So, after travelling around Darwin on the hunt for the perfect (cheapest) van we plumped for a Breezer from Britz and read every single free camping guide before heading out to Kakadu for 5 nights of bush!

We picked up our camper, and headed to Coles to stock up on supplies (corned beef, noodles, cheese slices, and a box of Goon). 1 hour later and after an epic wrestling match with everyone's luggage to recover over bags from the Youth Hostel we were on the road.

Now highways in Australia are something else. Our first overnight rest stop was 175km away, with a few planned stops on the way. En route we came across no more than 5 cars and 5 road trains. The road trains are absolute beasts, like monster trucks with 4 storage containers bearing down on you at 130kpm, the legal speed on the highway, sadly our Breezer starts to take off at 100.

The first stop was Humpty Doo, which admittedly we only stopped at because of the name. Humpty Doo was a small supermarket, bar and a cafe, and apart from a couple of drink aboriginals we deserted. It was at this stage I remembered I had left my towel drying at the hostel, leaving the towel to join the rest of my lost things in the sky (there will be a lost blog coming soon!).

So towel, liquorice and mosquito coils in hand we were off again.

Now we had been warned several times to be 'crocwise', with over 100,000 saltwater crocs roaming the creeks, rivers and Billabongs in the NT, so each river we passed involved a slow down and a croc watch, but sadly no joy (this maybe a good thing).

Our second stop was the Wetlands look out, which had an amazing view over the marshes and thousands of birds, and our first encounter with a beast of a spider hanging over the stair well (we took the long route out to avoid this web of terror).

Further down the Arnhem highway we did tick off another 'I spy' when we saw our first Roo by the side of the road. This got us a wee bit excited and gave us the sense that we had truly arrived in Oz.

I can't remember who the conversations were with, but I remember someone complaining how the we're in Oz for 6 months and didn't see a Roo. We also met someone who said they didn't see any spitting in China. I can only assume that these people were blind and death, or never left their hostel bar.

Other things we spotted on the road that were more scary that the croc threat were the blown out rubber tyres, and burnt out cars. Not sure if this was to scare people into safe driving or just a lack of clean up effort.

By 4pm we were finally in Kakadu, and pulling into our rest area, that our 'camping for pikeys book' had quoted as 3 stars on the basis it had a toilet and an emergency radio. Bonus.

Obviously there was not a single other vehicle or person there, but we ignored the fear factor, cranked up the gas and prepared our first camp tea of curried chickpeas which was interrupted by Claire's arch nemesis....THE CROW!!

Swooping down and making the crow from Japan look like a midget, a piece of bread was enough to distract it while we collected some rocks to pelt it incase a second round of strikes occurred. We did have a Dingo walk past, but he seemed more scared of us.

Despite eyeing us up the anti crow rocks kept it at bay, and the Dingo soon left, and once the sun had set it was time to get in the van , close the door, and hope the beasties left us alone!

We did pop our head out to see more stars than we had ever seen in our entire lives, before the spookiness of the total darkness scared us back into the safety of our van, complete with Leatherman on 'stabby knife' mode, and podcasts to drown out the night time noises of the bush.

So night one was complete. No snakes, crocs or deadly spiders, but a Dingo, a million flies, Roos and a giant crow left us plenty to dream about!