Cairns, Undara, Northern Territory, KAKADU, Darwin

Well my honey and I had a very busy and fun vacation for the last 16 days. We drove over 5,500 Kilometers in that time as well. We ended up seeing quite a lot of Australia, I've probably seen more of Australia than my own country.

We started out from Townsville and went up North along the coast to Cairns. This is the last bigger town on the east coast. Cairns was a nice town, though very busy with other young backpackers. The "highlights" was walking along the strand by the beach and daydreaming about owning a fancy sailboat in the future by watching the ones in harbor. Oh and having bats shat all over our car that night plus having a drunk backpacker(s) in the hostel be very obnoxiously loud at 3 am. :P I think we've learned our lesson about hostels......we're too old for them!

Then off to Undara which is famous for it's lava tubes. However the tours were very expensive to see them, and we arrived to late anyways and missed it. But we did hike up to a old overgrown volcanic site the next morning. It was a really nice campground we stayed at as well.

On the way to Mt. Isa which is far west Queensland, we ran out of fuel. The fuel prices were incredibly expensive in the outback, as it was up to 0ver 400 kms between service stations. Thus no competition so propriators could really ask outrageous prices. The most we paid at one station was $1.70litre. This trip became quite expensive........

Anyways we had to hitch a ride to the next town which was thankfully only 20 kms aways and buy a 5 litre jerry can then hitch another ride back to our stalled car. Ahhh the adventures :P

Mt.Isa we stayed at a very nice caravan park but it was quite abit cooler at night.

Threeways, the next stop was an awful location it was so windy the tent was caving in and very cold. We didn't even stay at that caravan park on the way home.

Katherine was beautiful. It was warm . This was in the Northern Territory now, the far north west state of Australia. We stayed at this campground for 2 days. We hiked up a 7 km walk the next day along the beautiful gorges. Saw a thin small brown water snake and then turtles and fish in the river. We dropped bits of our lunch and tuna in the water and they loved it!

The campground had a nice pool in it as well, so we cooled off after the hike.

That night we met a German backpacker named Patrick. He was 19 but passionate and intelligent. Anyways Andreas and I talked with him for several hours and religion and Christianity came up too. It was a great opportunity to witness our faith. Patrick is definitely searching and we prayed that our words and example could make a postive impact on him.

Then on to Kakadu National Park. We stayed at the Park for 3 days, 4 nights. It was great. Many hiking/walking trails, beautiful rock escarpments, artistic ancient aboriginal rock art, unique and diverse wetlands. We went on a wetland boat cruise and saw about 4-5 wild crocodiles. The second campground (Merl) that we stayed at in the national park was better. The only down side of Kakadu was the Mossies (Mosquito's). They were awful, those combined with Midgie bugs. Andreas and I got at least 200 bites each. Let me tell you it was a very itchy 5 days after.

Then on to Darwin. Which is the only city on the North coast of Australia. It was a scenic interesting place. A beautiful park, historic museum and lovely beach. The only problem was no swimming as there was algae growth in the waters. We also got our thermostat replaced on Mandy and also a couple rock chips on the windscreen from the big road trains that passed us on the highway. It was mainly 2 lane highway the whole way.

Then it was the long drive back to the east coast, to Rockhampton. We drove over 2,500 Kms in 5 days. The most interesting stop on the way back was in a town called Winton. Nothing very special about the town or the caravan park we stayed in that night. But at the caravan park they had this evening show featuring 2 middle aged bush poet women. It was highly entertaining. They were comediens, they shared some amazing poems they had wrote, waxed yarns about the way of life in Oz and just spoke abit about their lives. It was definitely memorable.

Two days later we were here in Rockhampton........overall this road trip was awesome and I could not have had a better travel companion. I love married life and have such a wonderful husband. Andy was so helpful with all of our camping and set up, making dinner, looking after Mandy really well and even changing the oil himself. He was the best snuggler the nights it was cool outside, I actually for once was not too cold camping :)

I will be uploading a bunch of pictures on my facebook today of our time in Australia, if you're interested in the sights we've been seeing :)