A new state – The Northern Territory.

We left Lake Argyle and detoured back to Kununurra in a failed attempt to get our medical results. In hindsight, it was truly frustrating all ‘round, as the road to Lake Argyle goes off at a very acute angle, and we were right near the border. Since our medical records were lost, all we achieved was the additional loss of two good hats (Angus’ and mine… somewhere!) Oh and we also got to pick up our mail, which had taken somewhere between 12 – 15 DAYS to get from Melbourne to Kununurra! It was a good thing we had to go back, I’m not sure if the post office does forwarding for ‘post restante’.

Anyway! We got to the border just after lunchtime and bid a fond farewell to Western Australia. It had been 4.5 months and my favourite state so far.

We made it as far as Pine Creek, where we stayed at a turf club called “Pussycat Flats” for the night. It was a grand total of $24 for the powered site (no charge per person or for kids – yay!) but they have a GREAT bar with delicious meals so we ended up spending a fair bit more than that!

We were in a bit of a hurry to get to Darwin, so skipped the sights there, knowing we would be back through on the way south. We were on our way to Litchfield National Park, which was highly recommended by our friends Michael and Terry, who we had met in Adelaide and caught up with now and then right up the west coast.

We weren’t sure if Bertha would fit in the campsites there, so we decided to play it safe and stay just outside the National Park at the Banyan Tree Caravan Park. It was SUCH a lovely place to stay. Shady and beautiful and alongside a buffalo park so we had lovely moo-ey neighbours. (Not so lovely at 6am though…) They also do a free sausage sizzle 3 nights a week so we even had dinner provided one night too! And it wasn’t just one sausage in a dodgy slice of bread either. There were buns and onions and sauces and more snags than you could poke a stick at. Yummo! We even had some post-dinner entertainment in the form of a hungry children’s python who had just woken from 3 months in hibernation. We got to watch “Myceita” eat her second mouse of the day. (Say her ‘Spanish’ name slowly, out loud, and you’ll see where she got her name from!)

We spent a lovely couple of days driving into Litchfield National Park. It was just gorgeous – breathtakingly beautiful once more. We are always surprised that each National Park is so different from the others. The gorges and rocks and trees all have their own individual appeal. We headed into the closer bits the first day – the magnetic termite mounds (built by blind termites with in-built compasses!) and Florence Falls and the cool and wonderful Buley Rockholes were first.

The next day we checked out Tolmer Falls - an amazing view, but blocked off to preserve the local Ghost Bat colony. And went to Wangi Falls. Wangi was wonderful. The kids and I all had a swim (too cold for Duncan!) and Angus and I even made our way across the water to swim in the waterfall. We found out later that the VERY NEXT DAY they were closed when a tourist had an ‘encounter’ with a crocodile! Eek. Luckily it was only a freshie, and the stupid Russian guy chose to antagonise it, so good on it for biting him. He survived with minor injuries, but the poor croc had to be found and destroyed, and the falls were closed for a few days so lots of people missed out on spending time there.

We also went on a short hike in the hope of seeing one of the many feral pigs in the park. Unfortunately we had to satisfy ourselves with a bush turkey and about a million bats instead.