Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Tuesday brought high expectations that the fabulous gearbox would arrive at Advance Tech Automotive and then be whisked away for surgery. Sadly, it never showed but was promised by TNT for the next day. Oh, well had to amuse ourselves with luncheons and playing in the park and long walks. Wednesday: I lasted till about then before i rang about the car; they rang TNT, they called back with the news that it was definitely in Canberra but not exactly sure which delivery truck it was on. Please wait.... Called them again at 5 and very relieved to hear that it had been delivered,taken to the hospital and was currently being minutely examined by the expert. Hooray. Russell tells us that it's all organised for the pick up and return as soon as it's finished. Coupla' days... Caught up with Roman for lunch, dragging him away from his busy and demanding schedule. Dinner was taken with Paul&Sue who are taking notes about outback travel - if only he could finish the blasted se...

Up up and away on the big silver bird - from 30 to 3 degrees in a few hours. I had to find long pants, a jumper and shoes and socks! Lauren and Daniel rugged themselves up in thick jackets, gloves and Cossack hats to pick us up and deliver us to Amy and Steves. I grabbed the new new baby and made Judy wait... she lasted 2 seconds before demanding a 'go'. Anyhow, here we are for a few days, hoping to get to see everyone before we fly out again on Friday. Snap of the day Thomas Michael Harney    Photo: Kathryn Black

Saturday: Morning trip to Yellow Waters to do another billabong tour. This one starts at Yellow waters and goes out onto the South Alligator River. Had to meet in the Gagadju Lodge carpark as a fair bit of the driveway down to the boats was still under water. They had a late-ish wet here and its a bit slow to dry out. There were 60 on this tour, a boat-full, and they had 4 other boats for when the rush starts. The tours go 4=5 times a day, so you can see that it must get pretty busy out here. This trip was much more professional than the last; an expert boat driver and passionate about the wetlands. Apart from the usual bunch of crocs, we saw flocks of whistling ducks, magpie geese, darters, rainbow bee eaters, sacred kingfishers, jacana and chicks, white bellied sea eagles and a couple of jabirus. Highlight was when Judy spotted a snake swimming across our bows and over into the lily pads. Apparently this particular snake is one of the very few native animals that can eat a cane toad ...

Wednesday Hooray, Amy was having the baby today, so we were really glad we were only going from one caravan park to another about 6 km closer to the city and had no problem with phone coverage waiting for the big event. Not long after we had settled into van park number 2, the phone call that we were waiting for came…….it’s a boy. Thomas Michael Harney all 8 pounds 11 ounces of him. Mum and bub doing well. With all that hard work over, just had to go to the shops and buy some baby boy clothes to send home. Hope it gets there before we do on Monday! Then the serious part of the day, off to the airport to pick up the hire car and drop our car at the mechanic. We had ordered a Corolla size care but they were short of smallish cars so upgraded us to a Kia Carnivale – an 8 seater like a tarago! Who cares so long as it gets us to Kakadu and back. Hopefully our gearbox will be out of the car and on it’s way to be rebuilt tomorrow or Friday. Fingers crossed everyone please that it will ...

Tuesday A tour to Lichfield National Park was on the cards today. We were picked up by the tour company and with another 18 people we travelled down to the Adelaide River to do a cruise and see just how many crocs we could find. They take this croc business seriously and we could only board the boat two at a time and had to wait til the previous two were on board before the next two could go ahead. They weren’t taking any risks to make sure the crocs didn’t identify the movements and vibrations with humans and food.   I can understand why as when we boarded, there were two big old crocs just lazing along the river bank about 75 metres away. We headed down the river and it wasn’t long before the crocs were coming from everywhere. They say for every croc you see, there are at least another 10 under the water that you don’t see. Doesn’t bear thinking about. The guide hung some meat and bones over the side and it wasn’t long before those big old crocs were just a few feet away. Th...

I don’t know what Brian has been doing to his clothes, but two pairs of shorts and his swimmers have started to fall apart. It’s still hot, hot, hot so I dragged him along to the air conditioned mall – his favourite thing in the world – to get some more clothes. This sounds simple enough but can you believe it, they have WINTER clothes in. It’s HOT here, why do they need winter clothes? We finally found some shorts in Kmart and Lowes had 1 pair of swimmers left. Luckily they were in his size. On the way back to the van park we passed a Rivers store and stopped to buy Brian a new pair of thongs. Once again the last pair in his size. I don’t think he has ever shopped successfully for so much at once. I took pity on him and we went back to the van for a rest. This evening we were booked on a dinner cruise of Darwin Harbour. I think the boat used to be a pearl lugger or something similar. We were lucky enough to be seated upstairs under the bimini with 7 others and the foredeck must h...

Saturday: The people up here really like their markets. Today was Parap Village’s turn. A lot of the stalls were at Mindil Beach markets last Thursday but the focus here seemed to be on food. The majority was cooked fare, mainly Asian in flavour with a lot of things I have never heard of let alone seen. As it was really hot, we opted for cold, peeled fresh pineapple. I bought some bananas, tomatoes, mandarins and cucumber for the grand total of $5. Really good value and good produce.  We went for a walk around the waterfront precinct where there is a swimming lagoon and a man made wave pool. There are 10 minutes phases where waves up to 1.7 metres wash over the swimmers most who have flotation rings to ride the waves. It looked like great fun but we ran out of time today to have a go but hopefully tomorrow. Took a drive to Charles Darwin National Park that overlooks the harbour and the city. The park isn’t all that big but is still dotted with WWII bomb and munition storage bunk...

Friday 18 May Decided we could go ahead and book the hire car for next week when the car goes in for it’s big op so went to the airport and did the deed. Avis were the cheapest so we went with them. All hire cars here only have 500 km so that should get us to Kakadu and back. We also decided to cover all options just in case we ne eded it, and if the car isn’t ready when we get back from home, we found out we could hire a Prado with a tow bar from Thrifty so could perhaps still take the van to Kununurra. We wandered around looking at the coast around the different suburbs, beaches with huge expanses of sand because of the variations in the tide levels, and covered with lots of pieces of different varieties of dead coral. The water was flat but still looked very inviting but unfortunately it’s all a no go. What with crocs and stingers the beaches and the az ure blue water is totally deserted Even on holidays the bills still roll in, so this afternoon was set aside for paying the...

Thursday: Look at them schnappers… Crocodylus is a crocodile farm where you can see all the crocs from tiny cute things to the big ugly bruisers. They have a tour with all the chat and Judy got to feed one a lump of meat on the end of a long string on the end of an even longer wooden pole. Later she cuddled a baby one about ½ metre long and it jaws taped shut. The farm saltwater crocs, but also had a few freshwater ones and a couple of America alligators. They separate them right after the eggs are about to hatch and then every year or two to keep them all about the same size in any given pond. One pond had 700 of the little blighters crawling around all over the place. They also have Australian and exotic animals in a zoo but the main attraction are the crocodile. Found the shops in town at Smith St Mall, Judy resisting the pearls at Paspaley’s even though the sales ladies were very nice. Toured the Oil Storage tunnels built during WW2 but not finished in time and not ever really used...

Left Katherine about 8.30 and with fingers crossed we headed north for the big smoke – Darwin. The car behaved beautifully and we started questioning whether we were overreacting. We stopped for morning tea at Adelaide River where there was a lovely shady spot to sit and have a cuppa. As it happened there was also a community market being held and I just had to but some relish and jam. While we were watching the world go by, the Ghan appeared from the north wending it’s way towards Katherine. We waved enthusiastically and with a toot of it’s whistle we watched it head away. An uneventful trip into the Darwin suburbs towards our caravan park, but as soon as we hit traffic lights and we had to stop and start, the gearbox started protesting so we knew ‘the big repair job was really necessary’. After we had settled in, Brian headed for the mechanic to discuss men’s business and I headed for the pool to browse all the brochures and tours – definitely secret women’s business. He came back po...

Brian spent some time on the phone organising as much as we can for the ‘Great gearbox Repair’ with Russell in Canberra and the man in Darwin. It all looks a little more positive and maybe even the timing will be OK for us. I have booked extra days in Darwin from 23 May and the car is supposed to go in on 24 May. So…… while the car is having it’s operation, we might hire a car and do Kakadu sans caravan leaving it safely at the van park. That should free up some time for us when we return from our trip home and hopefully with the car and it’s new gearbox we will be able to get to Kununurra. So today we cleaned the car and the caravan, did a little bit of shopping and had a caravan lunch break. As it’s our last day here, we just had to hit the hot springs again. We splashed, floated, swam against the current, washed over the weir and generally had a great hour or so. Back to the van park and the real pool so we could do a few laps before we retired to the van for champagne and nibbl...

Monday 14 May A quiet morning to just potter around, Brian to download some photos and catch up on whatever he does on the computer and finish my book. There is a nice breeze today so it doesn’t feel quite so hot especially sitting outside under the awning in the shade of the trees. We dragged ourselves away and headed for Katherine Hot Springs. What a nice surprise. A lovely creek that meanders through the pandanus trees with at least four or five different areas of warm pools that you can float, swim or just splash about. The last pool is created by the water flowing fairly fast over a small weir and  dropping into a deepish hole that creates lots of bubbles just like in a spa. Floating around here was about as active as we got today. This evening we were booked on a sunset dinner cruise through Katherine Gorge. We basically cruised the same areas as yesterday in the first two gorges but cruising late in the afternoon with the sun setting was fantastic. Dinner was to be held wh...

Saturday: Check out the original Katherine River crossing as described in We of the never never , called Knotts Crossing. The river crossing is now just a very low level concrete crossing, currently underwater, so it probably looks a lot like t did then. Went into the museum which is on the old airstrip. Had a good collection of old photos of the town and of Elsey Station, which proved that the ‘exact replica’ they built for the movie in 1969 was rubbish. Went to the local market, which was rubbish as well. Out of town 27k to Cutta Cutta caves, which is a dry limestone cave and reasonably interesting as far as caves go. Highlight was the baby Green Python which was ‘cute’. Sorry, best I can do, still feel kinda rubbish myself. Sunday:An early start was required today which isn’t in the least bit difficult as the park comes alive about 6.30am. I think people want to get out and about before it gets too hot. We needed to be in Nitmiluk National Park (Katherine Gorge) for a 4 hr cruis...