Nitmiluk at Eastertime

Happy Easter everyone! Yes, the Easter Bunny found our kids in Katherine and left some goodies near their beds. Although mum had to rapidly put them in the fridge to ensure they still resembled eggs and bunnies, and not a lump of chocolate!

We visited Katherine Gorge today, and for those that don't know (and I didn't prior to yesterday), you pronounce the National Park as "Nit-me-look". It means "place of the cicada" or something similar. We took the 2 hour cruise of 2 gorges starting at 9am. Thank god we chose that one, because it was so hot and muggy this morning.....I couldn't imagine what it would be like on the punts at 11am, 1pm and 3pm. Yuk. I was a sweating mess by halfway through - as were most people!

The Katherine Gorge (or Nitmiluk Gorge as it should be known) is really beautiful, but there are limits to the kids attention spans and they were well and truly over looking at scenery and rocks by about 3/4's through. Which was fine, because the aforementioned weather was starting to get to me too. Our guide talked us through the areas we visited and it was really quite interesting. There is currently no swimming or canoeing in the river as the wet season has washed some salt water crocs into the system. Nasty buggers.

Jeda's Rock - this is the rock that featured in the film "Jeda"

A hot day for a small girl and her dad.....38 degrees and 70+% humidity

Back at the caravan park, we were all just hanging out for the pool and a bit of a relax. It is amazing how much the humidity takes it out of you.

I think that the word above me just sums it all up! Thanks Tom (the photographer!)

Tomorrow we push on further south for Three Ways (just north of Tennant Creek) so we can push into Queensland in preparation for a big surprise for Tom! Stay tuned for that one!!

The Top End

After a bit of a blogging hiatus, I'm back.

Day 11 (this is now the 29th March), and we met the Stevenson's at Crocodylus Park. This is a crocodile park and research venue and houses in excess of 15,000 crocs. We had promised Tom even before we left on this trip that he would get to see a crocodile close up and probably even handle one....this was his day!

There are about 20 breeding pens which house 1 male and 1 female...these crocs have mainly been taken from the wild due to either injury or being a rogue croc. The males were ENORMOUS. Most of them were over the 500kg mark.

Keeping a safe distance

Tom and the baby croc - how pleased does he look with himself??!!

At the end of the croc tour, 2 baby crocs (2yos) were bought out (mouths suitable taped shut) for you to hold and take photos/video. Tom was right in there, which surprised me as I thought he would be reserved when the time came. In fact, it was Biddy who didn't want a bar of them and I thought she'd be the one wanting to hold them.

The rest of the park was set out like a mini zoo with both Australian and exotic animals on display. The kids got to see emus, dingos, wombats, variety of birds, lizards and snakes, lions, tigers, monkeys, and ostriches.

After the Park visit, we headed off for a late lunch before heading back to the caravan park with the Stevos for a swim and a BBQ tea of croc snags, kebabs and hamburgers!

Day 12 was a serious tourist day with Deb and I taking my 2 kids into town to do some souvenir shopping whilst Mark and Stevo went to visit a WWII museum. A fishy lunch on the wharf before heading back to the caravan for some relaxation time.

Deb mentioned that there was a local garden supply place that happened to have a heap of lifesized statues of various animals on display that the kids would love. Tom thought it was great because there were DINOSAURS!!! So day 13 saw us spending a good hour and a half at this place having a look at the various displays before having some lunch in the surprisingly fabbo cafe.

Yes....Mark found a dairy cow in the Top End.....albeit fibreglass!

We then headed off to a waterpark not far from our caravan park which was almost the highlight of the trip for the kids (both small and large!) This park was absolutely free and was so well equipped. There was an enormous water adventure playground complete with a number of small slides, various water fountains, and a huge bucket that filled and tipped a cement mixer worth of water on you in one go. There was a huge pool that was made to resemble a beach (it got deeper as you waded out into it) and there were 3 really big water slides. One you went down in a tube, the other 2 you just sat down and sped through. Tom didn't quite make the height requirement, but at the right time, he stood on his toes and passed muster. After a number of goes, he did get sprung for being on the short side and was stopped from going up again. Nearly broke his heart. Mark had some definate views on that decision for the lifeguard! Nevertheless, Tom had a ball on the slides and I doubt that any swimming pool in any caravan site is ever going to match up again!!

Who is the bigger kid?

Day 14 (April 1st), and we are rapidly approaching the time when we will have to leave Darwin. Sigh....our holiday is almost half over. Today, Mark and I took Tom and Biddy to the Territory Wildlife Park in Berry Springs (south of Darwin). This is sort of like Desert Park in Alice Springs, only it is tropical based. The highlight for Tom was the birds of prey show because the lady called them raptors and this is just too close to being a dinosaur for Tom. After the show, we got to go up and get a really close look at them. Beautiful.

Wedgetail Eagle

Barking Owl (Tom was particularly taken with this one!)

The lowlight for both kids was the enormous spiders that inhabited the area. These are orb spiders and are very big (maybe the size of my hand). Both kids got a fright at various points during the day - Biddy nearly had a melt down when I made her walk under one (I didn't think she'd saw it) and Tom got a huge fright when he was looking into a display and one ran nearly right under his nose! From then on, he was on spider alert!

Just for those that are interested....me at 30 weeks and 2 days. Suffering a little in the humidity!

Day 15 (halfway point) and it is Good Friday today. Nothing much open, which is just as good as we took the opportunity to start to pack up surplus stuff and get some serious washing done. We took the kids around to the Stevos for dinner and to say goodbye. Not for long though as Deb and Stevo are planning to return to Colac (for good) just before Christmas and will be parking the Big Blue Bus at the farm until they can move back into their house. Biddy has taken to Laura and follows her everywhere calling her "Lola". Tom thinks Will is pretty good too.

Biddy, Laura, Will and Tom

Sam and Deb

Day 16 and we leave Darwin headed for Katherine. Darwin has been great and once you get a bit used to the heat and humidity, I would fully recommend visiting in the wet season. Mainly because there are just so few tourists around and you really can have your pick of things to do without fear of missing out due to overbookings. Sure, some things aren't running and some things are closed, but you can always find something to do. So we headed south for Katherine and lobed into the Low Level Caravan Park. This is a very nice park - very shady and quite a bit out of town so you tend to not get the riff raff. We have booked in for a cruise of the Katherine Gorge tomorrow and have elected to do the 9am cruise which goes for 2 hours (to miss the heat of the day). So an early start tomorrow. Afterwards we'll see what else there is around here to do that may interest the kids. After all, when the kids are happy, I am happy!!

The big push for the north

I must admit that I didn’t intend to be as lax with our blog entries for the trip, but we have had some big travelling days and some pretty poor phone/internet service while we’ve been away. Add onto this that most nights we are absolutely buggered, and you start to get a picture of why I haven’t been blogging.

But the time has come, so I’ll do a bit of an update for you all.

The first day (March 19^th) we did end up leaving home well before I thought we actually would but a bit later than planned (I think we drove out the gate at about 8.45am). This day was pretty much spent in the car travelling to Adelaide, where we stayed out the north side of the city so we had a jump on the next day’s driving. Distance travelled today: 730kms

Day 2 was another big travelling day as we are trying to get as much distance between us and the farm as possible! No, seriously, if we don’t put in some big days then we are simply going to leave our time in either Darwin or the trip home a bit short. The outback pretty much starts after Port Augusta as there is nothing much to see from here on out. We stopped at a place called Pimba for a refuel (just out of Woomera) and I could not believe the flies. I thought they were bad at home, but my god.....these were just unbelievable. As soon as you got out of the ute, they just attacked you. And they were no better 200km or so up the road at Glendambo where we pulled in for the night. The temperature today was up around the 38◦C. Distance travelled today: 605kms

Day 3 was a short run to Coober Pedy. The kids need a break out of the car and frankly, so do we. We are finding that they still have all their energy reserves for the day when we pull up at night and they are not getting to sleep until 11pm....not great when we need to be on the road early the next day. Coober Pedy on a Sunday is just a bit of a ghost town. Much like Sundays were when we were growing up....nothing much open, no-one around.... But it is as hot as hell here! The pool at the caravan park is inside a sort of water tank – completely out of the sun. Freezing cold..or maybe it just feels that way because we are so hot! Distance travelled today: 250kms

Day 4 was spent being tourists around Coober Pedy. We visited the dog fence and the Breakaways which are located about 15 – 20kms out of town towards Oodnadatta. The dog fence is an amazing structure as it extends 5,600kms from almost Surfers Paradise down to the Great Australian Bight near Ceduna. The longest continuous man made structure in the world. The landscape around Coober Pedy is just barren, and a number of movies have been shot around here that play on this rocky, red, hot environment (Mad Max, Pricilla Queen of the Desert, Red Planet). Later in the day we took the kids on a tour of an example of an opal mine, an underground house and one of the underground churches. It really is not that cool underground...quite muggy in fact. It struck us that Coober Pedy feels like it has fallen a bit on hard times, tourist wise, as there were a lot of things closed and obviously big ventures now not operating. Sort of feels a bit sad. Didn’t buy any opals here as they are not any cheaper here than anywhere else in Australia. Distance travelled today: 50kms

Biddy near the dog fence just out of Coober Pedy (can you see her? Right in the middle of the pic)

Tom and Biddy in the Old Timers Mine, Coober Pedy

Day 5 was an early start out of Coober Pedy headed for Alice Springs. Another big day of travelling broken up really only by a photo opportunity at the SA/NT border. Both Mark and I had not long been to Ularu, Kings Canyon and the Olgas, so we didn’t bother taking the 400km round trip to go there this time. The kids at their age would not be that interested and it is a bloody long way to go. So we pushed on past the turn off at Erldunda and kept going. It was amazing how green it is up here. The last time we were up this way (about 8 years ago), it was like a dust bowl. But this time, there is greenery everywhere. There have been some extensive rains in recent weeks – in fact enough to get the Todd River in Alice flowing which actually drowned someone! We pulled into Alice at about 5pm and headed straight for the caravan park. This park is one of the Big 4 chains and it is really well appointed. There are 3 pools here and the kids were in heaven! Distance travelled today: 692kms

Mark and the kids at the SA/NT border

Day 6 was another tourist day. We took the kids to the Alice Springs Desert Park in the morning where they got to walk around and view different desert habitats. It is simple enough to walk around (in fact, we took Biddy’s pram for the inevitable slow periods) but it was so hot. You are out in the heat for pretty much the whole time, although there are water stops along the way (which we made good use of). Tom did so well walking around the park, but by the end he was buggered – so was I. I think I was bringing up the rear! (give me a break, I’m nearly 7 months pregnant). After lunch we headed for the Reptile Centre in town. This is a bit run down and institutional looking, but there are heaps of exhibits to view and even a “pet” goanna that meanders about the place on its own that you can pat (but don’t touch its head or tail unless you want a nip!). Tom was hugely impressed by the snakes and geckos.

Tom with the goanna at the Alice Reptile Centre

We are now at day 7 and the novelty of living in the caravan and travelling has worn off the kids and they are now settling into a routine much better. For the first couple of days, Tom was a bloody nightmare to deal with, mainly because he had so much pent up energy, but now he is getting a lot better. Biddy is also settling into it all as well, sleeping better at night. This day also sees us leaving Alice and heading for Tennant Creek. We passed through Aileron which has a huge statue of an Aileron man overlooking the town and another of an Aileron woman and child down in the town. I’m not sure how big they are (I’ll google it), but they are enormous (impressive!). Not much at Barrow Creek and we ate lunch in the van under the only tree in the roadside stop. Temperature is in the 40’s today and after lunch, both the kids and I fell asleep and missed Wycliffe Well and Wauchope. Wycliffe Well is reknown for being a UFO hot spot and is even marked on maps as being the UFO centre. Mark said that there was a tin cutout of a UFO and another of a green man at the entrance to the town. The “centre” was just the arse-end of the roadhouse! But the highlight of the trip for me so far was the next stop – the Devils Marbles. When I was a little girl, we used to have a big book at home that was all about travelling Australia. In it, was a picture of the marbles and I always thought they looked so cool. I remember knowing that I would visit them one day and now here I am! They are spectacular in real life! I made both kids and Mark get out and come for a walk with me. I really enjoyed this bit of the trip. Onto Tennant Creek afterwards. Distance travelled today: 529kms

Aileron woman and child statue

All of us at the Devil's Marbles

We were going to head to Katherine today (day 8) and spend a couple of days here, but that would mean that would put us in Darwin a day later, and we really wanted to get there. So we decided to go as far as Mataranka (100kms less) and then do a short jump to Darwin the following day. So onwards from Tennant Creek to Mataranka we went (Mark insisted on calling it Madagascar!). On the way, we turned off and stopped at Daly Waters Pub. This pub is famous the world over and heaps of international visitors come here. The bar is covered in stuff (no other word for it really) – from bras, undies, rugby tops, stubbie holders, cloth patches, money, hats etc... The kids had a good time wandering around and it was a good half hour break for the out of the car. Mataranka is reknown for 2 things: thermal pools and also the place that the book (and film) “We of the Never Never” was about. Never having read the book, I’m not sure what the story is about (although I could venture a guess). The thermal pool is located just near the Mataranka Homestead where we are camping for the night (and I mean camping...this is just about bush camping), and we all toodled off for a look and a dip. What we thought initially were noisy birds turned out to be red flying foxes – thousands of them! And you had to walk under them to get to the pool. I’m sure we were piddled and pooed on for the round trip! The pool was beautiful although I couldn’t help but think of it as one giant bat toilet! It is now quite muggy and we are feeling the tropical weather more and more. Distance travelled today: 575kms

Sam and Biddy enjoying a cold one at Daly Waters Pub

Mark at the Day Waters bar

Red flying foxes

Us in the thermal pool at Mataranka

Day 9 saw us wake to a beautiful morning, but very muggy. The kids spotted a hand reared kangaroo near our camp site and took off to give it something to eat and for a pat.

We packed up and left for Darwin today, although things seem to be a bit slower going as any exertion results in you swimming in your own sweat! We arrived in Darwin at about 3.30pm and the kids and I left Mark to set up the annex while we took off for the pool. Deb, Chris, Will and Laura Stevenson came over to the caravan park to meet and greet us – the friends who are main reason for coming up all this way! – and to stay for tea. It was great to catch up with them and find out all the goings on (from both sides). Will and Laura have grown so much since we saw them last. Just as we were finishing dinner, a HUGE storm hit us and held us all captive under shelter. There have been cyclone warnings for a number of days and whilst Darwin itself is not in line for it, we will receive the rain from it. But the rain was warm and the kids had a ball running around in it. I’m glad that we have finally arrived and am looking forward to staying put for a week or so. Distance travelled today: 421kms

Tom, Biddy, Laura and Will

Deb, Mark and Stevo

Today (day 10) we took off with the Stevos and Deb’s friend Caz to Litchfield National Park for a look about and a swim in some rockpools. We started at the furthest one (Wangi Falls) and then worked our way back towards home. Wangi was unfortunately closed for swimming (crocs) but it is a beautiful waterfall. There is also a walk around the base and up over the top of the falls. We all started the walk, but after getting to the first stop (300m up stairs), I was knackered and was not going further. Neither was Deb or Caz (who is also pregnant – 13wks). The young boys took off up more stairs with Biddy, so Mark followed them. When they didn’t come back within 5 minutes, we figured that they decided to keep going the whole circuit. So we headed back and waited for them at the bottom. When they got back, Tom was still going strong, Will was holding his own, but poor Biddy was being carried by Mark. And apparently, had been for most of the walk! So Mark was a pool of sweat and his arms and legs were killing him!! We stopped then at Tolmer Falls for a look before heading to a rockpool near Florence Falls for a swim and some lunch. The water was beautiful – clear, cool, although there were some murderous rocks! We even spotted a couple of water monitors that hopped in with us for a bit (freaked Deb out!). Afterwards we went to the Magnetic Termite Mounds which are enormous before a visit to the Batchelor Pub for a quick beer before heading back to the caravan and another swim. Distance travelled today: 240kms

Mark at Wangi Falls

Mark and kids at Florence Falls rockpool

Sam with the kids at the giant termite mounds

Packing, lists and time running out!

Get ready for a flurry of posts over the next 4 weeks as we set off on our epic journey north to visit the Stevenson family in Darwin. But before we even drive out the gate, there is a flurry of activity right here! The organisation that goes into being able to take 4 weeks away from the farm is astonishing to say the least. I really think it will take Mark about 1 week to settle into the holiday, so it is just as well we are taking a great slab of time!

In the meantime, I am madly washing clothes, making lists and going shopping for all the things that pop into my mind at 3am! We drive out the gate at 7am THIS FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!

Stay tuned.......

My 40th party

Aloha!

Over the past weekend, the calf shed had been recreated to resemble a south island tropical resort. If only the weather played the game, it would have been perfect (Friday it was about 36 degrees...Saturday (party night) it was about 15!). Ahh well....we can't have it all.

Yes, it was the setting for my 40th birthday and about 65 guests came along to help me celebrate. I want to once again thank all of them for making the effort to not only come along, but to also get into the spirit of the occasion by dressing up in hula skirts, hawaiian shirts and sarongs despite the cold. I had a wonderful night. I'm sorry to say that I missed a heap of people leaving as I had to go back tot he house and put tired kids to bed, but I'm sure those people understood. After all, most of them were leaving to do the same or at least relieve baby sitters!

The bulk of this post is photos, so sit back and have a squizz.

A couple of big thankyous though....

my mum: for cutting out all the palm trees that we had as part of the decorations (you can see one in a photo below. These were 7" high and made of MDF....a bit of work gone into them). Also for helping with the shopping, the food preparation and serving and also the baby sitting while I was trying to get organised!

Butler ladies: Bernie made my cake, helped with decorations and dished out the food. Emma and Monnie made some great decos to bring to the farm. Emma also acted as bartender for a bit to get cocktails organised.

Mark: for running around, picking up and dropping off hire gear, helping to set up the shed and also for helping me to clean up today! (very important job)

Trevor and Terry: our farm guys pitched in to help set up, help Mark pick up hire gear, mow lawns, move machinery around.... general dogs bodies.

Mooka: for arranging the coolroom for the drinks and the food. A damn godsend!

Alfie: for cutting up the meat and making sure it was cooked properly.

And finally my cousin Dean and his family: for travelling from Adelaide especially for the night. It was great to see them all (it's been too long guys!)

Biddy

Tom

Mum, Emma and Bernie

Mark

The (6 months pregnant) birthday girl giving a speech

Kids on the "beach"

Some of the guests (you can see a palm tree in the background...one of 12!)

Blowing out the candles

The following morning, we put on a breakfast of bacon and eggs for all those that stayed overnight. Much to our amazement (and delight), Biddy decided to give us all an impromptu performance. "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" was her song of choice. And of course, she HAD to have the microphone on. Singing into it with it turned off was just NOT ON. Mark had to go and crank it all up for her! She lived it up for her "fans".

Do you think a karaoke machine might be on Santa's 2010 list?