By the time we arrived at Fitzroy Crossing for the second time in a few weeks we were stuffed and ready for bed it had been a great time touring the Kimberley for a couple of weeks but very tiring and once we had the tent setup and had the last of our beers our day was over. The next day we collected our gear that we’d left in storage at Kununara gave the car a wash to get the Kimberley dust out before departing for Darwin.

We spent a night camped at Katharine Gorge, it was ok but we are all gorged out, the drive into Darwin was good with plenty of WWII air strips lining the highway. Darwin has plenty of building going on in the city mostly apartments like all other Australian cities. We booked into the Shady Glenn caravan park 10ks out of town and headed for town on the scooter. We ended up in the Darwin Hotel on Mitchel St talking to guy who runs Flemington Race Course in Melbounre, funny considering we had planed on being here for the Darwin like him but missed it for the Kimberley trip, turns out the Darwin cup was a pretty sad day with a female jockey having a fall and dying before the races were called off.

A couple of days after we arrived Chris played footy in the local masters comp and copped an elbow to the head so we spent 5 hours in Royal Darwin getting 9 stitches above his eye. The next day we ran into Bob and his Winebago in our park, we had last seen him back in Kununara. We then went camping out at Litchfield National Park and the camp ground guy sets up a projector and plays a movie a couple of times a week, tonights film was Death at a Funeral, that was pretty funny and enjoyable sitting out under the stars with a few cold beers among the old grey nomads.

After Litchfield we went to Humpty Doo and had a few beers in the well known Humpty Doo Hotel who had plenty of people getting in the Friday afternoon with a band playing some pretty good music out in the beer garden, we enjoyed it so much that we could drive back to Darwin so we drove a few ks out of Humpty Do and camped out in the wild for the night where we light a big fire and listened to the footy before playing some loud music to keep us entertained.

The Darwin Museum has a display on Cyclone Tracey that is worth checking out, plenty of pictures and a tv report that runs on a loop from the original ABC news reports, they even have a room where you can be in total darkness and hear the sound of Tracey as they were on the night.

We spent plenty of time sitting around the pool at the Darwin Waterfront and for our 25th wedding anniversary we caught the ferry over to the Cox Peninsula here we had lunch looking back at the city from the old Mandorha Pub that closed it doors at the end of September. Cyclone Tracey departed Darwin a long time ago but you can still see the effect in many ways, the buildings in the city are new nothing of any great age to speak of as they were mostly blown away by bombs from the Japanese and Tracey, the twisted power pole at the foreground of our view from the pub, the force to twist metal must have great.

We went on one of many pub crawls that afternoon and ran into some good people, a couple of older guys were on the ferry to the pub and we ran into them again later on Mitchel Street (the pub street) they were brothers from South Australia both farmers ridding their motor bikes around Australia. Walking back to our room at the Hilton we ran into a guy Chris had played footy with 20 years ago in Caloundra, Rohan Gazzard was in town doing a show he is now a hypnotist “The Amazing Gazzard” we went to his show later in the week and had a great time neither of us got up to be hypnotised but enjoyed the show anyway, he puts on a funny show.

Sam and a couple of her friends stopped in for a few hours on their way to Bali so I got to spend a few hours with them on the sunday and again a week later when they had to spend the night in Darwin on the way home.

Chris started his week long footy carnival on a very hot Sunday a day after drinking all day with Ronny Jones and Kevin Rutter from Traralgon watching the Grand Final, not a great preparation for sport in the heat, after getting beaten by Tasmania in the over 45s he kicked a few goals in the 40s who easily beat Vic Metro where he ran into Darryl Mayman on the ground another guy he played footy with years ago. We also caught up with a few guys from the Broome Pearlers and another guy Chris played with in Perth. By the time of his 5th game in 6 days way played he was over footy for a long time. The Northern Territory over 40s won the final against WA so the pain was all worth it, to finish the carnival off we had a great night at the Darwin Convention Centre with over 600 others in attendance.

Over the last couple of weeks the weather had changed dramatically, they call it The Build Up and its easy to see why, you can feel the wet season building up along with the temperature, the humidity and storm clouds build up each day and its tough to get motivated to anything other than hide from it. We got a few good storms that put on a great show and made plenty of noise these storms clear the air and reduce the temperature but this only results in a hotter more humid day the next day. As the build up continues we know its almost time to leave we don’t want to get stuck in the wet season and not be able to cross back over to the east coast and we don’t want to be caught in this extreme weather for the next few months.

We spent a couple of days out at Kakadu National Park thats around 200 ks south east of Darwin, we had lunch at Jabaru before going out to Cahills Crossing thats a road that runs through the East Alligator River and is the border between Kakadu and Anham Land. Its an odd name the East Alligator River when they have a public viewing deck over the crossing where you can see many crocodiles chasing the birds and fish and some times cars as they cross. We went a further 5 ks up the road to the lookout and aboriginal art site, the lookout was packed for sunset and is a bit of an iconic place, its where Mick Dundee pointed out across the vast land and said thats my back yard in the film Crocodile Dundee.

The rock art was good mostly the food they ate turtle, roos and other animals very different to the art we had seen in the Kimberly. We camped close by but it wasn’t the most enjoyable evening, the temp didn’t drop at all from the 40c it had been during the day and with no wind at all it was the most uncomfortable night we had spent in a long time. We went fishing in a couple of spot on the river and had to compete with many crocs but we didn’t land any Barra.

We enjoyed our time in Darwin, I even got to catch up with my Aunty Marianne for a few hours in Darwin before she left for Cairns where she was meeting my dad. Thanks to Kristy and Rene for getting us somewhere to live for the duration of our stay. We are heading east and will be back in Queensland within a couple of days.