We awoke early again but not due to heat this time. The dark clouds from last night had kept the
rising sun at bay for us, however some of them were carrying rolls of thunder
and torrential rains in our direction. I
was keen to get moving before we got trapped.
The direction we were headed in looked clear.
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| The long, straight road ahead |
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| Sadly we didn't get to see any of these cuties... I want one |
Back on the road trip, there was one more Park I wanted to
visit this side of the WA border, Mirima NP with a hidden valley. I cheered as we had to display our park pass
to gain entry! Today we’d managed to
make it for our daily dose of exercise a little earlier…. 11am. It was still baking but just not quite to the
same intensity as the day before. We
went for the half-hour walk up to a lookout over the valley. It was immediately
a better call than yesterday’s activities.
The rocks were colourfully patterned and towered around us and the views
were spectacular. The end result was still two sweaty Brits but it
didn’t matter so much because it had been worth the effort!
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| Hidden valley - Mirima National Park |
It was a fitting last outing in Western Australia. We left the UK a month ago and here we are,
having spent that whole month in one enormous State. We have surpassed the 6000km mark in our
quest to see as much of it as possible.
WA, we salute you!
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| It was time to reflect on our journey through Western Australia |
So, the Northern Territory has a lot to live up to. But only just over a week to deliver it! We need to pack in Kakadu National Park,
Litchfield NP and Darwin before our next massive drive down through the middle
to Alice Springs and on to Adelaide by 8th December. The last couple of days have been good
training! We guessed that the clocks
would go forward when we crossed the border, but I was surprised when my phone
leapt forward by an hour and a half instead of just the hour! We’d only just had lunch and it was now
suddenly 330pm!
Not wanting to have another game of ‘frogger’ this week, we
carefully selected a cheap campsite (only $25) with complimentary reviews (and
showers very importantly) for tonight’s stop to get us off the road by
5pm. We parked up in the middle of a
massive field but had the feeling we were being watched.
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| The locals were curious... |
Okay, so we’d stopped here
partly due to some excellent reviews about the wildlife! It was only a short walk to what had clearly
become an outdated bridge over the Victoria River, showing the incredible range
that the flood waters are capable of here in the rainy season (below). The crocs
remain elusive, but the sunset was dramatic with this light show to the west whilst the storm clouds gathered behind us.
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| There's only one way that log got itself stuck in the bridge, that must've been a LOT of water |
We tried our best to be ‘outdoor campers’ tonight but the
volume of bugs was impressive. This
became especially apparent when we turned off all the lights on the van to give
them a chance to leave and witnessed a firefly mating ritual. On the ceiling INSIDE the van! This gave us a quandary. We like fireflies, so the usual mass gassing
of the van was delayed until they’d hopefully moved on. After that, anything left was fair game for death! The problem for us though was the heat. Inside the camper, even with all the netted
windows open it was sweltering. We had
to resort to running the engine and shutting all the windows to let the air con
in the dashboard work it’s magic in the whole van. It was impressive. Within no time at all we felt cool in our
living quarters. In fact, we resorted to
leaving the engine running whilst we got a couple of hours sleep and setting an
alarm for 1am when I got up, turned off the engine and returned to bed! It used about an eighth of a tank of
petrol. Well worth it in our opinion...
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