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It's 5:30am on 3rd November and i get picked up by a local bus to The Wildreness Lodge, Mitchell Street, after about 18hours of travelling from India (snivelling the whole way because of fever -same league as man flu!), through Bangkok and Singapore.. I sit outside on my suitcase, waiting for the owner to arrive. 7am and i'm in my room, a four-bed dorm, for just me! So hot, but glad to be resting, which i do till sometime in the evening, when i venture out to see the lcoal town. At this stage i've got no idea what time it is, because of all the time differences on the way (and watch(es) are sitting neatly in my room in London)! turns out to be 7pm, and i'm starving! i find a local 'Coles' (like our Asda) and pick up some milk, baguette and philly snack pots. hmmm..... food!!
next thing i know and i'm asleep again, and wake up next morning, ready for me baguette and philly... someone's pinched the lot from the fridge! it had my name on it, as was requested. It's like being back at uni!!
Anyway, i headed off to Parap Markets for the day- local arts, food and asian influenced crafts. really pretty stuff. As i plan to leave, i try to find the entrance i came out of to no avail, and end up walking for half an hour trying to find a bus stop - no one can help as no one seems to get a bus round there!! anyway, after waiting for 50mins at the bus stop with four others - two drunk dudes, a person who's asleep and someone who's talking to themselves, the driver arrives and tells me i've got to wait on the opposite side of the road... yeah...thanx!! i get home shortly after that!
Okies, have visited a pearling exhibition here (pearling is a big trade in oz, and lots of backpackers do it, as well as mango picking), the national history and art museum and kakadu and litchfield national parks. The museum was all about the aboriginies national heritage, and talked about their life in Australia including their main trade- their arts and crafts like the didgeridoo (named so, because of the sound it makes when being played). They also had a very good exhibition on the Aussie sea life, with a display of 'box-jellyfish' -the reason why you can't swim in Darwin at the moment.
Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks were also amazing! At Kakadu we got to see original aboriginal art on the rocks like diptictons of their spirit leaders, learn about aboriginal life and saw huge termite mounds (more than 5metres tall, made by creatures about 5mm long!). We also did a cruise on the yellow and alligator rivers where we saw couple of saltwater crocs (they originally thought they were alligators because they had seen them in another part of the world, only to find they were actually crocodiles! Anyway, the name stuck!) Anbangbang billabong was aour final stop. -What an awesome name!
At Litchfield National Park we swam in waterfalls and jumped into plunge pools! Was laodsa fun until i realsied there were fish that 'kiss' (friendly BITE!) in one of the waterfall pools and my only way out was to stand on a rock in the middle until someone came to rescue me!!! I can hear already hear you guys laughing, and telling me 'you're such a giiirrrrlllll!!!' Anyway, i can also hear concern about my welfare (yeah right?!), so to put your minds at rest i was rescued and brought back to shore!! Plunge pools were next, and i braved the jump into the middle of it!! was scary but so much fun! One of the girls tried to video it but you only see me walking to the rock, before my camera died! It's now been recharged! We also got to see a 'frill-necked lizard'. They're dangerous but our driver/guide caught one up a tree for us to see, and it roared back at us -check out the pic! Some of our group then joined our guide for some bush grub, eating ants that tasted of black pepper, and others that tasted of lemon- apparently they're really tasty boiled in warm water!! Hmmm... think i'll pass, i'm a vegetarian! This was towards the end of the tour after walking a trail that had been visited by the death adder the previous week! i was so scared!!!
Fianlly, food... Dip (my cousin) and I had a craving for jacket potatoes (as you do), and so walked around for ages trying to find a restaurant that would willingly cater for us! We found the Wisdom Bar, and ordered them with cheese and beans. They asked us if we were sure, and confirmed that we were really strange, and that 'no one eats that in Australia'!!! Fair enough, but we went back for seconds the next day!!
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