Sep 15 - 25 (Day 227 - 237) - Darwin

Our stay in Darwin ended up quite a bit longer than we'd intended, simply because of the building heat and humidity. Maybe we're getting soft, maybe we just haven't fully acclimatised yet, but either way the thought of heading out into Kakadu National Park where we heard it was 40+ degrees didn't fill us with anticipation!

Water Parks

While we have been staying in Darwin we have visited numerous free water fun parks as you've read before you can't swim in the ocean up here so it's great they provide such facilities for the locals and also the tourists that pass through.

One of the water fun parks was Leanyer Recreation Park which had some pretty fun slides that we all went on. It even turned into a bit of a competition to make it just that little bit more fun. Greg of course won because he's the heaviest (not in a bad way). The red slide you could go down with two people on a double ring and what I didn't realise to start with was that it was actually a very dark slide. I really did not enjoy going down this slide as I don't like things being pitch black and not being able to see. It's just one of those things about me. I've never liked pitch black darkness. It was also because you couldn't see when the twists and the turns were in the slide which made it even more scary (to some others they find this thrilling). I went down with Jude and he was absolutely fine with it all but I was a shaky mess and needed time to get my legs back again. I was quite happy to go on the other ones once my poor heart had recovered but not the red one. All the others went down numerous times but I just didn't want to go down that one again. 

Q&A on road tripping!

Hi all,

We've had a few people ask questions about travelling full-time, so we're going to do a post or a video answering these questions. If there's anything you'd be interested in knowing about travelling full-time, be it good, bad or ugly, then please post in the Google comment form below and we'll see if we can't get it answered for you!

-- Greg, Mim and kids

Sep 12 - 14 - Mataranka to Darwin (Day 224 - 226)

Saturday 12 September 

We woke to these beautiful peacocks walking past our van. I got some oats out to see if they would eat out of our hands and they did. I just love peacocks. I think it's the colour combinations or something they are just beautiful. 

 

Our intention today was to head to Darwin and stay at a place that someone at Mataranka had told us about. It sounded like a nice farm of some sort with extra facilities and not as expensive as a caravan park. So we gave them a call and they had plenty of room so we packed up and headed off after one last swim. :)

Sep 8-11 (Day 220 - 223) - Burketown (Qld) to Mataranka (NT)

Tuesday 8 September

Burketown is a fairly small town, however it’s also the headquarters of Burke Shire which covers a large part of the north western Carpentaria region, so it’s a little better appointed than some of the other smaller towns in the region, like Gregory.  It has two shops, one of which is part of the post office we’d been to a few days ago, one fuel station with pretty expensive diesel ($1.85/L), as well as the main reason for our visit - the library.  Rural Libraries Queensland has been a great service for us – we first used them at the library in Mossman where we set up our account, not really expecting to be going anywhere else, yet we have since been to member libraries in Cooktown, Weipa, Normanton, and now Burketown, borrowing books from one and then returning them at the next.  Being able to source books from all over the state and have them transferred between libraries while you travel has been really good too, and we’d collected another full load of books in Normanton.  But Burketown is the western-most public library in Queensland, so we had to clear out our account and return all the remaining books we had on loan in anticipation of leaving Queensland later today. Special thanks to the lovely lady at Weipa library who organised for some books to be sent to Normanton especially for our kids so they could finish the sequel of the Rosewood Chronicles. She certainly went above and beyond to help!

 

This cute setup was at Burketown Caravan Park.

 

No that little aqua 4WD isn't an old LandCruiser -
believe it or not, this is an old Nissan Patrol!

 

 

Sep 3-7 (Day 216-219) - Leichhardt River to Gregory via Burketown; then Lawn Hill and back to Burketown

Thursday September 3

Our intention for the next few days was to get down to Lawn Hill, about which we'd heard many great reports. Camping at Lawn Hill National Park is run by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Services, but when we checked their website we found they were booked up for the next few weeks. So instead of this, we decided to stay at a free camp in the well-named town of Gregory, then leave the van there and drive into Lawn Hill for a day to see how we liked it and if necessary to then book for a month or so ahead when there was availability.

The boys did a bit of fishing in the morning which took longer than we'd expected, though they didn't catch anything, so we didn't end up leaving until closer to lunchtime. The track out was quite sandy and uphill a bit, so we had to get a bit of a run-up to get enough speed to make it out, but we made it.

On the way out we saw a couple of rusted wrecked cars. Given where we've been so far, seeing wrecked rusted cars is hardly a novelty, but the shape of this one made me stop for a closer look. On closer inspection found that one of them was an EK Holden, which was built in the early 1960's!

60 years ago, it could have been this car...

Video - The Castaways!

Hi all,

As I mentioned back in the post about Coen, we shot a short video while we were there. We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed filming it!

Sep 2 (Day 215) - Normanton to Leichhardt River

Our attempts to leave Normanton promptly were once again thwarted. First I went for a morning run, and then we decided to go back to the library just to see if one of the two other books had arrived. When we arrived, Jason victoriously brandished a book for us to see - it was one of the ones we'd been waiting for and it had arrived in the morning's post! The kids were so pleased! There was still one book to come but it looked like that wasn't going to make it sadly.

We stayed and I did some more work. It's so lovely and cool inside and they have free wifi too which is a big bonus when your mobile data is reaching its monthly limit!

After we left we had a quick photo by a replica of an 8.5m saltwater crocodile which was caught in Normanton in the 1950's! Just as well he's not still swimming around!

Sep 1 (Day 214) - Karumba to Normanton

After packing up the site we drove to the foreshore to take a proper look at the Gulf of Carpentaria. Of course we'd been here a couple of days ago when we had dinner there but it was after sunset time so we couldn't see a lot.

The water looks lovely and aqua in the photos, but in reality it's a bit on the murky side, probably for the same reasons I mentioned a couple of days ago on Dixie Road, being the fine silt which is easily stirred up. The silt being very light in colour, it tints the otherwise blue water with a lighter, greener hue. It's also a bit swampy - you can see the mangroves to the left of frame in the photo below.

The Gulf of Carpentaria, Karumba