be inside a crocodile. We went on some lovely bush walks and saw some amazing 20,000 year old art work - Luca was very impressed.
Andrew was very keen to test out the 4WD but all the unsealed roads were closed off because of flooding. He couldn't resist testing out the car on a few grass verges, which was fine until we hit a particularly boggy one and sank down about two feet in mud. He tried desperately to dig us out, while I helpfully took some photos. Eventually, I ran to the main road and flagged down a local. Fortunately, he understood about boys and their toys and he and his mate were able to eventually tow us out.
The next day we had our marathon trek back to Darwin and stopped in beautiful Litchfield National Park on the way., where we saw more enormous termite mounds and some very impressive waterfalls.
We're now quite pleased to back in civilisation and enjoying the lovely air-conditioned Holiday Inn again.
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