The Northern Territory

Darwin to Broome - 10th - 24th May

After a 10 hr bus journey and then a 3 hr flight we arrived in Darwin in the Northern Terrority (it's only a couple of inches on the map!). We picked up our home for the next 34 days - a Toyoto truck with a caravan stuck on the back. It looks kind of strange, but the important thing it is a 4 wheel drive.

Our first stop is Kakadu National Park. We go to the visitors center to find out where we can go. It turns out that we can't really go anywhere off the main road. Nearly all the interesting 4WD roads are still closed within the park. There are only 2 seasons up here, the Wet and the Dry. During the Wet it rains for months and large parts of the area get flooded. In the Dry every day has a perfect blue sky and the temperature drops to a more bearable 30. We arrived at the beginning of the Dry, so there's still a lot of water around, and luckily we missed the recent cyclone which hit the area.

Our 4 WD may look like a bit of a plodder but it does have some grunt under the bonnet. And we've needed it ... we had to drive through a bog to get to a campsite in Gregory National Park. One car had already been abandoned by the track, presumably after a failed attempt to get across. It's bloody nerve racking going through because if you get stuck you've got no idea when the next person will be along to give you a tow. The ruts in the mud were about a foot deep and as you go through the truck pitches so far forward you think you're going to nose dive into the dirt. But after a couple of timid/failed attempts we managed to get across with a bit of brute force and gas ... and boy does this thing drink gas. 70 litres of diesel fill up the tank .. that's get you 500km on a good road.

You know you're not in St Albans when you see signs like this all over the place... This one is by the side of a bush walk which the tourist information centre recommends you do ! There's an identical sign in a couple of the campsites we've stayed in. (Thankfully we're not sleeping in the tent any more). When they say there are crocs in the area they mean it too... and they're much closer than you think. At least they were at the Yellow River. The site we stayed at backed onto the water and not five minutes into a boat trip up stream we saw our first croc. The first of many. You can see why they like living here though.

We decided to "nip down" to the Bungle Bungles before going across to Broome. It's about 300km with 50km of 4WDing. It takes us 6 hrs to get there. Thankfully our body clocks have adjusted so we wake up at dawn (around 5.30am) and we're in bed soon after dark (around 7pm!!). This place is really strange. Strippey, massive beehive domes everywhere. You have to walk to see the best places, but in the heat even a short walk takes hours. The most beautiful place was Mini Palms Canyon. The colours are amazing and it's hard to believe anything survives out here.

The temperature out here during the day means even going for a short walk is a major undertaking. I say a short walk, in fact all the marked walking tracks out here are short. 3 km max. But then that's just about as much as anyone can manage. The heat and the sun (We've not seen a single cloud in days) make you feel exhausted after 500 metres. The going is slow and you guzzle masses of water which you have to carry around. We've gone walk-about a couple of times and we've both ended up stumbling the last 200 metres back to the truck. But it's worth putting in the effort. The views, plants, rocks, insects etc are incredible. I've got nothing to compare it too. Our camera is having problems digesting it too. The lense can't handle scenery on such a grand scale. Apart from the exhaustion there's one other major side effect of going walk-about. It's a syndrome called "acute hypersensitivity to rustling noises round your ankles." The world's most dangerous snakes and spiders live out here and there's plenty of long grass for them to hide in. Fortunately rustling noises so far have all turned out to be false alarms - mainly due to us stepping on dead palm leaves - of which there are many. Because it plays on your nerves quite a bit Caity and I take it in turns to lead the way down particularly narrow stretches of path.

The Whitsundays 28th - 7th May

This boat was our home for the week as the four of us sailed round the Whitsunday Islands. There are 74 of them in total, many surrounded by white sandy beaches and coral reefs. Obviously what with Chris' sailing credentials it made sense for him to be captain. I liked to think of myself as "First Officer" (vice captain) with special repsonsiblity for navigation and the anchor. Caity and Jean were "competent crew" although by the last 2 days we (the captain and I ) saw fit to assign them to navigational duties under close supervision. Caity was also the ships doctor and was press ganged into being our VHF communincations officer. From the ships log you will see only once were we within inches of running aground.

Life on board "Y-Knot" was slow and relaxed. The only decisions to be made each day were - 1) where has the best snorkelling 2) where are we going to anchor for the night 3) which one of the gourmet meals are we goint to take out the freezer for dinner?

My role as Communications Officer was vital to maintain the pretence that we knew what we were doing to the boat hire company. Twice a day they would radio us with the weather and then talk to each boat in turn to go through their plans for the day. Being at the end of the alphabet (Y-Knot) meant we got to listen in on everyone else. Over the week we made certain observations about the other boats in the area. "Morning Mist" never answered the radio. "Sun Quest" had a very depressed sounding man who always seemed to be at Happy Bay. Our favourite boat names were "Champagne on Ice" and "Rum and Coke".

We did some great sailing when the wind came up (and the rain came down!). Our maximum speed was 8.7 knots, but Dad did keep on insisting we could go faster!

AUSTRALIA - Sydney

Sydney 22 - 27th April

Meet the parents. Look who's come to visit. For the next two weeks Chris and Jean are officially on tour and it just so happens to coincide with Caity's 30th birthday. This is them on Bondi. Bevans on Bondi.

Mum and Dad arrived a few hours before us and had already checked into the hotel by the time we arrived. It was strange knocking on the door and seeing them after so long and so far away from home. The hotel is in an area called Kings Cross, which the guidebook says is the red light district. You only have to walk a short distance to see all the shady goings on, but there are also lots of trendy cafes and bars in the streets nearby.

We might as well have had the Union Jack tattooed on our foreheads - because we went out of our way to do all the tourist bits. The highlight of which was going to the opera house - not just outside - but inside too for a concert. Despite looking like something from outer space on the outside - there's lots of concrete inside and it all looks a bit 1970's... which is around the time when it was built so I guess that's what you'd expect. There was also a trip to an art gallery - full of modern stuff which we all thought was rubbish. At one point Chris and Jean started laughing - which because there was so little stuff inside to muffle the sound - you could practically hear throughout the whole building.

Of course the main event was my birthday!!! I was kept firmly in the dark about what we were going to do. The day started with breakfast in our usual cafe, but today there was presents, champagne and beautiful flowers. Nik had also arranged for me to have my hair cut. We then headed off to the aquarium, which had floating tanks in the harbour with seals and sharks swimming around in (in different ones so the seals didn't get eaten). For lunch we jumped in a taxi to Bondi Beach to have a surprise picnic. Because it was so windy we ended up sitting in what looked like a bus shelter. We also had to hide the bottle of wine in a brown paper bag, because of the alcohol ban on the beach. And finally we had a fabulous dinner at a very cool restaurant on a quay with the Sydney skyline in the background. Supposedly Russel Crowe has a penthouse apartment there. Nik arranged for the transport to get us there.

Here's a photo of Caity with Dr J. "Dubya" for those people back home who're missing him. He managed to wangle us an invite to this cool house party overlooking Bondi Beach. There was a bouncer on the door checking names off a list, a cocktail bar, smoke machine, glitter ball + everything. It was all very Miami Vice except without the Tubbs and Crockett .. although come to think about it there was one person who looked a bit like Don Johnson.

The Far North 17-20th April

When looking for a good hostel we check 2 things. Firstly the Lonely Planet which has a little write up of the hostel. Secondly in the BBH Guide which gives each hostel a satisfaction rating - anything in the 90%'s is going to be something pretty special. The Endless Summer Lodge at Ahipara (the bottom end of Ninety Mile Beach) got 95% and you can definitely see why. (Kenny G recommended we stay here). It's one of those rare places that is not only in the perfect place (Ninety Mile Beach, surf beach for beginners outside the front door - photo above), is beautiful inside and out, clean and also friendly. That's me standing in our bedroom window. If we hadn't got booked flights to Oz we could have definitely stayed much longer.

Sod the environment ! Quad bikes are essential if you've only got a limited amount of time to see ninety mile beach. I don't know how much fuel we burned up, we were having too much fun to care. Apart from racing along the shoreline there were rocks and small sand dunes to negotiate. There was nobody telling us where to go or what to do or how fast to drive. A five minute lesson from the people we hired them from + we were off... left to our own devices on 75 km of sand (but for some reason they call it ninety mile beach) There's no "nanny state" here when it comes to the outdoors. What with all the mucking about and double donuts we managed to get 30 km up the beach past monster sized sand dunes (150 ft high) and impossibly run rundown holiday homes which NZlander's spend their summers doing up. We found out later that planning restrictions here are very tight - nobody is allowed to bulldoze their property and rebuild on the land. But it appears there's nothing in the rules to stop you extending your house by parking a bus in the front room.






This is Cape Reinga which is the northern most tip of the north island. It's where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet. Apparently one of them is 10 metres higher than the other. I don't understand how that can happen and nobody could explain.... out here it's just a "well known fact." But the point of these pictures is that Cape Reinga is as far as we can go in New Zealand. There's no more of it left. Which means it's time to go somewhere else.