To Darwin

After 3 nights at Kununurra we left towards Katherine NT, we were going to stay a night at the Lake Argyle park but we only drove in took our usual photos and carried on, we had lunch at the WA/ NT border then drove on until we came to a free camp called “Big Horse Creek” camp site, it was a bit crowded but we managed to find a good spot then settled in for the night, we could hear some locals!!! in the bush enjoying a drink but then the police from Timber Creek (which was only 10k away)came out and moved them on and all was great until we had a knock on our door about an hour later from another camper telling us we were surrounded by fire. It looked like we were in trouble so we got together and checked it out, I walked out to the road and could see that the fire was not destructive but burning the undergrowth so went back to camp to see that people were moving out and others packing up, some of us decided to stay. I moved our van into the center circle (putting a dent in the back corner while doing so) and tried to settle down for the night but everyone was still restless so we did another survey and all was ok but the smoke was that thick by this time I had trouble breathing, then we all decided to move into Timber creek, we found a place on the side of the road and all was good but we had forgotten about the time difference coming into NT so we lost an 1.5hr on top of all the excitement. (We are not sure who started the fire but we have our suspicions because we were told that they don’t start controlled fires at night)

Next morning we went to the road house had some breakfast, used their toilets, got some fuel and made our way to Katherine but was plagued by fire smoke all the way because there are controlled burn offs in this area every dry season ( the most unusual sight was the hawks flying around the fire perimeter waiting for food sources to emerge sometimes up to 10 birds on the road.) we made it to Katherine and booked into the Top Tourist park then had a look around town went to the museum and had a relaxing swim in the hot water springs and were entertained by some local indigenous kids swimming among us.

By now our credit card is going into overdrive which meant we did not do any of the local attractions so we moved onto Darwin and we are staying at the “Oasis” park which is out of town a bit but very nice, we arrived the same day as Marion’s nephew landed here by plane on a training trip with his job in the SES in Tasmania so we went into the city to see him and get our mail.

Things have changed dramatically in the last couple of days because we have managed to get a job here in the park cleaning the ablution (toilet) blocks 7 days a week for a couple of mths. It is hard work but it will help us get the credit card back to normal. Darwin is a pleasant surprise after all the red dirt and ordinary caravan parks we like it here but it is still quite humid even in the dry season so the wet season would be a bit unbearable in the caravan. We won’t have much time for sightseeing while working but we will make up for it later. We went into the night markets yesterday then sat on mindil beach with hundreds of other people to watch the sunset and even though we got some great photos it was spoiled by a smoke haze from burnoff fires. Click here for the latest photos

PS; I havent had any feedback on whether anyone is having trouble viewing the the photos,please let me know.