11^th News Letter.

I am beginning this newsletter by complaining about the dreadful heat we are experiencing and have been subjected to for the last couple of weeks. Each day it reaches at least 38 deg and some days 40 deg so can you imagine what that’s like in a closed up caravan? I have two things to say, one, thank got for air conditioning and two, I am really over this whole traveling thing.

Now I do feel better after getting that off my chest. I should start by reflecting on our stay in Darwin, which was quite pleasant, however, after nine days we were pleased to move on if only to greener pastures (if only). Our van park was some 25klm out of the city centre in a suburb called Coolalinga, it provided us with green lawns and space to move so we didn’t feel so crowded in. Our first day we drove into the city and had lunch at Cullen Bay Marina, which was a lovely introduction to the city. We also visited the Art Gallery and Museum, which we both found interesting and informative. Shopping around for tyres for the caravan was high on our list of important things to do and luckily we found two that fitted our purpose. After loosing two tyres in one day we have opted to carry two spares now. On the weekend we ventured up into Kakadu and our first stop was ‘Window on the Wetlands’ an amazing building perched on Beatrice Hill overlooking the Adelaide River floodplains allowing 360deg view. We arrived at Mary River Park at lunchtime a great time for more flies and excruciating heat while gazing at a trickle of water with Ken pondering where the crocodiles might be. On our way back to Darwin we pulled into Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve, which are wetlands of international significance because they support huge numbers of water birds. At that stage nothing was significant to me unless it was fully air-conditioned and did not contain dirt and flies, I did manage however to get some nice photos. On another day I was coerced into going to The Territory Wildlife Park (by Mr having to see everything) however on this occasion I was glad I went as it really ended up being a great day. It’s a fantastic park with a wonderful aquarium, Billabongs full of wildlife and best of all a huge walk through Avery and Birds of Prey display which sadly I got to miss because I preferred to sit in air conditioned comfort and partake of lunch rather than experiencing huge Eagles swooping over my head with talons out ready to pounce on me as their next meal. As some of you may know I have a bird aversion, which basically means I am scared to death of them. Near by is Berry Springs a natural spring flowing over waterfalls and large rock pools surrounded by lush green vegetation and grassy parkland. The perfect setting for a cool swim after walking around the Wildlife Park. That’s about it for Darwin apart from having a great conversation with Freeman on Skype.

Thursday 27^th Drove to Litchfield National Park and found a nice caravan park on the eastern side of the park. Unfortunately the temperature rose to an unbelievable 38deg outside and 40deg in the van. We parked under cover but the afternoon sun did her thing and there was nothing to do but crank up the air con. We decided it was to hot to cook so dined in the restaurant on Barramundi, chips and salad (the fish was beautiful).

Friday 28^th our first stop was the Magnetic Termite Mounds, a unique sight with hundreds of termites mounds standing up to 2 meters high all with their thin edges pointing north-south. A veritable graveyard of headstones, yes the excitement was building for yet another jam packed day with the flies and the heat. On to Buley Rockhole, very pretty if you could only view it without the hundreds of foreign tourists that happen to be bathing in the pools. Florence Falls were beautiful but again filled with tourists bathing. Next stop was Tabletop Swamp, well the name gives it away without me having to say a thing, looked as though wild pigs had been wallowing in it. By this stage I was contemplating not getting out of the car again. Tolmer Falls however proved to be worth the long walk to the viewing platform, which is up the top of the falls. Water cascades over huge escarpments into a deep plunge pool that has been closed off to the public, very beautiful and hopefully I have some nice shots of the area. Next stop Wangi Falls that happened to coincide with my stomach telling me it was lunchtime. While sitting at the back of the Discovery we looked up to see our next door neighbors from home pulling into the car park. I can’t imagine what the chances of that happening are but its pretty slim. We didn’t even know that they were traveling let alone meeting them on the other side of Australia. It’s a small world after all.

Saturday 29^th headed out for Kakadu with particular interest in Yellow Water Wetlands. Unfortunately it’s 150klm into the park so I decided to seize the moment to do some driving, however I was to discover that the steering is quite different with such a heavy van in tow. We arrived in Cooinda and booked into the Gagudju Lodge, a very big complex offering many different types of accommodation. The campground charged $40 for a very ordinary site, a little steep in anybodies language. We took the opportunity to book for the 6:15am wildlife cruise on the wetlands for the next morning at the tune of $90 per person. This also included an all you can eat buffet breakfast.

Sunday 30^th We were up before dawn and headed for the bus to take us to the billabong. The bus driver looked as sleepy as we felt. Once there, we boarded an aluminum catamaran that fortunately was not too over crowded. It’s very hard to describe just how beautiful the sunrise was over the wetlands, a big red ball appearing out of the land through the fog. Yellow Water is home to crocodiles, barrumundi, wild horses, buffalo and a myriad of other wild and aquatic life. We felt we were very fortunate to see all this on a perfect calm winter (?) morning. I was amazed to see the horses grazing in the wetlands, they are really beautiful creatures and the size of the saltwater crocs was pretty impressive. The billabong attracts millions of migratory birds including jacana, egrets, jabiru, sea eagles and geese and it was wonderful to watch them interacting with one another. The banks are lined with Paperbark trees and Pandanus, while water lilies add color with their beautiful pink and white flowers. The cruise lasted for 2 hours and it was well worth the $90 per head to experience nature in such a way. We both enjoyed the experience immensely. After breakfast we headed out for Katherine as that’s the point where we turned west for Western Australia. This time we tried a new campground out of town called Springvale Homestead Tourist Park. Chronicled to be the oldest homestead in the Katherine area. It certainly looked it!

Monday 31^st. Left Katherine at about 11am heading West on Victorian Highway. Mostly savanna woodland with long straight roads filled with termite mounds and the odd Boab tree. However after entering Gregory National Park we approached Stokes Range and the typography changed dramatically. The range is breathtaking beautiful not only in its color of deep red, but also in its formation of jaggered layered ridges and huge elevated plateaus. After a long day of extreme heat we found Gunamu Tourist Park at Timber Creek offered large trees for us to park under for some relief from the heat. At 5pm we walked down to the creek to watch the freshwater crocodiles being fed. Very snappy with their jaws.

Tuesday 1^st September. Still more beautiful mountains and rock formations from every angle the beauty is breathtaking, it’s moments like these I know why I came along for the ride. Crossed the border into Western Australia having to give up all fruit and vegetables and honey, fortunately we knew about this and had cooked up a storm before hand, so only had to hand over the honey. On Ken’s insistence we headed for Lake Argyle ( Ord River Dam) and were not disappointed with both the beauty and the magnitude of the place, it is the second largest artificial lake by volume in Australia. The caravan park was very ordinary and for the first time in our travels we inherited what could be loosely called feral neighbors. They actually weren’t a bother but the way they chose to live certainly captured my interest. The family consisted of a women of about 40, her boyfriend whom we are guessing by his attitude has probably spent time in goal and her son of about 20 years and 2 dogs. Their van was a very old, small pop-top, their belongings appeared to be thrown in through the small doorway, when the door was opened the view inside was of total chaos, crap everywhere. Every thing they did have appeared to have been picked it up at the dump, but mainly nothing was cared for, they seemed to live amongst squalor quite happily. Ken’s version is they were nice people. Fortunately we were able to move on the next day as we had seen all that we felt important including the dam and its history.

Wednesday 2^nd Only another 75 klms down the road we discovered Kununarra and pulled into our pet friendly caravan park by the lake strangely called Lakeside Tourist Park. We were able to get a spot right on the lake alas however this meant NO TREES. Before long we were off into town to find the shops, and to replenish our supply of fresh fruit and vegetables and also to pick up our mail. Mail takes 2 weeks to get from Qld to here so we will miss it, probably have it sent on to Broome. We were however luckier with the fruit and veg and on the advise of a woman in the Information Centre we drove out of town to find a place that made really nice mango and banana smoothies. I made a nasty discovery today about the time difference between Qld and Western Australia, 2 hours. My friends have enough trouble staying awake until 7.30 to 8.30 as it is let alone 9.00 to 10.00pm.

Thursday 3^rd. We are having a rest day, which really means we aren’t driving in the car. No I am not getting used to this weather, it’s really, really hot. Poor Wendal is like a limp rag because of the heat, he probably needs to have a shave, come to think of it maybe we all do.

Friday 4^th. It appears we are having another rest day, still no mail and oh what fun it is to be here!! Got up a wee bit early and took a walk before the heat really kicked in, lots of new houses and housing estates going in, so the town looks prosperous. The people we have talked to are very friendly but it would appear most workers are transcendence about to move on away from the heat. Good news we were able to change our free phone time so now I can start my calls at 5pm West Australian time.

Saturday 5^th Ken has taken the opportunity to drive to Wyndham a town on the Cambridge Gulf some 100klms away. I have taken the opportunity to have another awful, hot, boring day. Can’t believe he had the nerve to say that he didn’t like Wyndham. Oh well as he sees it its just another day.

Sunday 6^th We are leaving town at last, and not a moment to soon as far as I am concerned. More beautiful country as we approached Carr Boyd Mountain Range, wonderful colors and formations. We decided to stop at Warmun or Turkey Creek as we had done enough driving for the day. It offered a camp spot quite close to the highway but far enough that the noise didn’t bother us too much. As we were setting up I noticed this large Brahman Bull wondering through the camp ground and then during the night I noticed at least 6 cows just wondering through between camps. I got the impression that they owned the place. Warmun has an Indigenous community on the other side of the highway however they seemed to be very comfortable with the store and park belonging to the roadhouse. The store is immaculately clean and orderly with photos of people in the community lining the walls. The people who run the store are white but appear to have a great re-pour with the indigenous people. I was very moved on Tuesday when I went to check out the store before leaving to encounter an indigenous lady of questionable age, she had white hair pulled back with combs, her dress was of leopard skin fabric, rubber thongs and a walking stick that said she meant business. When I looked at this exotic creature she smiled at me with such warmth and said hello, I walked out of that shop feeling I had encounter someone very special.

7^th We drove to a very special spot on this earth called Purnululu National Park which is located between Warmun and Halls Creek. The mountain range is called the Bungle Bungles and is unique in this world because of the ethereal rock formations. ‘The beehive shaped domes soar more than 250 meters into the air and stretch to the horizon in an intricate maze of rusty red rocks’ (Dept of Environment & Conservation) don’t want to plagiarize, but could not have said it better. We ventured on some of the recommended walks such as the Domes Walk and the highlight Cathedral Gorge a massive ampthy theatre of brilliant red rock, just wish I was still actively singing as I would not have been able to resist an aria or two. It is a place of great magnitude and beauty, a place that lets you know how small and insignificant we all are compared to

this earth we live on. The down side of this park is its inaccessibility, it’s 52 klm drive in on what can only be called a track and it takes 2-3 hours to complete. Now I will leave you to do the maths on that one and then you can guess what the terrain is like.

Tuesday 8^th. Left Warmun at about 10am and arrived at Halls Creek at lunch time. This spot can be scratched from your must do list and in retrospect we wish we had not stopped. The Shell Service Station in town (the main one) was out of action as it had an electrical failure and the line up of grey nomads with every type of van imaginable was a sight to behold. Ken being Ken decided “not a problem we would just do lunch instead of waiting in line”. We soon saw many of our fellow travelers going to a very small place just down the road serving fuel. After a leisurely lunch we jumped in line like all the other fools and ask the man to fill up the fuel tank. Some time out of town Ken uttered the words “oh no” after seeing black smoke bellowing out of the exhaust. Bad fuel is the diagnosis, hope he is right. The problem became so bad that as we passed a fellow motor home traveler he felt he needed to share his concerns with us via the radio, ‘did we know we were belching black smoke out of out exhaust’ well yes we did thank you very much for reminding us that we have a problem as if we didn’t know. We were later to catch up with this gentleman at the next campground, which was a wonderful opportunity for more male bonding. This evening we stayed at the beautiful “Fitzroy River Lodge” at Fitzroy Crossing an oasis in the middle of the wilderness that has truly done a wonderful job in bringing style and comfort to the outback.

Wednesday 9^th. A 260 klms drive to Derby and a hope of seeing some water at last, we were not disappointed, brown muddy stuff for as far as you could see. This town was much bigger than we had imagined and I was delighted to see they even had a supermarket, yes a WOOLWORTHS. A proper supermarket, hey don’t knock it until you haven’t seen one for some time, they are important to some of us. However I must admit it did not have the usual Fresh, Clean Woolies look, this looked decidedly worn with its parade of Indigenous folk, sitting, standing and sleeping in the shade of the entry. We were able to find an OK caravan park and took off to book into a flight to the horizontal falls for the next day. There are several companies all offering the same thing but very competitively, fortunately we have come at the end of the season so the fares were reduced. I have told the boys that we are spending their inheritance so there won’t be any surprises.

Thursday. 10^th We were up at 5am in time to catch a shuttle for the airport at 6am. While waiting for the shuttle we meet another couple from our campground whom we became friends with by the end of the day. Waiting for us at the airport was a de Haviland Beaver seaplane built in 1962. Well while the men were struck by its age and beauty us women (all 3, by this time another couple had joined us) couldn’t believe we were putting our lives at risk in such an old plane. Who could not have imagined what a wonderful day was ahead. The pilot flew us low over Stokes Bay, then

Wyndham Range and then on to the Horizontal Waterfalls where he was able to swoop and make many turns to enable us the best view before landing in Talbot Bay. We then boarded a large catamaran while waiting for the fast boat to take us to the falls. The fast boat, a twin engine 300hp vessel especially built to take the privileged grey nomads on the ride of a life time through the horizontal water falls was driven by a young skipper, what a job he has. Well it was very thrilling but super scary, because of the amount of water being pushed through these falls would have killed us all had anything gone wrong with the boat or the driver. We eventually got back to the catamaran and had some breakfast and then on to another vessel for a trip around the beautiful waterways of the bay. Back on the Beaver and on our triphome we were treated to a scenic flight over Buccaneer Archipelago and then King Sound. It was a spectacular day ending by sharing drinks and dinner with our new friends.

Friday 11^th found us the road headed for Broome some 220 klms away. We picked our caravan park or rather it picked us because there is only one in town that is PET FRIENDLY. After parking the van and making sure our boy was comfortable we headed into town to the post office and also for a look around the shops. We saw some very beautiful Pearls, unfortunately none of which ended up in my collection, Kens wallet containing credit card etc got stuck yet again due to his short fingers and long pockets. We ended the day watching a fabulous sunset over the Indian Ocean from Cable Beach sipping a wine or two at the beautiful Cable Beach Resort which was built by Lord McAlpine, an eccentric English environmentalist. It truly doesn’t get much better.

Saturday 12^th. Today we explored Broome and began by going down to Reddell Point where the Port is situated. We are both blown away by the clarity and vividness of the color in this part of the world. Rich beautiful blue sky meets sparkling turquoise water for as far as the eye can see. The fore shore is a carpet of white sand adorned with dark orange rock formations spreading for miles along the coast. The inviting scenery could be a pastel painting, so clear and so still. Truly is a very beautiful part of the world, I hope for your sake you don’t miss it.

This has been a very long newsletter this time, but there have been a few things to share. Hope everyone is well and that happiness is part of your lives.

Think of you all often Elizabeth and Ken