G'day amigos!! Well, I've escaped the overpopulated east coast, and have arrived in hot and humid Darwin. I promptly booked myself on a 3 day tour to Kakadu National Park, which involved bush walking, camping, river cruises, fresh water swimming, waterfalls and aboriginal rock paintings and cultural experiences. These included making a necklace, throwing a traditional spear and playing the didj - or at least trying to!! Now, don't think me some reborn spiritual nut, but whilst Kakadu has some spectacular scenery - see the photos coming soom - the whole experience is enhanced further when you take the time to consier the importance of this place to the aboriginal people here. They survived on nothing but the land for more than 20 000 years, and the artwork on the rocks are both a testament to that, as well as instructions to later generations. The tour was great fun - the bush walks involved more rock climbing than bush, but I thought that was more fun, and the reward was to swim in a plunge pool at a large waterfall, or to swim lazily in a fresh water creek! I hope the photos do justice to the place, because the scenery was pretty spectacular. Darwin itself is not a bad little place - it actually reminded me a lot of Gaborone -with the heat, the dust, the atmosphere, the slow but steady way of life, the semi-tropical bush land, the rocks... the only major difference was the ocean - but in Darwin, you can't swim in the ocean for fear of being eaten by crocs or stung by box jellyfish.... I think these crocs are all a hoax - I've yet to see any here in the NT yet!!!