Marina View Darwin

Since I have been old enough to read a map, Darwin is one of those exotic places I have always wanted to visit, never dreamed I would be able to, and here I finally am at the end of the world! Anywhere else is literally thousands of miles away and the capital city of Jakarta, Indonesia is closer than Australia's own Canberra! Even Singapore and Bandar Seri Bagawan are nearer. The Chamber of Commerce likes to throw that fact out there to dazzle and impress visitors ...

... heading west to The Kimberly next, so see you in Broome.

Sweaty and loving it

Amanda & Roelof xxx

PS I am proud to announce that I became an aunty on 25th August. Whilst on a ‘babymoon’, Melissa (my sister) and Steve (husband) experienced a new heightened level of stress when her waters broke at only 6.5 months (of the required 9 months) at a remote country B&B somewhere in the bush ...

... been to see our "Chubby Van" it is called Donkey Punch, no doubt we will share lots of photos of it when we collect it! It is quite small....but will be our home for the next 5 weeks or so! There is a festival on at the moment so there are lots of live bands and shows. We didn't manage to make it out of our Air Conditioned Apartment last night, as we were so tired and decided to watch the cricket instead...Come on England!!

... br>horse holds the rope tight by going backwards and the rid** quickly
gets out of the saddle, throws the calf to the ground and ties all its
legs. The team roping competition requires good timing: One cowboy
throws the lasso around the neck of the calf while the oth** tries to
catch both hind legs. Wow!

I got a lot of adrenaline out of
watching the bullriding: If a big massive bull stand just a few met**s
Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia feeling_alive

... here he went onto she the remains of the old city hall building or what was left of it after cyclone Tracy went thru and nearly wiped out this city.

Much of the city is only 30yrs old as a result of cyclone Tracy so there is very little in the way of heritage buildings but what there is is worth the look and appreciate the beauty in that stone work, the rest of the day was spent doing the usual stuff getting ready for the next leg of this holiday the train trip so ...

... eat more grass than all the other wildlife put together. They collect the grass over the dry season and store it in the mound to use over the wet season for food.  Apparently they have a similar social structure to bees in that there is a queen and a king, workers and soldiers.  The workers build the termite mound and it grows by 1 metre every 10 years and the soldiers guard it against unwanted visitors.  Some of the mounds we saw today were about 20 feet or more high. I learned that ...

... and went straight into town - its a nice little town, which we will continue to explore over the next few days (including the awesome amount of cheap food that we saw today)

Not much to say about today - the photos explain it all really!

... soeurs les Kata Tjuta. Ces immenses roches sont vraiment spectaculaires et on comprend pourquoi les aborigenes les venerent et leurs pretent des pouvoir magiques depuis des siecles. Nous avons eu la chance d’observer un coucher de soleil magnifique pendant lequel la roche brille de toute sa splendeur. Dans la meme region nous sommes alle visiter Kings Canyon dont la vue du sommet etait a couper le souffle. Finalment nous avons fait un tour ...

Thursday 18th June 2009 Owen starting to feel a little better. Up early and packed ready to go but it took another hour & ˝ to get out of the camp ground as we chatted with the people next door and said what we believe will be our last good-byes to our good NZ friends Jim & Lorraine. Glad to leave Kakadont, we headed to Darwin with no accommodation and many stories of "you won't get anything, it's all ...

... br>We set out to carry out our plan, determined to get away from the endless rain in Cairns which was slowly seeping into our tent. It’s amazing how many people are trying to sell their car in Cairns, it seems everyone buys a car, drives up the East Coast and sells it again in Cairns…which makes the place very much a ‘buyer’s market‘. We viewed a few cars, got majorly bogged down in rules and regulations of ’regos’,(don’t ask ...