We drove from Kununurra to Darwin after spending some time with some friends. We had plenty of time to pick up Rosie from the airport, in fact we had so much time we managed to get two of our tyres changed as they were totally shot from the Gibb River Road. The Gibb River Road is an unsealed track which is around 700 km long and something of an achievement for travellers. We also found a cool free camp on a world war two airstrip just outside the town, which was helpful as we were suffering from depleted funds!
We managed to pick up Rosie and then Barney from Darwin with no problems and headed for Kakadu National Park where we stayed for the next week. The national park was full of aboriginal rock art and wading birds and we took a great boat trip and got to see many of them close up along with some crocs! We even had a campground manager who we had to chase to pay our fees and who would turn up at odd moments brandishing his machette!!
We went back to Darwin to deliver Barney to his flight but not before he insisted on paying for us all to go on a sunset cruise around Darwin harbour. Our thanks to Barn as it was probably the highlight of our time with him.
We then relaxed in Litchfield national park for a few days doing plenty of swimming in the plunge pools and breaking the exhaust on the car yet again! Litchfield was an amazing experience and we were camping literally 100 yds from 'Wangi Falls', a breathtaking waterfall and large refreshing plunge pool below. There were tropical rainforest walks with a dense green canopy high above us creatign a cool green tunnel - a great refuge from the heat of the midday sun! We ended up staying for about a week and introduced Rosie to snorkelling, helping her fear of fish! We will definately go back next year!
We then decided to make a dash for the East coast with Rosie as she wanted to see the beaches before going home (you couldn't swim at the beaches in the Northern Territory as there were crocs everywhere!). We nipped through the fairly boring Northern Territory towns and entered Queensland fairly quickly. We have now been touring up and down the coast in and out of the rain. We finally made our home at Mission Beach and are camping literally on the beach and paying hardly a thing for the view. Tomorrow we take off for Cairns to do a Great Barrier Reef trip, snorkelling etc. This will mark the end of Rosie's trip to Australia with us and even though we keep trying to make her stay she won't! She does promise to come back and see us next year though!
