Agnes' blog: Alice to Darwin in a camper van :-)

On Oct 22nd with Philip we started our fun drive between Alice Springs and Darwin. We rented a camper for 4 days, so we had plenty of time. The day before leaving Rob (my footy mate) gave me about 40 sausages!! Philip cooked them all and for 4 days we ate sausages cold, watm, in sauce, etc.. By Sunday we were sick ot it!! Lol. Leaving Alice was a bit difficult for me. I made really good friends there and it felt like home. We actually left Heaven twice (the backpacker I was staying + working) because I'd forgotten to say goodbye to a few of them the first time. We finally left around 11am and headed north. Our first stop was the Devil Marbles. Basically it's rocks in the middle of the desert. It's incredible, you could think that they've been put there on purpose on the top of each other. According to scientists, the 'marbles' are the rounded remains of molten lava eroded over aerons. That was nice and not crowded so perfect to look around. For our first night we stayed next to the Tourism Office in Tennant Creek. I'm not sure we were actually allowed to but we did anyway. We watched a nice sunset and had sausages for dinner!! Lol. The first day we drove ...kms.

After a good night sleep and a nice breky (Oz word for breakfast) we hit the road again. We wanted to stay in Mataranca for the second night. Mataranca is known for its crystal-clear Rainbow Springs thermal pool shrouded in rainforest. It sounded like a good plan after a day driving. On our way we stopped in the Daly Waters Pub where all good backpackers have to stop. The walls are covered by foreign currency, t-shirts, underwear..pretty much everything except wallpaper. It was a cool place to stop and get a nice rafreshing drink. We were also "lucky" to see a controlled fire on the side of the road. Basically the lands are being set on fire regularly to allow the nature to survive better with the environment. That was impressive and a bit scary!

We finally arrived in Mataranca just before sunset and that was so nice to cool down in the thermal pool sourounded by rainforest.

On the 3rd day we drove to Katherine where we firstly stopped at its hot springs. Then we went to an 2hours cruise on the Katherine River. That was very nice. The rainy season hadn't started yet so the river was low but I enjoyed it anyway. After the cruise we quickly drove to Pine Creek where we wanted to stay overnight. On our way we stopped to Edith Falls for the sunset, very nice! Nothing special was in Pine Creek, only a good location to stop before doing the Kakadu National Park the following day.

The next day we got up early and started to drive through Kakadu. A bit dissappointed we couldn't do much apart from looking things from the car cause we didn't have a 4WD to access the best place. But, well that was all fine anyway. The waterfalls wouldn't have been great anyway because of the hot season, so no big deal. We stayed overnight in Humpty Doo - close location to the Crocodile Jumping that we had planned to do on Sunday morning before heading to Darwin and end our nice road trip.

We then went to the Crocodile Jumping on Sunday and I have to say it was impressive!! But I don't know what most hillarious.. the crocodile jumping to get some meat or the birds stealing the crocodiles' meat!!?!! lol

We finally drove to Darwin where we dropped the camper van and had a rest for a few days before flying to Cairns.

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