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Darwin was hot and humid. Its actually their cool season, but geez, if you weren't in the shade by 8am then you were sweating. So every day we were there, we went to a water park, all of which bar one were free (always good!). The evenings were cooler and we all remarked that its so good to wander around in shorts and Tshirts all day and night not worrying about the weather. We bathed in DEET and sunscreen and suffered only minimal bites and no sunburn - yay! We were busy, visiting RFDS, Darwin Bombing and Cyclone Tracey exhibits in between water parks, ice cream and fun things like Mindil Beach market, the Deckchair cinema (Paddington 2 was showing) and Crocosaurus Cove.
But the real highlights of the Top End for us were the wetlands tour, and the rock art stories and geology in Kakadu. We saw so much wildlife on the wetlands - birds and crocs in such a flat, beautiful space, it kept everyone entertained for the 2 hours, which says a lot! Kakadu sparked so many discussions between us: conservation and the issues of uranium mining, how changing environments (ice caps melting 10,000 years ago and then water levels receding 4000 years ago) shaped Aboriginal culture which is expressed through their different paintings, how dreamtime stories are protected and shared and what morals we can all learn from them. It was really quite fascinating for us all. For a bit of fun we watched Crocodile Dundee one night and were able to pinpoint a few locations featured in the movie in real life (our guide did this too!); we had forgotten just how much swearing there is in the movie...oops.
We are at Mataranka tonight ( of 'We of the Never Never' fame) and have spent most of the day in the thermal pools and just relaxing (like we see the resident peacocks and wallabies doing). We are heading to Tennant Creek tomorrow, then east into QLD. The car and van continue to go well, we lost a plug the other day on the road somewhere, and we are now experts on deflating and re-inflating tyres on corrugated roads; we have been lucky we haven't had any flat tyres yet.. touch wood!