Saturday 31st May
After spending two nights at 'Parry's Creek Farm', we packed up our stuff and got back on the bus, heading north on our journey towards Katherine where we were due an overnight stay, our last before we finally arrived in Darwin. We left Parry's Creek at about 07.00, and travelled for a few hours to Lake Argyle, our first stop that day.
We took a boat cruise around Lake Argyle, the second largest resevoir in Australia. It was a trip of about an hour, during which time we got to learn about how the dam was constructed and how it in turn created the lake. We also got to have a swim in the lake, the braver of the group jumping from a rock edge into the water about fifteen feet below; this was a lot of fun and it allowed me to confront my fear of heights to a certain extent (I would probably face a sterner examination whenever I got to New Zealand, the adventure capital of the world!).
We had a long, boring drive for the rest of the day, with the only real point of interest being the crossing of the border into the Northern Territory, and where we said farewell to Western Australia. There is a time difference of an hour and a half between the two states, and it meant that there would be more light in the evening, but darker, colder mornings. Thankfully, we only had to face one more early start before we arrived in Darwin.
We stayed overnight in a camp site south of Katherine called 'Springvale Homestead', a reasonably rundown sort of place that had dried up insects in the rooms, but was also quite comfortable as well if you were able to see beyond some of its difficiencies. Again, there was nothing to do there at night. We had some canned chilli and rice for dinner, talked shit for a while before heading to bed early, and to dreams of arriving in Darwin the next day.
