The three day slog was as painful and boring as you could imagine and we were racking up some serious mileage at this point. The one good thing was that we got to stop at geikie gorge on the way back to break up the monotony. Its a pretty enough little gorge and worth the diversion. For a bonus we saw an olive python on the way out of the gorge. The rest was boring and we were super happy to get to Katherine. It was almost the end of the road trip and we had 5 days left to see the top end.
We set off for Kakadu NP and first aimed for Yurmikmik to do some hiking first. This was super dull and a waste of time. We vowed to stick to the highlights. We were told that Gunlom would require a high clearance 4WD to get there. We were later told that this is not true, but it was too late by then. Even more frustrating when we realised that the beautiful infinity pool shot from LP was taken there. Cannelle had wanted to check it out, but I said no as the car was already damaged. Stupid me. Afterwards we did go to Maguk (which actually needs a 4WD for one point) but we handled that fine. We were a little wary as someone had been eaten at Kakadu by a saltwater crocodile not long before our trip. I have never been as scared of water as I was in that park. Maguk is a beautiful little rock pool and well worth the 'hike' as the Australians call it. Yeah its a hike alright lol. Anything more than 1km is a hike for them. From here we headed to yellow waters where the boat cruise was too expensive but the wetlands themselves are really beautiful and well worth a visit. I think the tour is more for birdwatchers than mammal lovers. We finished up at Nourlangie rocks where we saw some aboriginal rock art. I liked some of them, but the others liked them a lot more than I did. There was one evil spirit who used to wear a head marker, bash women over the heads with yams and eat the people it killed. I don't know about you, but that sounds like a perfect description of a tribal Papua New Guinean so I assume that the evil spirit was probably based upon some Papuan raiders. We couldn't make it down to Jim Jim Falls and Twin Falls because it needs a high clearance 4WD and we didn't want to risk it. Good job as our battery died only 2 days later.
The next day we went back to Nourlangie to take the longer walk on the other side. Apparently almost noone goes there because you have to walk 3.5km lol. It is a little pathetic when you can walk 60km a day that 3.5km is considered a big walk. I don't even consider less than 10km to be a walk, let alone a big walk. From here we headed up to Ubirr to see the main gallery of aboriginal art. This one is really beautiful and the views over into Arnhem Land were much prettier than we were expecting. Really special place. Even saw some rock wallabies. We then went down to Cahills Crossing. Here you can sometimes see crocodiles. We only got to see one on the bank. The river crossing for vehicles here is tidal and it had flooded so noone could get across. People were still standing by the side of the river. Despite the death and the warnings it seems that some people are still super stupid. We were disappointed not to see more wildlife there, though we did get to see a lot of birdlife. We figured we would get to the wildlife park on the way back to the city. On the way across to Litchfield we opted for a jumping crocodile cruise. Given the frankly ridiculous prices of tours in Australia it was amazing to see such a good tour for just $35. You get an hour on the river watching the saltwater crocodiles being fed and later some action from the kites. They claimed that noone has ever been killed on their river so they must be doing something right. The sight of these huge crocodiles attacking the meat is enough to educate you not to hang too close to the water edges. The raptor takes were equally impressive and it turns out that kites will take a fire and eat all the fleeing animals. Then they will pick up sticks and make more fire so they can hunt down even more animals. Impressive no? This tour is well worth the money and we were enjoying the North end of Australia.
We had got to Litchfield for the night and it was our last full day with the car when the battery went flat in the morning. It took a local to tell us as we had no idea. All car illiterate. Damn it. We had to wait 2 hours for the company to send someone to jump start the car. I think the mileage took the car way beyond its servicing date. We the discovered that there was dead bird in the engine as well. Nice. We eventually got started and decided to just do Litchfield as we no longer had enough time for the wildlife park. Litchfield is a small little park and has a number of waterfalls and swimming holes. I think its really pretty and would be a fun day trip from Darwin. There is nothing exceptional, but if you like swimming in safe, very cold water then that place will be for you. We finally limped in to Darwin and frantically cleaned all the sand off the car so that they wouldn't know what we had done with the car.
In the morning we gave it back and the road trip had come to an end. We had had a lot of fun on it and seen a lot of places with a lot of dull driving in the middle. We asked them how many kms we had done. Bear in mind we only had it for 3 weeks. The guy did a double take and said 'if this is correct then its 11,500km. Does that sound right?' Yep it does and we used the car well in that time. We had seen a large chunk of Australia. We would leave the country with just Queensland to really see. We were covered so the windscreen was no probem. That will serve them right. Cost them more money by getting us to take the insurance. We sat back and decided to kick back in Darwin for 4 days while we waited for the Ghan back down south to Adelaide. Varun only had 2 days so we visited the botanical gardens and the museum (which is a really interesting museum) and the sunday we went down to the waterfront and to the Mindil Beach sunday night market (this is an awesome place). It has kick arse music in its bars, a nice museum, is multicultural and has a nice vibe. After 3 days I think Darwin is probably the coolest city in Australia. I really like the place and would highly recommend it as a place to visit. Just going to head to the doctor maybe for my nose and go to the cinema tomorrow for cheap tuesdays. Trying not to spend any more money now as we just count down the days to Perth and hopefully until my passport arrives. Will probably be short entries until we go now as I am off to ring the passport people. England lost 2-1 Italy but I don't expect much from us in this world cup. We had a cool road trip. Australia is expensive and a lot of it is repetitive, but the outback is still a cool place. Just be prepared to drive a lot.
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